Monday, March 22, 2010
Chapter 6 Tompkins
This chapter took me back to TE 301, and all the material we covered in class. The biggest thing that jumped out to me in this chapter was on page 201 with Visual Learning Software. As we move towards a new way of teaching and learning I find myself at times dragging my feet in regards to the new technologies. But talking to my students and exploring the different advances I see that it will be a useful and benefical tool for not only my students but myself as well. I do think that there need to be some balance of 21st-century technology as they put it in the readings, and the traditional sense of learning. Although as I type this blog, I find myself questioning why I feel that way. People say that imagination and creativeness has declined, but I think that it has taken shape in new ways. It is so vital for us never to forget that we are going to be teaching in a society that is ever changing and we as teacher's really don't have the luxury to drag our feet. Something that comes up in my placement is in regards to first graders and fluency. I looked at the list of characteristics of Dysfluent readers on page 208. I went through the list and it was interesting to have it seem like a personal handbook for the students in my placement that struggle with reading. There is a group of five students who are very behind and a specialist comes in several times a week to work with them. I had the chance to sit and learn some of the tools that she uses to help them and it was great! A big think she stressed to me was they need to hear and act out the sounds in the word and then blend them together. I even went through a lesson with the kids and acted out all the things they had to do which really was an eye opening experience!
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It seems like students in your classroom are enjoying the engaging exercises of learning to read fluently. To go along with your experience of students in reading by decoding and combining them together to make a sound for a word; I have also realized in my placement that it is important for students to sound out the syllables, then come up with a pronunciation of a word on their own with little help of ours on the way. Not knowing the value of having students figure things out on their own, I have previously said the word without really telling them how I came to make such a sound. Hence, not all students were able to connect them to the readings they were doing on their own. However, as I solely helped decode syllables from a word and have the students sound out the word on their own, they seemed to grasp the idea and were able to connect their learning to other readings.
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