Last week I was sick and, unfortunately, slept through writing my blog post, so I am writing this post in response to both chapter 11 and chapter 8...
As I was reading about Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Reiner's student, Sarah, and her interest in the History of Women's Rights, I was thinking about how lucky Sarah is to be in a classroom that has created such a wonderful atmosphere for inquiry-based learning. What has been irking me about inquiry-based learning since we started talking about it, is how little input the students are allowed to give in their own learning processes even in inquiry-based classrooms. Since we began studying how to implement inquiry-based learning in our lessons, I have really grown to appreciate the benefits of students exploring and taking responsibility for their own understanding. Inquiry-based learning seems to be a way more authentic way to completely grasp something. Even in college, I have found that the classes from which I learned the most were the ones that taught me how to think outside the box by letting me explore the topic myself. However, the key part of these classes that really helped me to love learning at a higher level, was that I was allowed to choose the topic about which I would explore and really learn. My experience with inquiry at the elementary level only exposed me to learning that the teacher decided what they would get out of inquiry. I'm not saying that this is a problem. I think that teachers are great manipulators. We can get children to learn and believe anything, and when we can do it without them knowing that we had a master plan behind it all, it's even better. BUT, what I think is missing (not at all times and in all situations of course) is the opportunity for students to take the inquiry skills they acquire through our predetermined inquiry-based lessons and use them to discover something completely for themselves. What I took away from chapter 11 is a hope (and goal even) for my classroom. I want students to feel comfortable to come to me with a topic they want to learn, and I want them to know that they should learn about it. They need to learn about it. Our one-size-fits-all curriculum doesn't really fit all. In the real world, we aren't all asked to know or learn the same things. They need to understand the basics (and learning to explore is definitely part of that) which is what the curriculum is trying to cover, but they need to take more responsibility for the "extras": the things the curriculum doesn't cover that are the things they really NEED to know.
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Wow... After writing my first part of the post, I was reading about Ms. Bell's class in chapter 8, and it's funny how well this connected to my thoughts on chapter 11. She made a realization that her students had their own interests and this should really be a part of literacy for them.
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I found chapter 8 to be really helpful because it gives so many helpful strategies for teaching intermediate readers and writers. My placement is in a fourth grade classroom, so I connect to this chapter way more than the previous ones about beginning readers. A lot of this chapter focused on word study and building vocabulary. I have noticed in my placement that the students of the highest reading group are learning new words through patterns and meaning. They look at the roots and branches of words and study how words are similar and different. The rest of the class doesn't seem to focus on learning words at all, outside of their weekly spelling tests. I struggle with knowing what to do with spelling at this age. The gap between the highest and lowest spellers in the class is huge. Should I be marking every word that the kids spell wrong? When they ask how to spell something, do I tell them to make up a spelling or is it time for them to actually know how to spell it?
Any ideas for how to improve spelling for the entire class?
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Hey Anna,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment about the book posters in your classroom. I absolutely love that idea! You are absolutely right...sometimes we need to 'take a vacation' and read a book that is easy, sometimes we can 'dream' and challenge ourselves a little bit, and sometimes we should read books that are just right. What a neat way for your teacher to explain that to her class!
I share your questions about how to mark spelling in the upper grades. My teacher doesn't seem to ever correct misspelled words (unless it is on a spelling assignment). At first I liked this, but now I am not so sure. The students keep misspelling the same words and my teacher does nothing about it. I do think they need to be help accountable for correct spelling in subjects other than spelling, but I also don't think it's fair to take off a lot of points for incorrect spelling. It's a hard balance. I would love some insight into it as well!
~Michelle~
It seems to me that there does need to be a time when our students just have to know how to spell correctly. If they have beens spelling the same words wrong since kindergarten and now they're in 4th or 5th grade and they haven't been corrected, then they probably have a pretty good feeling that their way is right. They have probably memorized these wrong spellings as correct ones if they are never being corrected. I don't know if I think students should lose points for misspelled words, but I do think that marking them wrong and maybe taking notes on the specific things each student is doing would help you have a better idea of what to target for each student. It's hard for me to say anything for sure though, because I'm in a second grade classroom, so these are just my initial inclinations on the topic. I'll have to think more about it for sure.
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