Blog #4

This week in Gibbons I found the very first page in chapter 4 to be quite intense but so true. Stating that those who do not have enough literacy will be " 'locked out' " from the society and all it has to offer. Thinking that we as teachers are supposed to provide students with the tools to be a part of society and to be literate enough to carry on these tasks...is kind of scary! The world now can be a scary thing but with the new generations of people, our world is ever changing. As the chapter begins to touch on the fact that not only is society a tough place for English speaking students, imagine a ELL! Helping ELL to not only speak but write English may be hard. I think helping students find their strengths and weaknesses will make reading, writing, and speaking more enjoyable. As a teacher I want to help students focus on their strengths and improve those. I feel as if drilling students about their weaknesses will only discourage them and will make them think they are not capable of accomplishing difficult tasks. In my classroom I have a student who can speak English but I can tell that in her home another language is spoken. She is a very shy and quiet girl and I feel as if my CT does not always give her the help that she needs. She is not very confident when she speaks or writes. I find this unfortunate because she does not really receive any extra help from my CT because she can speak English. She is just pushed aside.
In the chapter it says to express meaning more than form and I think that this is a great idea. It helps students focus more on their work and trying that worrying about whether it is right or wrong. I also liked how the 'stages of writing' were described; I think those are really helpful. The steps that the stages take will clearly help a student become a well-rounded writer and thinker. Lastly, I feel as if (like the book said) writing is a process of scaffolding. I really see how a teacher-student relationship can be beneficial while a student begins to write and express themselves through pencil and paper.
In Chapter 4 of Tompkins I really tried to relate what I read about to what is happening in my kindergarten class. The chart on 116 I think was really helpful in seeing what students go through as they begin to read, because I know I don't really remember HOW I learned to read. All the games, silly rhymes, posters/labels, and books in the classroom have a part in helping students to read and write. Each time students learn a new number-they sing a song on how to write that number, every time the students learn a new word-they recite that word and make meaning from it by experimenting with the word. For ELL I think that many of the activities I see in my classroom would help them. They too need what the other kindergartners are doing in order to understand English. My CT plays many rhyming and sound-matching activities with the kids; they do spell on your own story journals. As far as spelling goes I don't know if I would be really all that worried right now, that is what my CT tells me. You don't want to help the kids too much because then their parents will think they can spell these words on their own-but you want to help a little to help them think about 'sounding out the words'. I get kind of torn when I try to help them in the classroom because I see what she says but I sometimes do not agree. On page 141 many of the words on the page are my kindergartner's top sight words, and they can see them and recite them quickly! I was pretty proud of them. I liked both of these chapters they were fairly insightful and I can connect many of the things that I see in my class to what I read about in the chapters.