I enjoyed the second chapter in Tompkins about the Reading and Writing Process. There were so many techniques and projects that I would love to use in my future classroom. I am not able to see/use them now because of the young age of my students. However, the application projects on pg 49 would all be extremely beneficial when creating lessons based around books for maximum comprehension and understanding. They are unique ways of grading the students without writing book reports about the book. It is also very helpful that projects involving technology are included, considering the fact that we decided literacy in modern times involves being technology-savvy.
The Applegate article was also very interesting when it classified "comprehension profiles" and how to provide interventions for each profile. While I was reading, it was easy to identify students in my own classroom that fit each profile. I am interested to see if any of the interventions would be able to work in the short time I have left in my classroom. This is an article I plan on showing my CT and working with her on how to help these particular students.
The same is true for the Gregory and Cahill article - finally an article directed specifically for kindergarten teachers! I feel that I usually have to modify most of the information I receive in class, but this was perfect for me. My CT is trying to focus on comprehension with the class right now and the administration is fighting her on her techniques - I hope that showing her this article will help find a common ground in this complicated topic.
I definitely agree with you that the Tompkins chapter has fantastic application project ideas. Using new and inventive ways to have students report back and express their understanding/comprehension of stories does not always have to be a book report. Did you experience a lot of book reports when you were a student? In my experience I feel like we got burnt out doing them, and eventually used the same template for each book just making sure that we hit the main points. It became ineffective, and ultimately gave us a poor picture of what it meant to explore and present comprehension. I also found that the stages of the reading process were represented very well in the curriculum of my 3rd/4th grade classroom; is it represented well in Kindergarten? If you don't see the stages exactly, can you pick out certain aspects that you feel are the most beneficial for the students? Do you think something small could be done differently to use more of the stages?
ReplyDeleteI was really excited to see an article geared specifically towards kindergarten as well because as you said people in kindergarten are always talking about modifying what we do in our classes. I liked being able to see something first hand about kindergarten so I had a better idea of what it is like.