Modern Day Considerations

I’ve decided to challenge myself a bit when it comes to literary analyses. Part of my education to be an educator required that I choose a concentration area. As much as I wanted to fill the great need for math and science teachers, humanities has always been my passion and strong suit, so I chose English as my concentration.
I do love my reading and writing, probably in a different way than many others. I have long time been a big fan of the non-fiction genre, as my desire to learn overpowers my desire to escape into a good novel, although I also enjoy the latter. As a result of my obsession with non-fiction reading (and believe me, it goes way, way back- to childhood really) I am not well read in the fiction genre, and less well read in many of the classic junior novels that will likely be part of the curriculum I will someday teach.
I decided that in order to familiarize myself with popular junior novels, despite my lack of time for recreational reading, I will start getting books on CD from my local library and listening to them when I am in the car. While listening to them, I can begin to think about questions I might use in discussions with my students, if I were to teach this book.
I started this yesterday with “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. I am only a few chapters in but I already have some great ideas of critical thinking questions that I might pose to my class. But one thing I didn’t expect was to have all kinds of thoughts regarding the actual experience of listening to audio books as opposed to the experience of reading them. Back when I was in school, cliff notes were the only cheater we had to reduce the work of actually reading a book (now I relish in the thought of reading for homework!) But in this day and age, there are so many new ways for children to access information that I feel it necessary to ask myself, “how would I handle this in my classroom- if children choose to listen to books instead of read them.” It also makes me wonder how teachers are already dealing with this situation.
I can see that there may be both positives and negatives attached to audio books.
The first positive that pops into my mind relates to accommodation for disabled students. If I get to choose a book to use for a lesson, it would be beneficial from an inclusion perspective to choose books which are readily available in audio format.
Another positive would be to utilize the audio format in collaboration with the text to help students integrate the material with both visual and auditory sensory input.
On the negative end, the experience of listening to the audio book tends to color the readers perspective of the characters, much the same as watching a film about a book does. The reader on the audio book adds his/her own voice to the characters and reads in such a way that the listener begins to model the character to match the readers voice, instead of using the tone, imagery and characteristics of each character to create an impression of their own.
Also on the negative end is the affect on technical details, such as becoming more fluent and learning new vocabulary and synthesizing the material, lack of retention and the ability to “space out” or get distracted when not focusing visually on the text.
In the age of technology, there are many other considerations to make when developing lessons and assignments in order to ensure students do not short change their education by using technology as a shortcut. Even reading has become techno-fied (yes, I made that word up).
On the other hand, for teachers, all this technology can be an incredible time saving method of staying fresh and current on the curricular material and obtaining new perspectives and ideas on how to approach discussions with students.

Teacher Moment

Last night as I was reading a book about creating quality lessons, I had a teacher moment. I envisioned myself teaching a literature lesson. We were having a whole class discussion about a book and I was trying to pull examples of themes, found in the book, from my students. I imagined asking one of my students to recall what a theme is and share it with the class. Then I would elaborate on that definition and ask for students to share their thoughts about what themes may be present in the book, as I create a brainstorm model on the board with their answers. I imagined a student responding with a portion of the plot and me replying with appropriate feed back: “that is an excellent observation Jimmy, however rather than a theme, you shared a portion of the plot.” Then I would differentiate the definition of a theme and a plot and suggest we use Jimmy’s plot observation as a platform for building on to find the theme. I would use a visual model of the building blocks of a story, say a pyramid.

I would then use Jimmy’s example (a small fragment of the whole) to find the individual elements involved in that portion of the plot, then as a group, determine what we think the theme to that segment of the story could be. Once I felt the students understood, we would then start brainstorming other themes present in the novel. At the end of the instruction portion, I would encourage any questions and ask students to write the models from the board in their writer’s notebook, as reference for their assignment.
The assignment would be to use the themes present in the story to find a angle in which the story is relatable on a personal level and write about it in their journals. What I would be expecting is identification of the chosen theme, and explanation of why that theme was chosen, 2-3 valid comparisons between the story and the personal experience as it relates to the chosen theme and a conclusion which states at least one valuable insight that the student can grow from that was discovered while analyzing the similarities.
This of course was just an imaginary account of how I might approach a lesson on literary analyses of theme and teach children how they can find deeper meaning within works of literature. This is an example of why it would be great to work with 4th- 8th grade because of the possibilities for more complex lessons and assignments.
Since I haven’t gotten into any methods courses yet and have nothing to go on except some basics on educational theory, I often feel as if my path is blocked by a giant question mark. I have a good general understanding of administrative structure, educational policy, educational style/approaches, theories on teaching diverse learners, inclusion, classroom management, room set up and the general responsibilities of teachers. But vary rarely do I get any sense of what executing any of this is actually like, how does it all come together into a meaningful experience for students? What will I say when I am standing at the front of the room with all those eyeballs focused on me? I really try to put myself in as many imaginary situations as I can but when there is missing knowledge and no understanding of curricular requirements, those teacher moments don’t feel complete. I have so far to go yet, but at least it’s a vision that I can hold and build on, something to bring me closer to closing the gap between theory and practice.

More Great Ideas

Another great idea came from this blogger. To help first graders get in the reading mode, she is taking photocopies of the covers of all the books she reads to them as a group (and has multiple copies of each book in the class library) and hanging the pictures up so that the kids can identify which book it was that they remember and want to try to read on their own. I really loved this idea because children are so visual. They are much more likely to make the connection that “hey, that is that book the teacher read that I like” and then pick up the book themselves.
I also think that this concept can grow with students into a visual card catalogue. The photo copies of the covers can be stored in a binder by author and then have a simple color and or number coding system on the classroom shelf to help students make a visual connection with identifying books by author and title as they will encounter in the real world- libraries and bookstores. Plus it’s a great way to organize a classroom library and keep an inventory of what books have been collected over the years and which are student favorites. A check out system can also be created. Some organizational methods that can be built from this idea:

• Colored dots can be used to indicate reading level, then secondary to the color dot can be a letter/ number system similar to the dewy decimal system.
• A sign out sheet can be used, possibly a simple paper with columns for the week kept in a child’s work folder. Bingo daubers that match the color codes can be used and the number of the book to indicate what the child is taking home for the week.
• Items checked out can also be interwoven with writing lesson plans- ie, children must write an entry in their journal citing their thoughts on a book taken out that week.

There are a lot of benefits in creating a simplified mock library within the classroom other than just encouraging kids to read. It can also serve as an introduction to library skills and as a platform for writing.
There is also a great opportunity for teachers to collaborate on this so that the skills are built upon each year (of course this may once again be my perfect world in my student mind, do most teachers really even have the opportunity [or in some cases probably open mind would be more likely!] to collaborate?) I read about some schools where the teachers seem to work really well to make the transition from each grade smooth, but I imagine that many schools are also not that collaborative in nature. Hmmm, maybe something to consider when I am looking for a job someday.