Boys vs. Girls

     After last week's discussion on teaching boys, I've started to notice some of the differences that we talked about in my own students, one in particular.  Zach is seven and cannot sit in a chair.  He is constantly standing when he works, and at the rug, he always sits up on his knees or wobbles around in a crouching position.  He is in constant competition with other students in the class (whether those students know it or not) and has a serious desire to prove to the teachers that he is smart.  He is constantly touching things and feeling the need to grab at things he or other people are working with.  All of these traits I see as being very male characteristics.
     Now that I see these differences in my male and female students, I need to decide what to do with the information.  After much reflection, I think it makes the most sense to stick with my current teaching methods, but make sure that I keep in mind these gender differences as I'm teaching.  Does it really matter if Zach sits while he works?  Little things like that can easily be overlooked, but as far as totally revamping teaching methods, that's just not realistic.  Even if my classroom were to be completely neutral as far as teaching to gender, if a majority of teachers do teach to girls over boys, boys need to learn to adapt.  By not preparing boys for that teaching difference, they will struggle in later grades.

Reader vs. Thinker

     In our class, we teach the kids in Reader's Workshop that when they are reading, they need to use their "readers" and "thinkers."  Their "readers" are in the front part of their brain--the reader reads the words and makes sure they sound right.  The "thinkers" are in the back of the kids' brains.  These make sense of the words to help the kids enjoy the story and have thoughts about the text.  To show that their thinkers are on, students have post-it pads that they use to mark pages on which they had a thought.  They draw little thought bubbles on the post-its to remind themselves that that specific page had their thinkers working. 
     The readers vs. thinkers method has been very interesting to use with the kids because it helps identify exactly where the kids are struggling with their reading--is it the words/letters themselves or the comprehension aspect of reading?  The number of post-its in a child's book helps us see if he/she has the thinker "turned on."  So far, we've noticed that the kids usually forget to use their post-its.  Is this because they are so engrossed in the books that they forget to mark their thoughts or because they are focusing so much on the words that they aren't really thinking about what the text means? 
     My guess is the latter.  I mentioned in my last post that I've been having the kids work on their own "just right" sight words, and since then, I've finished assessing all of my students.  An overwhelming number of students knew not only a majority of the words, but were able to get through third grade vocab lists without skipping a beat--this is first grade.  That tells me that their readers are doing an excellent job in Reader's Workshop; the kids are great at figuring out words.  Their thinkers, however, are clearly the reason students are not at more advanced reading levels; their comprehension skills haven't caught up to their sight word knowledge.  

Spelling and Sight Words

     Tonight's discussion on the importance of teaching spelling and how to go about that task in a way that will be most effective for each individual student had me thinking about two components of my classroom.
     First:  My class uses Fundations to teach spelling through phonics.  I have very mixed feelings about this program.  I understand the thought behind teaching students spelling through sounds, tapping out words, and a variety of activities to supplement that learning.  Still, I feel that Fundations is not as engaging as a program like Words Their Way could be for my students.  I work with a group of eight students who are not as strong at spelling as the remainder of the class.  I find that the loose structure of the program and reliance on white boards and magnets works for a certain kind of student, but not very well for my students.  The students view these learning tools as both a treat and a distraction.  Give a first-grader a white board and the immediate response is "I need to draw a heart right now."  I just don't feel that they are getting all that they should out of the program.  For students who are so interested in kinesthetic learning, Words Their Way seems like a better solution.  In the future, I'll try to supplement Fundations with activities from Words Their Way.
     Second:  I'm currently assessing my students' sight word knowledge with Dolch lists.  After identifying the words that students do not know on the spot, I'm making flashcards for them to work on at home for a week.  After a week of practice outside of the classroom, I will go through the words with them to see if they now know the words.  If they do, they get another ten words to learn, and continue with this until they have made it through the third grade list.  Rather than recall the spelling of these words, students just need to recognize them, but I like the idea of this kind of spelling assessment rather than a traditional test.  Students learn "just right" words at their "just right" pace and are not put through the stress of a traditional spelling list/test situation.  Something to think about...

Writing Workshop

     Last week's discussion on writing conferences was perfectly timed for me--our class started writer's workshop and conferences the very next day.  We had been conferencing with the kids the past two weeks or so in reader's workshop, and although they seemed very willing to work with us, their enthusiasm in reader's workshop was nothing compared to writer's workshop.  My class of twenty-three first graders worked on writing in complete silence for thirty straight minutes on day one--amazing!  My students were instructed to write about something that has happened to them--a vacation, a special event, a funny moment.  After receiving instructions, the kids went straight to work.  I had never seen the work so diligently before.  It was clear that they are so excited to become "authors."  They drew pictures, wrote sentences, and eagerly raised their hands to show off their creations.  We had writer's workshop three times after that last week, and it's becoming my favorite subject of the day.
     The conferencing with the kids was pretty straightforward this week.  The two main teaching points we addressed were making your pictures match your story and to tell the full story, or, more simply, add details.  A lot of the conferencing consisted of us asking them "And then what happened???" or more pointed questions like "How did that make you feel? Excited? Nervous?"  Rather than being shy about answering, the kids were very eager to fill the gaps in their writing with extra details.  They loved sharing their stories on paper.  On my morning message one day last week, I asked the students to check off which subject had been their favorite the day before, and fifteen out of twenty-three students chose writer's workshop.  I'm so glad that writer's workshop has been such a hit in our classroom, and I can't wait to see the results of my students' efforts as they improve over the course of the year.

Read Alouds

        I found that the reading on working to synthesize the text in read alouds validated the methods I have been using in the classroom, but also provided me with more ways to have the students really think about the text that they are reading.  My students are only in first grade, so they are still working on learning to read text more than meaning, but read alouds are a good way for them to not have to worry about deciphering the words and just think about the story.  Usually when we do read alouds, I read the book to the students and at the end we discuss it, typically with some guiding questions from me so they will get the point of the reading more easily.  Still, they have managed to come up with some very thoughtful responses to books that we have read all on their own.  As we work through the year, I'm sure they will get better and better and figuring out the point of a book without so much help from their teachers.
     One way that I feel I have somewhat followed Sunday and Cate's methods is through our "Me Book" unit.  The kids are writing very simple books about themselves in which they complete sentence starters like "When I grow up I want to be a..." or "My favorite food is..."  As a way to introduce this project, my lead teacher and I read them books about self-confidence and learning to like you.  This included Todd Parr's It's Okay to Be Different.  In our discussion about the book, one student said that "if we were all the same, life would be boring."  The students learned from the book that differences are good to have.  One page of the students' Me Books is a drawing of the students' families.  Our classroom has a wide variety of family units (students with two dads, students with divorced parents, students with just a mom), so it was really important to make all students feel comfortable drawing their families.  We read a book called Families Are Different, and after reading, we discussed that if it's okay to be different (like we learned from Todd Parr's book), and families are different, then it's okay for families to be different.  In this way, the students were able to synthesize the information they received from multiple read alouds in order to understand the main points of the readings.
     I really liked Sunday and Cate's analogy of baking a cake and reading a book.  Later in the year when my students' reading skills are more advanced, I would love to try this method with them, including the drawing of the cake ingredients and matching those up with facts from the text.  This might be good to incorporate into science lessons or social studies lessons so that we can sneak those topics into reading lessons.