Something that I found really interesting was on page 102 of Literacy for the 21st Century. It states that interactive writing is children and the teacher both take part in creating a text and “share the pen” as they write text on chart paper. The text is composed by both the teacher and the students, and the teacher guides children as they write the text word by word on chart paper. Children take turns writing known letters and familiar words, adding punctuation marks, and marking spaces between words on the chart paper. I like the fact that all of the students participate in creating and writing and correcting the text on the chart paper and they also have the chance to write it again on small white boards or whatever is used. This is repetition for them. There are different methods of using this process. Some are predictions on a story, letters, or reports. Students can learn concepts about print, letter-sound relationships and spelling patterns, handwriting concepts, and capitalization and punctuation skills. There are different concepts in one idea. Do you think that it is a good idea for every student participates even if they don’t want to or don’t know the answer? This may cause the students to participate in case they get called on. What do you think?
I have noticed, in the morning, with my practicum class that the teacher writes sentences on a white board and have the students correct them. There will be two sentences or one long sentence to correct. The teacher writes how many mistakes are in each sentence. The teacher reads it to them, gives them some clues and then gives them a couple of minutes to correct the mistakes or as many as they can find. The students also rewrite the sentence on a piece of paper that is provided. The teacher then gives them the answer. Do you think that it is a good idea to give out the answer or let some of the students to correct the sentences?
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6 comments:
I think it is definitely a good idea to have all of the students involved in this activity. It does create an opportunity for students who may not raise their hand. On the other hand, there may be some students who do not understand or have a hard time with the activity. One of the students in my practicum classroom is very behind when it comes to what she should know in first grade. She doesn't recognize most of the alphabet letters and sounds. She has a hard time spelling words on her own. This student would struggle in such an activity where she would have to write on chart paper. She would need assistance.
There is a student in my practicum how has trouble reading and writing. She mixes up "b" and "d". She writes them backward. So dog becomes bog and vise versa. I read with her and she does the same thing when she is reading. When the teacher calls on her I can see that she is a little hesitant in answering. She likes to work in groups sometimes depending on who she is working with. If she is with someone who is more on her level she is more likely to work with that person. If not then she will shut down. She is also in first grade as well. Every day when I help her with her seatwork, before even looking at the paper she raises her hand and asks for help. Every test that I have seen them take, "Can we have help?" I have been in the class now for about 2 ½ weeks. When I was in the classroom for the first day I helped her without any hesitation. But now I tell her to read the directions and try to do it on her own first. I don’t know if that is what I am supposed to do but I don’t want to do every little step for her.
Speaking from my own personal expriences, i know that if a student knows they will be called on, sometimes, all they can think about is how they are going to get out of the situation, not about what they are going to do when they get called on. asking for volunteers or asking each and every student if they want to take a turn i feel is better becuase even if they dont raise thier hand they will still get an opportunnity to share write.
I think it is great to get all the students involved with writing. Because this is tailored towards younger students who are learning to write I would suggest doing activities like this in their reading groups. This way, students who are a little more advanced and can already write words can do so and students who are lower and can not could get more guidance from the teacher. In the reading I class our teacher gave a get idea for an activity like this for the lower kids. The students all have paper with lines, just as the teacher does. The teacher has a bag of items that are bunched on the table. One student pulls out an item (such as a bracelet) and makes a sentence with it. For example, ‘I like to wear a pink bracelet.’ The teacher writes the sentence on her paper and the students copy it. The next student goes and pulls out a keychain. The students says, ‘you use a keychain to hold your keys.’ The teacher writes this and the students copy it. The pattern continues. When all are done the kids begin by reading just the sentence they said, because they know it. Then all the students read all the sentences. Now, the kids have at least 5-6 sentences that they can read and likely some new vocabulary words that they learned. I have tried it and it is a really great activity for this age group!
I like having lots of interaction between the students and myself when I teach, so the interactive writing suggestion from the text seems like a great activity to me. In my practicum class I think everyone would be able to do an activity like this one with no problem, so I don't think required participation would be an issue for any of them except maybe one. If I had a lot of students struggling, and I felt some were embarrassed when they were called on, however, I would be sensitive about putting those students on the spot and move to a smaller reading group setting like Megan suggested. I have an ESL student in my class and I think she might be a little uncomfortable, but I also think she needs to practice speaking and interacting to help improve her English. I'd probably see how much I could get her to participate by pushing her a little, but not so much that she gets really, really upset or uncomfortable. I'd probably talk to her first about activities like this just to give her a head's up and let her know she's in a safe environment and we understand her hesitation, but we also want to help her feel comfortable speaking and that requires practice.
I also like the idea of the proofreading exercise. Proofreading practice is a great way to share real life examples of grammar and mechanics. Completing little exercises like this makes the students more aware when they are writing of things they should watch out for. I tried an activity like this in my second grade class last week kind of on the fly while I was writing some sentence ideas on the board. Some of the sentences were fragments because I was just getting the idea down and some were complete sentences. I just went through the list and asked, "Is this a complete sentence?" I had the students raise their hands if they thought it was or raise them if they thought that it wasn't. Then, based on those who raised their hands, I asked if they would tell us what needed to be changed. With almost every sentence the class was split 50/50, and I thought this would be a pretty easy thing for them. So, I guess I would probably just give the correct answer with this age group after they had time to make their corrections to avoid confusion and save time. Unless, of course, I thought they weren't giving their best effort because they knew the answer was just going to be given to them at the end. I would then discuss anything that seemed to be troublesome or things they had questions about.
I love the idea of using the bag of items for sentence practice. I think anything visual that the students can touch or feel or pull out of a bag is really fun for this age group.
The text mentions writer's workshop often and my teacher doesn't use this program. Have any of you seen this in action in your practicum?
Laura M. said,
I think it is a good idea for all students to participate. With the guidence of the teacher, the students will be able to answer the question. If the student needs help, the teacher may ask another student to assist them. Having the student participate will help them be involved in finding the answer.
Depending on the grade level students should be given the opprotunity to try and figure out how to get the answer.
In the class I observe in, the teacher assists the students by walking them through the process, for example; she writes two sentences on the board and asked if there is one or two sentences on the board. A student is asked to come to the board and point to where the sentences start and end, identifying two sentences. If the student knows the answer she askes them to explain how they figured that out.
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