Whole-class sharing is a strategy I will need to develop because
I have not seen it done in the way Routman describes, nor have I experienced it
during my elementary years. The only way I have seen this done is when students read their word. The teacher has never made it a learning opportunity, but rather practice in public speaking. According to Routman, the purpose of a whole-class
share is to celebrate a student’s writing and give him or support when moving
forward (p. 207). I believe this is exactly the positive support Kindergarteners
need as they begin writing. Routman wrote a translation of a Kindergarten class
doing this, but the one thing I noticed was that the teacher was doing most of
the talking. In fact, the translation did not include any other student
offering praise or suggestions. Routman said that students should be able to
respond to their peers writing (p. 207). I am curious as to how much the
listening students should be involved in the process.
Whole-class sharing will also bring about dilemmas. I have
never had to balance a curriculum like Reading Street and my own lessons. I am
worried about integrating the two so I can include things like whole-class
sharing. More specifically, I fear that there will not be enough time to
successfully complete them. However, it is comforting to hear Routman state that
a great deal of teaching happens through whole-class sharing (p. 211). Like a
lot of things I think it will just take practice hybridizing Reading Street and
outside strategies. I just wish I could watch it done first before I try it out
myself since I am a visual learner!
I agree with what Maria said because I, too, have not seen a whole-class share in action like Routman describes. However, my mentor teacher does use a type of whole-class share. So far, we have spent a lot of time working on letter formation and letter sounds because we are teaching our kindergarteners the basics of writing first. Therefore, our students' journal entries include mostly pictures, with some phonetically-spelled words or letters (often times, we write what the students tell us at the bottom of their journal page). On a couple of occasions, my MT then allowed the students to share their entries with the class. For example, one entry the students wrote about was on what they like to do. After they finished writing, my MT went around the classroom and let students share their ideas with the class, but only if they wanted to. I agree with Routman that the students LOVE sharing their journal entries with the entire class (2005, p. 210). They get a huge smile on their face when they get to talk into our teacher microphone and share their journal entries. Another thing we have students do is make a symbol with their hands to show they are connecting with an idea another student is sharing aloud (we have taught them the symbol and told them what it means). This helps the students really pay attention to what their peers are sharing aloud, and it gets them thinking critically by making connections with their peers. On the other hand, this is as close as we have gotten to a whole-class share. The students do not read their entries more than one time, like Routman suggests. Also, the focus is on giving the students confidence in their ideas, and not on revising the students' work (Routman, 2005, p. 211-212). As the school year progresses, and the students begin to write more, we may move toward more of the whole-class share format that Routman describes. I am excited to see my MT use a type of this conference already, and I am interested to see where it will take us later on in the school year!
ReplyDeleteIn my classroom, the only sharing we have done is pictures that students have drawn that relate to another book, such as coloring their own houses how they want after we read The Big Orange Splat. Routman says that students really enjoy sharing what they create and some did, however we still had about half of the class who chose not to because they are still shy. I think that once we build a stronger classroom community students will feel safer sharing their drawing/writings with the class and more will choose to share. We will be starting letters sounds next week in our class and we will be starting to try and write more around the time I begin teaching all of the literacy lessons, and I love the way he just lets students write and then, once they are done, showed them how to organize it. I think that that would take away a lot of the frustrations that many students have (especially in kindergarten) and would love to try it out in my classroom. In chapter 7 Routman explains a good way to have students write is to have them all help to put together a book because then it is meaningful to the kids and they know others will be reading it and this is a technique that my MT already uses. There were other techniques Routman included that I thought would make students feel more comfortable writing, such as sharing what goes through your head when you write and even the teacher needs to fix their writing to improve it. But like Maria I would like to see these ideas and techniques put into action before I tried many of them myself.
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