I took some valuable information from this article concerning the ways in which literature is disscussed and understood in classrooms, as well as it's importance in regards to critical thinking skills.
Relating to my kindergarten classroom, I see literacy being applied to many aspects of the daily cirriculum. Every day the students spend time reading books on their own and every day the teacher spends time reading from a chapter book to the students. During this teacher-lead read of the chapter book, the students are asked questions before, during, and after the text to check for understanding. In relation to Langer's "Possibilities for Instruction" (815), the students are asked to develop interpretations as well as reflect on personal experiences while applying the reading that they just heard.
I like the methods that my CT has used for her students when checking for literacy understanding. Even though much of it is both prediction and reflection based, I find it to be limiting about how you can go about dissecting the reading with kindergarten aged students. The students do not understand a lot of the meaning of the text without applying it to either something else they know or through the expression of their own personal ideas. The CT allows all students who raise a hand to express their opinion of the text and I feel it allows other students to get more ideas about the meaning of the literature.
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I can definitely see where you are coming from Joey. Kindergarten is a hard age to get them to look at the story from someone elses perspective. However, maybe you can present a situation in a way that it happened to you personally and see if they can put themselves in your shoes, someone they know, which may or may not make it easier for them to relate to.
ReplyDeleteI am in a 5th grade room and some of the students still have a hard time putting themselves in someone elses shoes to show an example of why not to treat others in a disrespectful way. I thought this article diod a great job explaining to use the difference between the two ways and explaining why one should be used more frequently over the other.