Blog Response for Oct 11

            It was interesting reading chapter 8 of Strategies that Work in regards to allowing students to utilize questioning to deepen their thinking and understanding. It made me wonder how I can teach my students different questioning strategies and help them to see how posing questions will further their understanding of the text. How would you teach your students the importance in questioning and how to appropriately question what they’re reading? How do you think teaching your students these techniques will change your classroom environment?

            Many of my students look to me when they have a question and pose the questions to me for me to answer. They don’t know how to pose a question for themselves to challenge their own understanding and deepen their understanding by finding the answer themselves. I really liked the part in the book where it talked about the “knowing when you know and knowing when you don’t know,” I liked how the authors talked about the students having their own sticky notes to mark where they have a question in their reading and then the students move that sticky note to the point in the text where they found the answers. I feel that this technique gives a student a sense of accomplishment and I feel that they will really comprehend what they learned because it wasn’t just a teacher telling them the answer they found it themselves. I feel that this process would have to be modeled to my students several times so that they really understood how to answer their own questions, and to show them how that can deeper their understanding.

            I also really liked the idea of “gaining information through questioning,” because I feel that it can really add to my students’ comprehension of the text if they are actively doing more than just reading the text. Teaching the kids to wonder can open their eyes to so much more information than just reading a text and then putting it down. Having the students fill out an “I wonder” page can make them active participants in what they’re reading and get them more engaged to look for the answer. I feel that this also would have to be modeled several times to my student to help them really understand how to not just wonder about what they are reading, but also to think about the answers, look for the answers in the text, or look for it outside of the text.

            I feel that all of these strategies if used in my classroom would completely change the atmosphere in regards to questions. I think that my students would not just rush through what they are reading but actually take a deeper look at what they are reading and gain a higher sense of engagement with the text. My students would have better comprehension because they would be taking a deeper dive into what they are reading and have a sense of ownership of their own understanding. I think that this would take a lot of modeling in front of my students to help them understand how to question, and how to use their questioning to aide in their comprehension.

I read through Karly’s unit planning. I think that your point with comprehension being extremely important is a great point because you’re right it is needed in every aspect of their lives in school and outside of school. This is a great strategy to focus on.

            You said that you were planning on focusing on picking out important events in stories and summarizing. You also talked about incorporating both teacher-led and student-led methods to your daily routine. Are you going to use this method as a whole class or are you going to work in small groups so that you can differentiate the books you use based on their reading skills and abilities? It sounds like you do not separate your students based on reading levels. I think that peer-to-peer help is great, but how will you make sure that students are not reading above their level and get frustrated and make sure that your higher-level readers will not get bored?

           

            I think it is really cool that you will be incorporating technology/online resources into your lessons, because I agree with you that it may become boring for them to just fill out graphic organizers. It would be neat if they did some sort of project where they do a re-tell of the story they read to a group who did not read the same story. They could do some sort of presentation to “teach” another group which would get the student led teaching in your lesson.

           

            It sounds like you guys already have a lot of systems in place and that your kids are doing a lot of great student led lessons which I think is awesome. It sounds like your classroom community is really supportive and I think you should really monopolize on that! I am really interested to hear about the activities that you come up with because comprehension is so important at every level. I am also really interested to hear how these lessons go and how your students do with learning comprehension skills!

Response Post to Joel's Inquiry Project

I really like how you mentioned you were planning on using technology in some way to complete this project. I think that technology has much to offer to instruction, with the different platforms that can be utilized. It will be a perfect resource to produce and publish the writing that your students do. I think you can get pretty creative with maybe using a website, such as Weebly or something similar to publish their work. I am thinking about possibly doing this as well. I can certainly see how you would make publishing of their work an essential component of your project; it gets students motivated to produce their best work when they are aware of their audience. As Routman points out, “We adjust our language according to who our audience is, but kids don’t know this. Too often, they are not aware that they need to think about providing information that the reader will need to have to understand the writing” (pp.145). The author goes on, “But once the teacher added a real audience and told kids it was important they use all the letters and sounds they knew so people could read their writing, they all used some letters and sounds” (pp.145). Therefore, I think it would be smart to remind the kids that the audience will be someone other than the teacher.

I like how you are very thoughtful and observant of the ways that your students are feeling about writing. The fact that you motivated to engage the students and spark their interest in the writing process speaks volumes about your attentiveness to the students’ needs. Because you chose to work on creating authentic, meaningful writing tasks as your core practice, I think this is a perfect match for targeting those students who struggle during writing time. By creating meaningful tasks, students will recognize their writing has a purpose and is important. The sample units used in the Writing Essentials book may be helpful for guiding you and sparking ideas in your creating of authentic, meaningful writing tasks.

It seems like you have a lot of good, supportive resources in your school and district. I like that your MT saves everything he has created and that you are given the opportunity to look over those types of things. Your MT sounds very organized J Your idea about writing something that might help the community or that they may like to read sounds like you are on the right track to the creation of something meaningful. Community engagement is a great idea! Providing students with the opportunity to write about something in the community that they feel strongly about is a great way to focus on voice through meaningful writing. As Routman points out, “Voice is the single most important element in attracting and holding a reader’s interest. Voice is the writer’s unique personality on paper, his own melody in words, her ‘mark’ as an individual. No two voices are alike. To write with voice, the writer has to be interested in the writing. Without that interest, students don’t invest in the piece” (pp.146).

I am interested to see what you come up with after a little more planning! Your blog has given me a number of ideas for my project as well. All your concerns and interests in relation to the students shows that you will create a thoughtful, meaningful, and creative project for your students to learn about and through!