Readings for February 7th- Kelcie Ebbitt

The Goldenberg and Almasi articles really tied together well, and I think seeing a similar trend across these two articles made it apparent that the idea of discussion rather than reciprocation is a major focus of literacy education. I couldn't help but notice, however, that each of these articles were written in the early to mid 90s. When I was reading this week, I was really thinking about my experience as a student in elementary school. I was entering grade school between the time these articles were, yet I don't feel like this was an approach that my teachers used when teaching literacy. I remember doing many worksheets that involved a question or promt and then a simple short answer, and many 'class discussions' which involved my fellow classmates and me vying for my teachers attention as we raised our hands to answer the proposed question *correctly.*

After reading both of these articles, I feel that there is benefit to both recitation and discussion, but discussion stands to have more benefit in the long term learning of a student. I know that saying discussion will have more benefit seems to make recitation obsolete, but I feel that recitation can be important due to tasks in daily life that require recitation. For example, standardized tests provide reading excerpts and expect that students will read for comprehension and answer questions based on the excerpt. Teachers are often accused of teaching to the test, and to be honest I cannot understand why people are surprised when teachers are teaching to the test. We place incredible value in standardized testing, and therefore expect that our teachers will prepare our students appropriately for the tests. While approaches like discussion mentioned in Almasi's article and instructional conversations mentioned in Goldenberg are fantastic and bring to light all of the incredible teaching techniques that should be a part of our classrooms, they do not address all of the issues students face when it comes to literacy.

Without having the opportunity to observe these different techniques, and without having experienced the discussion/instructional conversations I am not really sure how I would approach this as a teacher. When reading Goldenberg discussion on teachers' motivation and the inherent difficulty that teachers face in preparing instructional conversation lessons I was really intrigued. Using methods against the traditional recitation style must be incredibly time consuming and difficult, so I can see where there might be a discrepenacy in what is taught, and what is best practices for teaching. I am hoping that I can learn to manage my time and develop productive ways to implement all of the best practices in pedagogy that I am learning from all of these articles.