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.