In our classroom placement we mainly see lecture. The teacher stands in the front of the room and lectures to the students and then the children complete worksheets. I haven’t seen much response-centered talk taking place. I feel this is due to the teacher’s teaching style and possibly because of the young age of the students. The teacher has the class divided into reading groups which meet with her. I think the class has four. During that time they have more of an opportunity to have discussions. I think that some children need smaller groups to focus and truly participate in a discussion. The reading groups are modeled by the teacher. While one group is reading, the other students often pair off and work in a way similar to the way the small groups are conducted. Depending on the number of students and their individual personalities, students often need additional support and prompting during this time. There are some students in the class who need both verbal and visual directions and lessons in order to complete a task. There are also students who need to see the schedule and assignments for the day written out on the board.
If I were to see more response-centered discussions I believe the students in this class would need to have adequate prior knowledge, prompting, open-ended questions, a comfortable environment and classroom community.
1 comment:
I see many of the same things in the 5th grade classroom. This is probably due to district goals rather than the age of the children. I think that they are very concerned about MEAP scores rather than the student's ability to critically analyze pieces of writing.
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