Describe and
evaluate the approaches you observed from the classroom:
From the
classroom I observed, the teacher has built up a classroom library for kids where
they can borrow books every week and students would share their reading
experiences with the others in class. Share reading and independent reading is
applied into daily teaching.
For extended
reading, the teacher would pick up a book for the whole class to read together
every two weeks. The books are usually a little bit beyond children’s ability
and always related to social study. After finishing those books, students are
required to hand in their logs. Also, each student were required to pick up one
new word, explain with their own words and then let others guess what the word
is. I love this method because it allows students to make connections with
their personal experiences.
With students
who needed extra help, they have a specialist assisting the teacher. She took responsibility
with students who needed more exercises or explanation.
How much time
will you schedule for student writing?
For my
future teaching, I will definitely allocate at least one hour everyday for writing
as it is a very important part of ELA.
How do you
structure this time to support and advance student writing?
I will share advanced model writings with
students before their writing. I will use differentiation writing approaches
for students at different levels as well.
How do you
increase opportunities for students to improve their writing?
I
will make my students keeping diaries or journals every day. I will also encourage
them to keep down every new idea occurs to them in their daily life on their
notebooks.
How do you
balance student choice with teacher choice of writing topics?
I will do it half and half. Maybe half of
the week I will let them focusing on topics picked by me and leave them to
choose their own topics for the rest of the week.
What
challenges/questions do you have in scheduling adequate time for writing?
Maybe
the challenge is that it is hard to organized students at different writing
levels in limited time.
