Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Tompkins Chapter 5
I like how much this chapter pays attention to literacy physically being a central focus around the classroom with things like word walls and literacy centers. I sincerely wish that I could witness more use of centers in my class actually, I have only seen them done once or twice and they seem to be very beneficial to the students. Such a variety of activities keeps things exciting for the students and allows the teacher to work with a small group of students quite exclusively without the rest of the class losing focus on their own tasks at hand. Centers seem like a flawless activity as long as they are executed well, I just wish I could experience them firsthand a little more in order to better assess them for myself. Something else I always feel like I should see more of is these word walls. Now that I hear about them in our teaching classes, I actually remember having words up around my classrooms when I was a young student myself. However, I feel like a rarely see them in the classrooms that I’m actually placed in. My current third grade class has a tiny word wall on the wall in the corner of the classroom, but it is not at all extensive and only has a few words on in. I wonder how much these are actually used in general ed. classrooms.
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I, also, have never witnessed centers used in an elementary classroom, yet I have seen them in college classrooms. I like the idea of how exciting they can be for students, yet, their flaw would be direction oriented. If the directions at each center are not clear, or or not written down for students to see, I can imagine chaos during the beginning of each segment. I taught a volleyball team a year or two ago and when I would use centers, or stations, their were always questions. My players would only pay attention to the center that they were currently at. They would not listen to questions asked by others that were at other centers. In that, there were lots of repetitive questions. I think that as long as the directions are clear and organized, centers would be a fun way to get kids engaged. A teacher could leave the centers available throughout the day for kids who had extra interest in one specific center :)
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