Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Classroom Discourse
Typically the types of questions that are ask are the mean of words or how to say these words. Mrs. P always responds in a respectful manner. Today we had a tricky word. Lamented. Students say perplex, " lemontid?" Mrs. P. smiles, "La-men-ted not lemontid." Soon enough another student says allowed, "LAMBENTID." Mrs. P repeats with a smile, "Lamented." Mrs. P. responds to most questions in this pleasant and patient tone.
This is actually a fairly engaged class. One student that stand out as a non-participation would be one of the ELL students. This student speak English fine, however reading aloud is tough and maybe a little scary.
One particular student has a problem with sticking with relevance in discourse. This student is too much fun, however many of his contributions have nothing to do with the current discussion. This is attributed to his disability and today he didn't have his in-class aid so he tried focusing his powers of distraction on me. I tried my best to resist.
I don't get to hear students outside of Q & A and aloud reading. I would say the boys talk more than the girls. Mrs. P's son who is in the class seems to talk a lot in class discussion, because he is comfortable with his mother, as it should be, this attitude transcends through-out the classroom.
I also wanted to add that this is very much an IRE discourse pattern in the classroom which must be very characteristic of Elementary school children. I'm interested to hear what my fellow Elementary school goers have experience with discourse at their practicums.
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I am impressed with my practicum teacher’s patience and kind voice as well. It seems as though she easily guides the conversation where she wants it to go and openly accepts authentic questions without missing a step. When the class is not doing reading activities what other kinds of discourse practices have you seen?
ReplyDeleteI primarily go through this same pattern everytime I go to my practicum the only other discourse marker that I can think of is when the student have to go to their "Specials" (gym, music, library) Mrs. P will stand by the door which tells them it's time to go. And of course the students do raise their hands for permission to speak or to answer a question.
ReplyDeleteMy teacher alsways begins by affirming some point about a student's contribution, before asking if any other students have some feed back or maybe introducing another position. She has created a system that all the students are familiar with, that first includes giving positive feedback, then giving suggestions for the next presentation, or whatever the context is, so that students always get some good productive feedback.
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