The way Patricia R. Kelly guided students responses in her classroom was by asking:
(a) what
was noticed in the book,
(b) how we
felt about the book, and
(c) how
the book was related to our own experiences
Timing:
Started off at 5
minutes and ended up at 7 to 8 minutes after student ideas. Students were
encouraged to use this entire time to write and not to worry about spelling.
Common words were put on the board.
Progression and
Results:
When students first
started this activity they gave short one sentence responses. By the end,
however, they gave more elaborate and meaningful responses. Students even gave
less literal interpretation of they text and more in depth analysis. They
discusses how real the story sounded, and even relations to how thing in he
story couldn't have occurred in real life. There was significantly more fluency
in the classroom and surprisingly fewer
grammar and spelling errors
My opinion:
This method of obtaining responses encourages the
students to do more than just look for information in the text, which is
usually of pointless in some literature anyway. The point of teaching
literature is not just to have students understand what happened, but to
understand why it happened and the devises being used in the literature. When
students read in a reflective way they become more active readers, understand
more, and enjoy reading more. I feel this is similar to what is done for the
reading reflections in our class. Being able to freely interpret the literature
encourages putting out my best work and using my own standard of writing. It is
up to the individual. It also makes the reading and writing process much more
enjoyable. It takes the pressure off and makes it impossible to simply search
the text for that one specific answer while absorbing nothing else.
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There is a push back against the personal response to texts. The idea is personal responses favor the wealthy who may have more background knowledge.
ReplyDeleteYet the idea that we can force the meaning of a text to reside only in its four corners seems silly.
Literature is about experience, a shared experience. We have to all actively engage with the text in a shared experience. We have to choose texts that are meaningful in the overall human experience.
Great use of different elements such as the headings, lists and embed tools.
I didn't think about it that way. However, even though the wealthy may have more background knowledge, I do think the less privileged usually have more life experience; in regards to hardship and relating to characters who are going through a difficult time/situation.
DeleteHonestly, I think this practice is more beneficial for those who are not wealthy because it has children observe, feel, and talk about their own experiences. So children are not expected to have the same background knowledge, just to have experiences and feelings.