This weeks readings focused on the type of discussions that are generated throughout classrooms. In chapter 10 of the Elementary Classroom Management by Weinstein and Mignano, they wrote about recitations - also known as a pattern of interaction called initiation-response-evaluation (I-R-E). I found this part of the chapter to be particularly interesting because the authors wrote about both the negative and the positive aspects of it. It has been criticized because it's teacher-centered and there is a lack of interaction between students and doesn't call for a higher or deeper level of thinking (300). On the other hand, it can be very useful in helping the students learn and talk about things they wouldn't think about. For instance, in the dialogue on pages 301-302, it shows us how the teacher is important when it comes to recitation because with her or his involvement, she/he is able to push the students' thinking by asking intellectually demanding questions. I think that no one strategy is perfect; there will always be negatives and benefits to each strategy and it just depends on what the teacher wants to accomplish with her students when deciding on which type of strategy she/he wants to use to generate classroom talk and successful learning.
The other type of classroom talk is discussion. There is a chart in Almasi's (1996) article on page 8 that shows the differences between the students' roles in a recitation and discussion. Some of the types of students' roles in discussion include: "Students ask questions in order to understand text better and to help construct meaning..., students encourage each other to participate..., students restate or try to question what others have said if it is not clear...", etc. After looking at this it sure makes the discussion look better than recitation, but will the students be able to hit every important aspect of whatever they're discussing if left to talk about it among themselves? is it alright if they don't go over the facts? I'm not sure. Nevertheless, in order for them to be able to venture off without the teacher they need to first learn how to do this by teacher scaffolding. The teacher needs to show the students how important all of their ideas are and that they can feel comfortable enough to express them to each other - each and every student. Good response-centered talk involves four things, as the McGee article states: It begins with teachers' careful planning, it's carried out in thoughtful interaction with children, it's extended by personal response activities, and it involves assessing children's responses to literature. A well planned and well-guided conversation will involve all students.
Now to finally talk about my placement classroom. I am in a kindergarten classroom and I have to say that all that I see is recitation. The CT wants to know that they know very distinct information. She wants to know that they know their numbers and alphabet and that they can follow a story line. Much interpretation and deeper thinking is not involved in this classroom.
The other type of classroom talk is discussion. There is a chart in Almasi's (1996) article on page 8 that shows the differences between the students' roles in a recitation and discussion. Some of the types of students' roles in discussion include: "Students ask questions in order to understand text better and to help construct meaning..., students encourage each other to participate..., students restate or try to question what others have said if it is not clear...", etc. After looking at this it sure makes the discussion look better than recitation, but will the students be able to hit every important aspect of whatever they're discussing if left to talk about it among themselves? is it alright if they don't go over the facts? I'm not sure. Nevertheless, in order for them to be able to venture off without the teacher they need to first learn how to do this by teacher scaffolding. The teacher needs to show the students how important all of their ideas are and that they can feel comfortable enough to express them to each other - each and every student. Good response-centered talk involves four things, as the McGee article states: It begins with teachers' careful planning, it's carried out in thoughtful interaction with children, it's extended by personal response activities, and it involves assessing children's responses to literature. A well planned and well-guided conversation will involve all students.
Now to finally talk about my placement classroom. I am in a kindergarten classroom and I have to say that all that I see is recitation. The CT wants to know that they know very distinct information. She wants to know that they know their numbers and alphabet and that they can follow a story line. Much interpretation and deeper thinking is not involved in this classroom.
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ReplyDeleteAs explained in Almasi, literature is meant to be a social event, meaning that interaction amongst other students is vitally important to the students’ comprehension of the text (Almasi, page 2). Discussion, as described in Almasi, is (I feel) the best way to engage in this type of interaction. It is unfortunate that we don’t see this type of discussion in many classrooms. Although there are merits to the recitation method, as explained on page 302 of Weinstein and Mignano, research done over the past 20 years shows that discussion promotes higher order thinking and students’ engagement. It also emphasizes that discussion helps students to develop persuasive arguments as well as their ability to predict and elaborate (Triplett and Buchanan, page 3).
ReplyDeleteIn order to implement this type of discussion into our classrooms, teachers need to be conscious about helping their students to develop their Experience-Text-Relationship (E.T.R). This involves the text being culturally relevant to the students. This technique helps students to become excited about reading as well as develop their comprehension skills which are often improved when using culturally relevant texts (Triplett and Buchanan, page 2). Teachers also need to encourage students to share their opinions about the text freely and to respond appropriately to the comments and opinions of other students engaged in the discussion. In order to encourage this, the teacher should stay out of the conversation as much as possible unless clarifying a student’s comment, engage students who are not participating, or to connect students’ comments where no connection is being made amongst the students (Goldenburg, page 3).
Much like Magdalena’s classroom, the classroom that I am in also uses mostly recitation during Language Arts. A typical Language Arts period consists of the students reading a specified story out of the curriculum text independently, and “discussing” the questions at the end of the story as a class (by discussing, I mean that the students are asked the questions and are expected to provide an answer and then the teacher responds to that answer and elaborates). Following this, the students are then responsible for completing a worksheet involving summarizing the main ideas of the story or are given a short writing assignment on the reading.
When picturing specific students that, I think, would benefit from book talks and discussions, I am made aware that encouragement for the students to share their ideas freely is incredibly important. Many students in my classroom are told immediately when they answer a question incorrectly and I have noticed that the same student seems reluctant to volunteer their opinions again after that. The students in my classroom would also need to be taught how to participate in this discussion according to the roles assigned to them. These roles include facilitator of interpretation, inquisitor, respondent, evaluator etc. (Almasi, page 7). Teaching the students these roles would take time and demonstration but the discussions will be better structured and the students would be able to engage in discussion with out the constant involvement of the teacher. Upon learning how to engage in this type of discussion, I believe that the students involved would reap all of the benefits from it.
My classroom experience aligns closely with what has already been said. I really do not see any type of discussion in my classroom. For example, this week each grade had to read a specific story and then the teacher developed some comprehension questions for each story. The students just answered these on paper and did not discuss the stories at all. Answering these questions was going to be the measure of whether or not the students comprehended their reading pieces. I do not really think that this type of assessment is useful. Some of the students struggled with being able to read the questions, so this would have a negative effect on their performance. Also, most of the questions focused on details and not the overall point of the story. I did not think that these questions were the best way to assess comprehension.
ReplyDeleteI think that a lot of students in my classroom would love participating in an “Instructional Conversation” as described in the article by Goldenberg. However, I think that it would take a lot of work and scaffolding on the behalf of my CT to make something like this work. Goldenberg tell us that “Perhaps most important, he or she manages to keep everyone engaged in a substantive and extended conversation, weaving individual participants’ comments into a larger tapestry of meaning.” (pg 318) There are quite a few behavior issues in my room and I think that it would be a struggle to keep everyone engaged. Last semester I got some experience teaching a couple lessons in the classroom and I really struggled with keeping the students on-task and focused on the lesson we were learning. However, I think that if the class had enough practice at it then they would eventually become successful at having an instructional conversation. The article also outlined 10 elements of the instructional conversation (pg 319). I thought that this list was intimidating. I think that it would take a lot of work to integrate all 10 elements into every conversation. Once again, it would take a lot of scaffolding on behalf of the teacher to pull this off. I think that it would be easier to implement instructional conversations at the beginning of a school year. I think it would be very difficult to try to implement them in the middle of the year when the students have gotten used to answering rote questions about the readings they are doing. However, through reading the articles for this week I have come to see how beneficial good group conversations can be for students. I think that something so beneficial is worth trying at any point in the year if it will help the students learn and comprehend.