Okay, let’s get this blog started!
I am in a second grade classroom, and after doing the readings this week I am a little concerned about the lack of literacy taking place in my field placement. At previous local schools that I have been to, they have devoted three hours of their school day to literacy and where I am there is maybe an hour each day spent on literacy activities. I am not implying that this is the case in all classrooms at the school but it is generally what I have noticed. Typically what I see for literacy is students silently reading while my CT and myself work with reading groups. We will pull a group of 4 or 5 students based on reading level and read together as a group. I will ask them comprehension questions before, during and after reading but in all it probably takes 10-15 minutes per group. While we are working with the groups, the rest of the students are usually off task and not reading silently but talking with their peers instead. I have not seen anything like the readings describe such as response-centered talk because they do not work in groups or read a story as a class and have a discussion. I can’t say that they do not do this at all, but I have not seen it. The student’s desks are arranged in groups and yet they do not work in groups at all! The classroom setup would be great for literature circles and small groups discussions where students can have a specific role to contribute. The readings offer great suggestions for all students to feel included in the group by each of them having a responsibility such as facilitator or evaluator.
One aspect of literacy that I have been in charge of the past few weeks is conducting a read aloud with the class. Towards the end of the day, I read a chapter book for 15-30 minutes to the class. They love it! We just started a new book today called Double Fudge by Judy Blume. Although there are no pictures, I still hold the book so the students can see the text. The few students in the front actually do follow along with where I am. This may be a stretch, but I kind of view this as scaffolding in a way. Maybe I am more modeling for them by showing how to hold the book and set an appropriate pace to read. I also will stop occasionally and ask questions to make the students predict what will happen or to see if they understood the events that just occurred.
I hope to see more literacy in the future and to make more connections with what we are talking about in class!
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Emily, Like your classroom my student's desks are also arranged in small groups. They seem too spend very little time working in groups as well. Actually, I do not think I have seen them work in these groups more than one or two times throughout the year. My students do literacy centers but they have different groups for these centers. I have also read short books to my students at the end of the day although they are not able to follow along very well we do ask them questions about what is happening in the story and what they think might happen later in the story. Its great that your students are already reading chapter books in second grade and they seem to be very interested in reading. Some of my students are struggling with learning letters and sounds and seem unmotivated to try and learn them. I hope that I will be able to find ways to get them interested in learning and motivated to learn these basic literacy skills.
~Sarah
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