How can we lift the level of analytical thinking about reading and writing the classroom?
There are many reasons for why I chose this topic. I have been observing in the classroom that I am interning in that the students are able to verbally express their ideas about their reading and character archetypes, but they struggle with writing about them. I think that this is true for many students in the fifth grade.
The school that I am currently interning in is an elementary public school in Chelsea, in New York City. The school has received high marks from the city and the state. I am currently working in a fifth grade, gifted and talented classroom. It is a small class of only eighteen students and one male teacher. The students in the class are from Chelsea, other parts of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.
I am a white, middle- upper middle class, Jewish 23 year old female. I identify with the American Family, my parents are still married and they have always encouraged me to do my best in all educational endeavors and have supported me throughout my schooling experience. My mother attended one year of college and my father received his bachelor’s degree from a four-year university. They have both worked very hard to make sure that I would receive a strong education in college. I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. I attended public school from Kindergarten until and went to an in-state public college. My school district was somewhat economically diverse. Most students were upper middle-to-middle class. I few were lower middle class. My school district was also somewhat culturally diverse with a strong African-American and Caucasian presence along with some Asian and Hispanic populations. I have done volunteer work in Malawi, Africa that has opened up my eyes to the education in under-privileged countries.
My school experience differs from that of the classroom I am interning in this semester. I grew up in the suburbs much unlike the large, urban city that my students live in. The students in the school that I am interning in are much more diverse than any other school I have worked in. I student taught in a middle class elementary school in a rural town in southwest Ohio with a somewhat diverse population consisting of many Hispanics and Asians. My intern experience in the fall semester is in an upper elementary class public school in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. I received my bachelor’s degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I am currently working toward my master’s degree at Teachers College in New York, New York.
How can we lift the level of analytical thinking about reading and writing the classroom? I believe that this topic needs to be studied because students need to be able to separate the elements of a topic in order to understand essential relationships between characters in their literature.
Many educators believe that it is hard to make our teaching “stick” with students. Sometimes it feels as though we send them off to do their independent work after our lessons, and we see nothing in return. This can be frustrating for educators. I also believe that this can be true. When I am working with my small group of students during a whole group lesson, it feels as though while we are working together they are engaging and actively participating, but when they go off and do their own independent reading and reflection work, the lessons seem to disappear from their heads.
I am focusing on How we can lift the level of analytical thinking about reading and writing the classroom. After reading the book, Shades of Meaning: Comprehension and Interpretation in Middle School, by, Donna Santman, I have discovered new ideas about helping my lesson stick with my students when they go off to work independently. For example, Santman states, “One way to make students’ reading processes and progress more visible is to create a variety of artifacts that will help me to see into the kids’ thinking as they are reading” ( Santman, Donna. 2008. P. 15). After reading this I realized that I have done similar things for my students. After the first strategy group that I had with three struggling readers entering the RST level bands books, I prepared them by giving them each a bookmark that had things to expect to happen throughout these higher-level books that differ from their previous bands of books. This allowed for them to have these to look out for and think about as they are reading. This will give the students the prompting to think deeper about the reading, become more in depth writers, and also be able to think more inferentially rather than literally.
In the book Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle & High School, by, Randy Bomer. He talks about how we need to focus in on the students’ lives and experiences as we create and teach our curriculum in literacy. Bomer states, “I want my literacy classroom to be a community engaged in making meaning, individually and collectively, from lived experiences. I have to concentrate hard to keep from reverting to the teacherly self-concept of curator or gatekeeper of supposed content and to crate a different teacherly identity concern primarily with students’ ability to make meaning from their present and past lives.” (Bomer, Randy. 1995. P. 9). This is something that I believe as well, especially when it comes to reading and writing. In order for our students to be able to lift their analytical thinking they need to be able to make life connections and use their prior knowledge on the experiences that they have had in their lives.
Later in the book, Bomer talks about evaluating notebooks. I found his ideas very interesting and something that I would like to do with my students in order for them to lift their analytical thinking about reading and writing. Bomer says in terms of grading the notebooks, “What was important to me was for the kids to continue to do good work in the notebooks. My response would have to come in conferences” (p.61). When I think back to my experiences with looking over and evaluating notebooks, I have noticed that students jump right to the end of the section and look for the grade. This is something that as a teacher I wish did not happen. I believe that students might feel more open to expressing deeper thoughts and ideas if they knew that the teaching would not be grading on these entries, rather than evaluating them on the responses they give for them during a well planned out conference. The idea of lifting the analytical thinking of reading and writing in students is something that I believe can be done in the classroom, and using the research that I have found, I know that it can be done.
My study is necessary for my students and for me as a teacher in many ways. This is not the first and will not be the last time that students in the fifth grade will need help and prompting in order to left their analytical thinking. By working with a small group of students I was able to work more one on one with them and focus especially on what it takes for struggling readers in the RST level band books to think more analytically about their reading and writing. As a teacher I now know more about what it takes to complete these tasks. For the students it was necessary because they were entering these higher-level texts where there were a lot more dynamic character traits, relationships, and interactions developing. Also, setting was becoming more important than in previous level bands, and there was more inferential thinking being done. The students were given a chance to talk about these changing aspects of their texts in order for them to develop better thinking, reading, and writing skills.
