It is not unreasonable to assume the presence of some of the four things "ljackson" just mentioned...no matter what a person's political or religious stance ;). BUT, back to teaching children about reading, I think it may be unreasonable to assume that someone, or anyone, who dedicates their life to educating children -or researching on educating children- is motivated solely by those four things referred to above.
I read Moat's article after becoming interested in this strand of Mosaic. And in my opinion, Moat's article is not trying to "bash" anybody. It seems that she brings up legitimate points that can be taken in ways that make us feel defensive. (But the "summary" part of the article reads differently than the body about the issues, which be really important to keep in mind.) A great point Kelly brought up, and a good example of what I'm trying to express, is illustrated when Kelly writes: "The author says that teachers like us don't do "explicit teaching" when we do lessons through read alouds (aka think alouds). She says that teacher modeling is most effective, but isn't that what we do with our think alouds?" It is perfectly reasonable to take up Moat's words in this way, but what if we thought about the following things: (Kelly, thank you for being an example here - you bring up a great point to use as an example!) First comes the definition of modeling. How we talk about it on this listserv seems to be the most progressive (which is a word that shouldn't need to be associated with any political party ;) way of defining how to model in our classrooms...precisely because it IS partly an explicit pedadgogy, by the way we define and use it. As the "comp strategies for little ones" strand touched on, without teaching explicitly the how's and why's behind strategies/our modeling think-alouds/etc, modeling is not nearly as meaningful (intuitively OR when the subject is analytically researched). This is just one example of possible misunderstanding that could necessitate further consideration. The article, just as any, is not perfect or the end-all for teaching reading, but it does bring up some meaningful points. Keither has reminded us to leave politics and religion out of all of this; perhaps our listserv can act as a model for our current administration ;) (I couldn't help but to 'go there' - hehe). And seriously, we all love children and want to do the right thing for them (way better to assume that way than any other!!)...same goes for researchers; label jars, not people. We don't have to agree, but we do need to at least try to understand differing viewpoints (another apt modeling potential for our admin...I mean...students.) _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
