Blog #2

This week's readings were interesting for me as I had a major "text to self connection" and highlighted a main point from the McGee article that I had been observing quite a bit in my classroom (in fact, I think the method that McGee talked about is one that my CT follows the most!) My CT uses the response-centered talk in her classroom where she delegates an area in the room (which she calls 'the carpet'). All students report to the area to have openly free discussions of books that are either read to them by the CT, read amongst eachother, or read independently. The students are given the chance through-out the CT's reading to: 1) predict the outcome on the next page, 2) follow the picture for further details on the story, 3) note any text to self, text to text or text to world connections. While reading the story, my CT allows each student to freely raise their hand if they have a comment, where she is sure to call on everybody. When she calls on a student, she firsts asks them what kind of connection they had to the story as the students know the proper terminology to use - hence why I stated that I had a 'text to self' connection during the McGee reading ;) In the opening of McGee's article, I noticed that Ms. Antos did something much similar with the story Rosie's Walk as the students reported to the 'book talk center' in their classroom. I have noticed that my CT helps scaffold the quiet/shy students by asking them to share their opinions as when they don't raise their hands to contribute. If the student has nothing to say, the CT will ask something like "well, what do you think of what Garrett just said then?" Amongst the other readings, I enjoyed Almasi's (as well as Weinstein and Mignano's) direction of discussions vs. recitations. Discussions are definitely something that takes place more in my placement as well because my CT always let's the children freely speak when analyzing a book, as she occassionally prompts them with questions. Because the class is a first grade level, in-depth discussions or revelations toward the readings aren't commonly noticed in the discussion which is why my CT allows them to use the "text to connections" idea. This way, the students seem to become more motivated and excited to read because eventually each one of them will find something relatable within the texts.