The choral reading activity I am going to write about is planning and performing my own choral reading. My group used small-group reading while working with Run Dog Run by Dr. Seuss. Specific grade level content expectations that this activity required me to use were:
Students will...
Speaking (Conventions)
Use enunciation and stress to emphasize key ideas and concepts when presenting.
Use tone of voice and pace of speaking to enhance meaning and influence interpretation when presenting.
Speaking (Discourse)
Engage in interactive, extended discourse to socially construct meaning.
Plan and deliver an informal presentation.
During our group reading we put stress on the rhyming words partially because it is easiest to pick out the rhyming words and partially because that is where the flow puts the emphasis. The rhyming words are the part of the book that are meant to have the focus on and so putting the stress on those words is natural. The tempo that we used was fast. When words were repeating or rhyming it forced the reader to speed up the words. It made the reading sound better and more exciting when the tempo was faster. While planning our reading, our group had to consider many aspects, such as tempo, pitch, juncture, etc, when deciding how we wanted our reading to sound. This included having really interactive discussions to decide how our reading would be received.
After reading the Triplett and Buchanan article about book talk discussions, I can see how that was applied to the choral reading activity. We as a group really worked together to have a successful book talk. We each put in our own ideas, listened carefully to each other and decided together how we wanted to present our book to the class. Our little learning community was very supportive of each other while working towards our finished product and towards the expectations.
I think that after doing this choral reading activity my role as a teacher has become clearer to me. I think that I will be a great listener as a teacher and will help to keep the discussions on topic and help to involve everyone in the group/class. The ideas will not always come from me, but I will help to draw the ideas out of everyone else involved. As I plan my language arts lesson I will have to remember to listen to my students and encourage participation. I will definitely use choral readings in my lesson. I enjoyed the activity and I think that everyone can benefit from an activity of this type.
2 comments:
It really sounds like you took a lot from this activity. It seems like as a group you really thought about and rationalized what type of emphasis you were going to put on the reading. You looked at the positive qualities that the book had and how it flowed and picked out strategies that would emphasis these parts the best. I think it was good that you realized that the book was set up to rhyme and that you didn’t try to change it in any way, but rather you looked for ways in which would help bring out the emphasis even more. I also like that you noticed that speeding up the tempo made the reading more exciting. As a student who doesn’t have the best attention span, I know that finding little methods like these can really help keep student attention which in return makes it more meaningful to them. When teachers read the same way over and over in a monotone voice, students almost automatically drift off as soon as the teacher opens their mouth.
Since you said that you plan on using choral readings in your language arts lesson, I hope that you realized how important the fact that your group worked so well together. If your group had not been so accepting or rational, the outcome of your story could have just as easily been disastrous as it was successful. Therefore the type of classroom community you have in your classroom will have a big impact on working with choral reading and or book discussions. I also like what you said in one of the last sentences of your blog. You said that you would have to remember to listen to your students and encourage participation. I think that if you got anything out of this lesson these were the two things that you should take away from it. By listening to your students and encouraging participation, any teaching that you do in your classroom will be more personal for the student and I think that they will get much more out of your lessons. All in all, nice summary.
Kelly – you and Andy brought up similar experiences/ideas from your choral readings in class. After reading your blog, I most liked your last point about how important and beneficial it is to listen to your students. This reminded me of the discussion we had in our TE 402 Math class. When students work on problems, it’s so tempting to want to give them hints on how to do the problem, or send them in the right direction. This is understandable because all teachers want their students to succeed. However, when students can accomplish a task, individually or as a group, with out your direct help, then they are really succeeding. It’s hard, yet very important to make a conscious decision to close your mouth and listen ! This idea definitely holds true with language arts as well. As a teacher, you may want to give them hints on how to read a story/poem. But like you mentioned, it’s important to step back and listen to their ideas. Doing this will make the readings personally meaningful to them!
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