Chapter 7 answered some of the questions we had about how to get children to make meaningful connections. We all have students who love to tell stories in class and we need to make sure we can direct our students to "dig deeper" and share and respond thoughtfully to one another. Miller uses frequent modeling and think-aloud strategies to help kids think before they join a conversation to make sure they have something meaningful to contribute.
Miller is also a fan of book clubs for students in the primary grades. She has her students choose their books for the club from those that they have already read as a class. She organizes her groups with 4 to 5 boys and girls with different views, interests, and abilities to keep things interesting for the kids and to expose them to new ideas. She has one group meet per week so each group participates about once every 5 weeks. Our group likes the structure of the clubs but would like to have the clubs meet more often. We would like to have each group meet about once a week. Maybe if we had all the groups meet at the same time during class, we could make that work. That way, all students in the class would be participating instead of doing other tasks while one club met.
Readers' Workshop involves a lot of responding to text and tracking students' own thinking. You can have the kids do this by using the ever popular sticky notes, notebook entries, two-column notes, Venn diagrams, webs, or story maps.
Work Activity Time is Miller's idea of how to give students free time to explore their learning and do creative activities of their choice. She lets her kids do almost anything they choose with no restrictions. We wondered how her students stay on task rather than just "playing". She hopes that one day her students will choose to make inferences about animals, create charts synthesizing learning about planets, and make cutaway diagrams of the Earth. We think this might be putting a little too much pressure on young kids. My kindergarten students enjoy playtime and need that free time for parallel play and to build relationships. Its really neat to see the creativity and imaginations that the kids have but we wondered how realistic Miller's idea of Work Activity Time is.
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A few weeks ago I incorporated choice for the first time in my lit circle groups. I kept the kids broken up into their guided reading groups (4 groups), but allowed each group to choose from 2 choices which book they would read. They read independently, record their thinking in a response journal, and then meet to discuss their thinking.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have always known that choice is important, I have really seen it play out in the last few weeks. The kids are not complaining at reading, and all groups seem to really enjoy the books they have chosen. Even some of the kids who didn't particularly love one book were willing to give it a try because the other members of the group were so excited to read it. It has made a world of difference in my reading groups!
We really do need to teach kids how to make MEANINGFUL text connections. I think teaching the difference between main idea and supporting details will help. I am in an inclusion class with a teacher that allows the kids to ramble on and tell their whole life story when she asks them to make a connection. Sometimes the connection is not significant either. This issue needs to be nipped in the bud!
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of having book clubs for the younger grades and think that my first graders would really like it! They really enjoy having reading buddies and guided reading groups and book clubs would be an even greater extension of literacy instruction in my classroom. I definitely will look into incorporating book clubs in my classroom for next year.
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