suzie herb
Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:54:41 -0800
I am following the discussion on 'to understand' and must admit there seems to be a bit of discrepancy between what we believe in reading and then what the expectation is in other areas and the 'department' approach to subjects at the primary level. I think the joy of being with children for all their subjects, is not that you are focussed on 'content' but that across the curriculum you can help kids build the skills and strategies that help them 'UNDERSTAND" what it is they are reading and to think through questions and encourage them to question. I have this very strong fundamental belief that if you teach your students the strategies in reading and writing, in a way that they are then authentically applied to other subject areas....well, you have done a great job. My big thing is using technology as a tool in the literacy area and I have asked across here and Mosaic, about how you as teachers apply new technology to your teaching. It's not been answered but the beauty in technology is being able to really simplify what you do by just expecting your students to think. Every morning I take a photo taken by an 'ordinary person' from a website and show it to my kids. If you don't have a smartboard or white board it's probably more difficult to orchestrate but the whole idea is to have kids brainstorming and thinking about the obvious, then in discussion piggy backing off each other and the building their comprehension in a way that no amount of teaching or 'text book' reading could ever gather. During a five minute session the kids brainstorm, either alone or with each other, it doesn't matter about what the picture is telling them, they compose questions about what they would like to know and then they 'infer'..given clues. What is amazing as has been discussed is that no child sees the picture in the same way. What happens in an indirect way is that the children are encouraged to think beyond the box.to think beyond a text and the most incredible understandings become apparent. The whole link to self and the world is exposed. The 'what i don't know and want to know' is questioned. Today the photo was of two little boy, running a tyre tube down a road. The boys were scantily dressed. But, the responses that came from the kids were amazing and what they saw in the picture was amazing. I think in that few minutes as a class there was evidence of real inquiry, real problem solving and thinking and reporting on the deepest level. And, what does it mean when later in the day, the kids are going back to the picture and debating their understanding of it. Later in the day when we were doing our independent reading I just asked before we started for the children to reflect on their 'photo' experience this morning and to see if that could connect in any way to what they were going to do in their reading. I didn't really expect anything but at the end of the reading time, we talked about going beyond the obvious. How, a scene or a character can be painted, but how your view can differ from someone else depending on life experience. I think what kids bring to the 'discussion' is far greater, far broader than we expect. I couldn't carry and connect the experience with my kids if they left me for Science or Social Studies, because my jog is to 'join the dots'. And, the knowledge of what they can build on. ......to understand is to build the steps, blocks, or whatever it take so connections are made.
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