SDCTeacher
Fri, 27 Jul 2007 08:47:42 -0700
In a message dated 7/26/2007 4:50:23 P.M. Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At times, the desire for some to show others what they know leads to a strange class interchange --students ask questions or say what they think they know--other students answer the questions or correct their thinking-- Meanwhile I am filling in the chart and not quite sure what I want to do with this type of interchange prior to reading. Do other people have this happen and what do you do with it? Bonita, I have had the same experience in class using the KWL. Some kids have a great deal of knowledge from their own reading or watching shows like Discovery, and it appears to make some kids feel insecure about sharing. I have at those times said things like, "Well, Ben seems to be our resident expert on the subject! Won't it be fun to learn in depth about these things that Ben is obviously very excited about?" I have been thinking since you brought it up that I might also add something along these lines: "It will be great for Ben, too, because then he will have lots of friends to talk to about this subject, which makes learning even more fun!" What if the day before we construct the KWL we ask the students to do a "quick write" of everything that they know on the subject. We could take them up and glance through them. If we see that one or two students have a great deal of knowledge, we could affirm them privately, and ask them to help you to be the teacher by not supplying too much information, but just enough to get the class excited. We could also challenge those kids to spend more time in the question part of the KWL, so that their own investigation has a place for some immediate focusing. We might even give a mini-lesson early in the year on how "experts" can handle KWL lessons. What do you think? I have noticed the quietness on the site, too, but if everyone is like me, there has been so much going on these last few days before I'm back in school. Company, weddings, trying to work some on my classroom, travel, trying to get some much needed work done (or at least started!) at home, AND trying to read a few pleasure books before the school year is upon us! I have just now finished Chapter 7 myself. My favorite part of this chapter was the "Distracting Connections" lesson. I thought it was brilliant how Steph stopped to share her connection, started reading again, and then stopped herself shortly to make the observation that she had no understanding of what she just read because she was still thinking about her connection. She then reread that part and summarized it to prove to the kids that she was once again focused. Since my students do this a lot during read aloud, it will be an important way to model that we have to catch ourselves and get going again on the right track. It's amazing how quickly a genuine connection can turn into a distraction, and cause us to miss the next learning. Some students are more prone to these distractions than others, so it will be good for them to see that they can work on overcoming it. We might even come up with a class prompt, "Back to learning" or "Let's see if we have any different connections which will help us understand the story" or "Everybody ready to put distracting thoughts aside?" I also liked being reminded of the "Connections in Common" part. I like using the 3 column form with My Connection, Important To Me, and Important To Understanding the Text. For some reason I have never used this form, but I definitely will this year. I'm going to do one more entry on Chapter 6 in a separate writing. Sherry ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour _______________________________________________ Stw2chat mailing list Stw2chat@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/stw2chat_literacyworkshop.org. Search the STW2 Chat Archives at http://snipurl.com/stw2archives.