In my classroom I noticed that the some of the students possessed strength in verbally expressing their ideas, beliefs, and thoughts about characters, but had some struggles with getting their thoughts onto paper. I decided to research how students on the same reading level varied in their levels of writing. I wanted to know if prompting the students with written questions rather than having them produce ideas on their own about their reading would push them to more analytical thinking. Also, I wanted to know if talking out their ideas first would help them in their writing. Some of my thinking this fall as I was coming up with my topic was the idea that some students seem to really not enjoy writing down their ideas about characters. I want to know why it comes as a struggle to some students and why others can do this with more ease even though they are on the same reading levels.
Some of my thinking this fall as I was coming up with my topic was the idea that some students seem to really not enjoy writing down their ideas about characters. I want to know why it comes as a struggle to some students and why others can do this with more ease even though they are on the same reading levels. The initial data that I collected was a video taped strategy group lesson that I did with three students who were entering the RST level band of books. I wanted to see their initial thoughts and ideas about how characters have changed and have become more dynamic in this level of reading. I then wanted to see what these students could do in terms of jotting about this topic. I have attached both the strategy lesson, videotape, bookmarks that I made for the students, as well as some of their jotting about characters to this document. (See appendix A).
When I look at the initial data of the jotting about characters that the students have done I think about many things. I noticed that all three of the students in this level have made some sort of character map in order to put their ideas down about the characters from their book. I noticed however, that two of the students only jotted down simple relationships characters had with one and other. For example, they would write down the main character in the middle of the page, and draw lines like a web to another character and simple state things like, main characters mom, or the helper, etc. Only one of the students was able to jot down relationships that characters had and explain why this affected some part of the story. I decided after looking at the students jots about characters I would have another strategy group lesson on how character archetypes in this level band of books are usually similar to real people we know, and that we can make connections to our characters because of relationships that we might have in our own lives.
I decided to do something like this in order to see if prompting the students with character types of questions would allow them to writer more analytically and deeper about their ideas. I wanted to do this to see if the students struggled with coming up with ways to talk about their characters on their own. After the strategy lesson I had the students complete a sheet of questions that I had prompted for them in order to see if the lessons that we had been doing in class about character archetypes were having an affect on these particular students. I first showed the students how to go about answer the questions by completing them with them about characters that we all know. The questions were as follows:
1. Pick a character from you independent reading book. Write down everything you know about this character.
2. What character archetypes does this make you think of? Explain why.
3. Think of someone (in real life) who reminds you of the character of your book. Describe this person that you are thinking of.
4. How and why is this person similar to the character you are reading about in your book?
I have attached their answers to this document in appendix B. After looking over the prompted questions that the students answered I noticed that they all were able to think for analytically when they were prompted with questions to write about. If we continue to give the students more prompted questions more frequently, it will help them in the future to think of their own questions to write about in terms of characters because they will have an idea of what deeper thinking looks like.
I did not have much time to establish great trustworthiness in my data, because out question was developed so late into the semester. I think that if I had more time to do several actions with the students my data would produce similar results and improvements in the students’ writing about reading in terms of character. From this whole process I learned that in my teaching I need to make sure that when I am teaching a whole group lesson I need to keep it to teaching to the majority. But, it is my responsibility to scaffold struggling readers in order for them to reach the same level as the other students. I leaned a lot about how my students learn during this semester. I learned that a lot of students are stronger in talking about reading rather than writing about reading. I noticed that some students need extra scaffolding like prompted questions in order to think more deeply about their reading as well.
There are some limitations to my study. For example, I only focused on one band of reading levels in my study, which only consisted of three students. These students are also the lowest level readers in the class. I think that because I am in a gifted and talented class the expectations of higher achieving and lower achieving students is also different than those expectations of students in a regular classroom. I still have other questions about students’ abilities to write about reading. In my study I only am focusing students writing about reading in terms of character. I wonder if their writing about reading would differ for other ideas about reading?
My findings have a lot of implications for my future teaching practice. I think that in my future teaching practice I will want to make sure that students do more writing about their reading. I would scaffold for my students by at first providing with them with prompted questions that encouraged them to think deeply about their reading in terms of their writing. I would do this for some time until I felt that the students were more confident into their writing about reading, and then slowly allow them to generate their own questions to answer on their own. There are also some next steps that I would like to take as a result of my findings. I would like to do similar types of group work with students on other levels of text in order to see where they are in terms of writing about their reading. I would like to see if students on the same level of reading in higher-level bands also differ on their writing skills in terms of writing about reading. I would also like to see if students on different levels of reading could help to encourage each other on how to improve their writing about reading.
Bomer, R. (1995). Time for meaning: crafting literate lives in middle and high school. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Santman, D. (2005). Shades of meaning: comprehension and interpretation in middle school. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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