Although this text focuses more on adolescents, I made many connections with what I read and the younger students that I have interacted with in the schools. I realize that we are focusing on how to integrate literacy into other content areas outside of English. I have definitely noticed many of the activities that were mentioned in the book in the classrooms that I observe. Think-Pair-Share I noticed in a math classroom in a middle school. They were reviewing tests that they had taken and helping each other with the problems that they missed.
Learning stations I saw in a few kindergarten classrooms. The students were grouped homogeneously and had whole group with their teacher and teacher's assistant and a time frame where they would do whatever they chose to do.
Reciprocal Teaching I haven't actually observed face to face but I saw a video on what a teacher did with reciprocal teaching and I realize it takes much modeling, practice, and teaching for it to be effective. But once it has become a craft, it is definitely an effective process.
Chapter 8 opened many doors for me in ways that writing can be integrated into content areas. I had wondered how far you could actually go with taking literacy into the content areas and this chapter gave a plethora of examples. I observed teaching students to ask themselves questions in a math classroom at a middle school as well. The students have bell work to complete and have to go through and underline the main words, do something with the question and show their work, etc. with each problem.
What questions come to mind as you think through ideas from our readings?
I did have issues with the jigsaw example in the book in chapter one. When we did what was considered jigsaw in my Literacy I class last semester, we broke one chapter down and presented it to the class. So in a sense, this was what the book spoke of but it seemed like more of a watered down version of it. The book gave clear examples of it being to compare or contrast information and what we did was to just go over a chapter. It gave a little confusion to me but I'm guessing we can take information and make it into our own as teachers do all the time.
I think that doing the think-pair-share after a test with the problems they missed is a great way to incorporate that strategy. I also don’t think I have witnessed reciprocal teaching but I am most positive that it is effective. Concerning your question.. today I observed a class where they did literacy circles and they read a chapter of the book out loud together and they were in groups of 6 and each person was given a different task to complete. So this is also considered jigsaw.
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