When I read the title of this chapter, "Getting to Know Students: Developing Culturally Relevant Practices for Reading and Writing" I knew this chapter was going to be very beneficial. I found the first part about Bianca very interesting because it related so much to the class discussion that we had last week. Many students that come from different cultural background lose their language because they only want to speak in English. It is immensely important that as future teachers we encourage our ELL and ESL students to keep their home language. In this text Bianca was "ashamed" of her culture/language and this is not something that I want to promote in my classroom.
In my classroom, everyday the ELL/ESL teacher comes in and does the first part of literacy with my class. She usually does vocabulary/concept development and an interactive read aloud. My class is about 60% Hispanic, 20% Caucasian, and 20% African American. During every read aloud that I have seen her do she had been able to relate the material across cultures. I love how she is able to take a piece of information and make it relevant for all of her students. It has been wonderful to see this done in the classroom because this is something that I've never seen before. Through observing her I have been able to learn good teaching practices that will help me when I get into the classroom.
Another thing that I found interesting in the chapter was the attitude questionnaires and surveys. I have seen these done in almost every class that I have been in, even in college. I never really liked doing surveys/questionnaires, but I see how they can be helpful in finding out students' interest and getting them interested in reading and writing. Reading is going to be more meaningful to students when they can read one of their favorite authors or about something that they are interested in.
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It would be interesting to watching your CT perform a read aloud, reaching all cultures. The ability to make a piece of information relevant to all students is a skill that I fear I might not develop (but I am working on it).
ReplyDeleteDo you plan on using survey's in your class room if they were not one of your favorites? I always loved them as a child, especially if we did not need to put our names on it.
Thanks for the insight!
Liz, I am so glad that you are finding useful things throughout your student teaching experience. My cohort of students does not receive help from the ESL coordinator so it is nice to hear about the work she does. I'd be very interested in the text she chooses to use, espcially during her read alouds.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about you, but the vignettes at the beginning of the chapters really help me when I'm reading through the chapter. I know over the years we've struggled to find relevancy in our text and work, but this book actually does a gretat job of making it more personal to us. I gain much more from the material because of the practical classroom application. Hopefully this has helped you as well.
If I were you, I'd try to keep a log of the books she uses that are culturally relevant that you found useful so that you can begin a class library of your own! Maybe you could even share the list with some of your favorite people :)
It's sad that students are sometimes ashamed of where they come from and the language that they speak if it is different then how everyone else speaks. I do not recall any ELL specialists coming into our classrooms in elementary school and there are no ELL students in my classroom now. I think it would be interesting to see how the students reacted to the lessons incorporating different languages and cultures. And I HATED filling out questionnaire questions and “how can we make this better” questions as a student but this chapter really shows the importance and the contributions that both our students and us as students make to lessons and improving the classroom and their education with these simple questions.
ReplyDeleteKristin, I probably will still use surveys in my classroom even though I don't particularly like them that much. I feel like they are important because teachers can get a lot of information from them.
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