In the first chapter of this weeks reading we learned about conferencing. As a student and writer conferencing used to scare the bejezzus out of me. I tend to be a little self conscious and when it comes to something as personal as writing, the idea of showing everything to you teacher before its actually done would make me very nervous. However Katie Wood Ray's ideas about conferencing sound very comforting and I don't think they would put a shy student in an awkward place. For one Ray suggests is to conference everyday. Maybe you won't get to every student every day but just doing this with a few will take some of the stress off of it. I remember conferencing being something you had to prepare for and then when it happened the teacher would sit at her desk all day and call people up one by one. I also liked that Ray said that you "try to teach" during the conference. I also remember conferencing from my experience being a simple approve or disapprove if what you were working on... maybe I just didn't have good experiences though. I like that conferring the Ray way is a very deliberate act of teaching to students individually. I also really enjoyed the conference notes table, but then I'm just a fan of neatly organized tables.
In Chapter 15 about sharing I really enjoyed reading about the 4 different types of sharing. i never would have thought that there were so many ways you could do a simple thing like sharing. Survey sharing was particularly interesting to me because with it everyone gets a chance to share something meaningful but it is still a quick way to do so. I really think sharing is an extremely valuable time. I have seen students go up to the share chair and beam with pride and confidence as they read off what they've been laboring over and it's such a rewarding thing to seen.
Chapter 17 was about questioning. Something that, as teachers, we should know a lot about. I feel like asking questions is something that comes extremely naturally to teachers. We just want to know about the students, what they like, what they're doing, how we can help them. At least thats the way I am. I think it's nice that Katie Wood Ray attempts to teach us the right way to do this. Something this reading made me think about was the statement Ray said that the questions you ask are a part of the curriculum and assessment. Asking questions of a student is, kind of obviously, the best way to understand what they are doing. You can make assessments or inferences based on what you read but if you ask a child about his work it may help you read it with that certain lens that really helps you understand.
1 comments:
A week away from the blog seems like years! I've been catching up all day myself.
I agree that asking questions of a student is one of the quickest and more reliable ways to learn what a student is doing (or trying to do). It is amazing how often we forget to ask and make up our minds based on our ideas. It all matters.
Post a Comment