- Ms. Binns discover how much more engaged her students are in reading when they are presented with an array of reading materials that cater to her students interests and knowledge. She accepts this approach to reading when she begins to observe her students reading, sharing, and analyzing of information excitedly form the books and magazines in the library. She saw the students creating their own purpose for reading, finding meaning form pictures and texts, and they demonstrated comprehension by sharing the information they had just read with their peers. This was a big change from the silent reading that went on, where the classroom was quiet and the students simply shuffled uninterestedly through books not really gaining any information from the book.
- Ms. Binns includes Teaching Reading guiding principle #1: Literacy practices are socially and culturally constructed. She does this by allowing her students to choose relative reading material that really interest and engages them. A diversity of material is presented that students respond and create valuable meaning with it. Ms. Binns is allowing her readers to create social connections and networks with the information and their classmates through their reading.
- Ms. Binns begins allowing her students interests to cross over into her curriculum. She is gaining more and more knowledge of her students interests and is using this information to create and implement more meaningful and diverse mediums of text. Her new approach is allowing her students to share and work together. This kind of environment has made her students more engaged in reading and learning. Literacy is becoming more and more meaningful to her students. This vignette is a wonderful portray of the importance of engaging students through their individual interests.
Further Readings...
- I've recently been exposed to LAUSD's Open Court Literacy Program. I had mostly heard mixed reviews about it in my classes here at CSUN. The questions I would address to a district level curriculum specialist would include: Do you think the topics of the reading material is relative to our diverse student population? Are there alternative approaches to presenting materials for students who are struggling in grasping the concepts? Are there any bilingual alternatives or options for our ELL students? Are currently developing literature that brings more social and cultural awareness to our students?
In my observation I've noticed that not all students are learning at the same rate. Some of the students can go up to the teachers book and identify and read out loud vocabulary words they're familiar with while others can only identify a period. What happens to the kids that are falling behind?
- The reader/writer workshop model sounds like an exciting way to approach reading and writing. I like how there is designated time for many activities involved with the story the students are reading and/or writing. I find that this approach might be exceptinal for some students but I worry about the number of students with learning dissability. I worry that they might become a bit overwhelmed with the process. More consistant guidance is recquired of some of our students. How would one accomodate the process for those students? Perhaps designing an individual schedule with that student can help the individuals mange their time and assignments. I like that every student has a designated conference time with a the teacher. This allows a teacher to evaluate how each individual student is performing. I've actually seen and example of this model in a video in one of my previous classes. It worked very well in that classroom. But, not every classroom is going to be a replica of another. Every classroom calls for unique methods that better serve their students.
3 comments:
Hi Nercy,
It is a wonderful thing that Ms. Binns did, allowing her students to be curious and choose what interested them. So offten teachers are quick to say, "no, chose a real book," such is not the same for everyone. Standardized tests and curriculum are ideal and function best in that ideal setting. Multimodal reading material should be welcomed for our young readers. Periodicals are what most students see at home and see their parents reading, modeling for them. Having the freedom to choose gives students the responsability to think for themselves. As empowered readers, students take more from the reading than they would have with assigned material.
OCR is very structured and doesn't offer much room to further develope a topic for the students. Teachers are given their guid book, students have their basal readers and worksheets to complete. So much is just teaching the children to memorize main ideas of the story, not make a personal connection. Yes, many special needs students struggle to keep with the pace. My student has some difficulty really answering the questions on his review worksheets.Reader/Writer Workshops pretty much run themselves, because the children are so involved in writing their own stories and experiances with the class. The writting process becomes mch more personal. As we've read in previous chapters, writing is one form of literacy,aside from reading text.
Nercy,
I think we as educators need to be patient and take a step back once in a while to observe how students learn like Ms. Binn did. Ms. Binn didn't stop her students from reading the texts that weren't not mandated by the school. Her patience helped her to explore how interests of students affect their reading and learning process. As educators, we need to know when to just observe our students and when to step in to guide them in their learning process. I think it's hard to just observe students at times because subconsciously I think that only way I can help them is to correct them when they make mistakes.
Hi Nercy,
I agree with Min that its hard to not step in and correct mistakes. And I also wonder how we can incorporate these various ways of reading when the district may have a very strict curriculum. How would we foster both?
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