A Penny For Your Thoughts

A Penny For Your Thoughts
Something to contemplate as you study to be a teacher

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Gipe (2010) Chapter 8 and 9 Response

Chapter 8 gave a very concise run down of the importance of literacy in particular reading/writing. It discussed the connections between the two and the importance of including both together in the classroom. I really enjoyed reading about the importance of collaborative lessons in reading and writing. In particular I liked all the ideas presented on writing such as: Write a sentence/make a story, add a word/stretch a sentence, change a word/change the sentence, add a paragraph/write a book, and dialogue journals. I can see by reading these ideas how students would enjoy working together as a group on a writing lesson. I will definitely keep these in mind for my future classroom. The one that I thought was the most interesting is the dialogue journals. That is such an interesting one on one approach, because they are using writing to communicate with the teacher at the same time they are learning to be better readers! What a great idea. Also in chapter 8 were discussions on structures and unstructured writing activities. I think that teachers can get so caught up in meeting the standards that we forget to allow student to take the time to just write for fun and not for a lesson, this is o so important to keep in mind! I am currently in another class in which I have to teach the writing process to 2nd graders and I found the layout of this in Chapter 8 extremely helpful! The section on spelling was fun to read because I TSS a third grader currently that has a spelling list every week and different activities along with it. It was interesting to read about teaching ideas for spelling and to compare that to what I am seeing my third grader do now. Some of the same ideas in the book are used for her spelling and some are still like the past, where she has to copy her words 3 or 5 times each....I hated that in school!

Chapter 9 was packed full of information on word recognition. I never really thought about the connection between listening vocabulary and reading vocabulary when it can to meaning. I found it so interesting to look at it in this way in order to help students to not only pronounce the word currectly, but to also find meaning in the word through context or in research. I like how it broke down the parts of the chapter and included assessments, instructions, and examples. These all can be made useful in my future classroom. I really especially enjoyed reading the part about the use of context clues. I have worked in a kindergarten classroom for a year now and these is used all the time in both the classrooms I worked in. The picture walk is the best example of this. For me, being able to connect experiences I have had in the classroom with the chapter text brings it to life and helps me to plan what instructional methods I would like to use in my classroom one day. In another class I also am working on writing a phonics lesson to teach and I enjoyed reading about the knowledge of word parts section because it pertains to this. It gave a nice brief overview that I can consult along with my text from my other class.

All in all the chapters had so much information in them I could write about it for a long time, but above I have stated what stood out the most and caught my eye, the rest will also be useful for many different lessons in my future classroom.

1 comment:

  1. Spelling is one of those lessons that I don't know what to do about it? I'm stuck to my "old school" ways that my teachers used with me in school. I do give spelling tests every week but I'm not sure how to do this anymore? I have seen that teachers give students a pre-test of words on MOnday and find 10-20 words a week that they do not know how to spell so that every child has a different list. This is GREAT...but it takes A LOT of time! Something teachers don't have enough of.

    I too, LOVED the dialogue journal. I had a teacher that did use that in her classroom. It worked AWESOME. Students would do it EVERYDAY and the teacher would comment. Maybe in a few years students could have their own blog and the teacher could comment randomly on every student's journal. :-) This would teach students to type, use the computer, and the internet!

    We will have so many ideas to use in the future! I really want to have my students prepared for the future. Writing IS A HUGE component of preparing them for the future. Just think of all the papers we had to write in college? I was NOT prepared. So I need to do that my students...I think we have the tools to do just that!

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