This weeks blog post I will be referring to Thalia Cruz's excellent entry, Disengaged or Disinterested? based on the knowledge and understanding of written and oral language of early learners and how Thalia has connected this learning to a sixth grade classroom that she has been observing.
Bless
First of all, I want to commend Thalia for her excellent understanding and work that she put into the blog post as well and the personal experiences that she extended to us to show the understanding and implementation of Language Experience Approach and the problems that teachers, and us as future teachers, might come across. I want to also state that I admire Thalia's kindness towards her students and how she helped the student even though the host teacher did not and said that she shouldn't help them with their work because they were "lazy"; Thalia wanting to help her students is something that I also strive for in my future classroom!
Address
One of the questions I have for Thalia is since some teachers find that the Language Experience Approach is ineffective how can we go around that "laziness" ideology and instead use the LEA to be able to further students ability not only in the classroom setting with reading and writing but also connecting it to Muhammad and her HRL framework? It states on page 135 of Tompkins that part of the Language Experience Approach is the ability to create individual booklets, "... children create individual booklets. They draw pictures on each page or cut pictures from magazines to glue to each page, and then they dictate the text that the teacher writes besides each illustration. Children can also make collaborative books, where each child creates one page to be added to the class book" (Tompkins, p.135). These collaborative books could be used as a way to continue to integrate Muhammad's HRL framework into the classroom. An example could be that you could you the collaborative book and each child could use a page to draw their family- where they came from and have them express their culture. This could help the children create/ continue creating a sense of identity through a book. Then you would be able to share the book with the class and share each child's background and history, creating shared knowledge of different cultures, backgrounds and families.
Press
I want to press Thalia's thoughts on what other activities we can do as educators to be able to engage those students that are disengaged or uninterested in the topic that we have to teach- especially if it is a state mandated lesson. How can we as educators engage our students to make sure that they are using reading and writing skills without them feeling forced to do so. Also how would Thalia use the method of the Language Experience Approach in her future classroom? What activities can she provide to ensure that all of her students eventually read and write for themselves without the extra hand? How can we pair the Language Experience Approach with Muhammad's HRL framework with identity, skill, intellect and criticality?
References
Tompkins, G.E. (2017). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (7th Edition). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Chloe, this was a substantive entry. It is clear how you used Thalia's entry to help you re-think again about how to teach reading. I have just two suggestions for the next time you compose this kind of entry: you do not need to use subheadings to separate your discussion. Allow yourself to use a more "free-flowing" writing process (dare I say fluent, given our discussion tonight in class). Also, if you are going to *press* the author, then in addition to posing questions, it is also helpful if you offer your own tentative answers to the question you pose or to elaborate on why you see things differently (what other aspects from the readings do you think are helpful to consider)
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