msaija.com

Anthony Cody a retired Oakland Teacher and Blogger For Edweek interview Mills College Professor Anna Richert about her work with the Mills Teacher Scholars. I am featured speaking in the video about my inquiry project on teaching clarifying strategies during reading comprehension.

One way to surface teaching issues/problems is to begin by checking your assumptions. – Tomas Galguera Professor Mills College

The notion of checking assumptions is a really important one. Not the idea of check your assumptions at the door and get rid of them. But, examine them for accuracy. Examine the idea behind the assumption and why it is that I am assuming what I am. Under my assumptions may be the issue of inquiry, the issue of equity that I need to get at to move my teaching practice forward. I talk to students all the time and I assume I know what they mean when I am filling in missing words, nodding my head why they say something I dont quite understand but I assume I know what they are getting at. Then I say, “ok my students comprehend this subject matter or they understand this story.” Then I ask them to write about the story or write about what they learned. SHOCK and CONFUSION, not on the part on my students, but all over my face as I read the written accounts of my students learning. The thing that I just new they understood seems to be all muddled when they write. Either there is a serious disconnect between what my students can orally describe that they know and what they can write, or in my attempt at filling in the language gaps I am assuming comprehension that students dont really have. This year I want to look/listen/read closely so I can check that assumption. As tomas states assumptions play a great role in inquiry. Checking those assumptions are essential to equity.

In my classroom I have small group work time four days a week. I spend 30 minutes with a small group during each of those sessions. For two days of the week I work with the same group. The other two days they work alone. We had been reading together a short Tall tale at their level. I must point out that it was at their fluency level. However the content and language of the text required some scaffolding. Particularly because this group of students are English learners. The story had hyperbole and simile, as well as a plot that began at the end and took you in a complete circle. With that said, we read the text together. We discussed what was happening at the end of each major section. we discussed the meanings of the figurative language and talked about the traits of the character. We worked with the story together for about 4 sessions. In the session where they were to work alone they had to answer some comprehension questions about the text in short sentences. One question asked them to respond to a question that could be answered by reading a sentence on the first page. One student in the group responded to the question by describing the scene in the picture on the first page. The picture had nothing to do with the actual text on the page. So during the share out of answers we discussed the discrepancy to the picture and the actual text. We also talked about how pictures enhance the text, but may not reflect the entire story. We also talked about how important it is to check the actual words. Even though by the end of the discussion the student understood why the answer was incorrect, I still wonder what this tells me about her reading ability. Especially since I know she could read the page and that we had already discussed it.

This site will be to showcase the inquiry that I am conducting as a teacher researcher. Interesting things will be COMING SOON…….