Kayla's Response Post 1/21

It was great to hear how another classroom is incorporating literacy into their daily schedule! I liked the idea of the at home reading program where each student is expected to read 1-15 minutes every night. I was wondering what the positive reinforcement for this behavior was? If it was something naturally related to what they did such as, receiving a new book since they read a specific amount of minutes, or if instead it was something not related such as a candy. This would be important to know since if it was something such as candy I would be worried that this is causing the student to become extrinsically motivated to read. Could the student get confused on what behavior is being reinforced since candy has no connection to reading? Another issue that could arise is that giving a student something such as candy might be reinforcing their behavior of eating unhealthy rather than reinforcing their behavior of practicing their reading skills. However, if the reinforcement is something such as letting the student receive a new book than the student is then going to read more which is reinforcing their behavior of reading.

I was also intrigued to hear that your fourth grade class gets an hour of technology time every Thursday. I found it interesting that this time was used to only read from an online source and take a quiz about the story that they read. What are students missing out when they are only seeing one online resource? I think that an important part of using technology is to learn what it is capable of doing. Although I strongly agree that it important to cross subjects and use literacy in any subjects that you can I think that it is also important to let students explore the internet (in a safe way) to learn what it offers us as learners. Perhaps while reading their story online they could also use the internet as a dictionary to look up words they don’t know or look up historical contexts about the story they are reading. This would be helpful for students since they can learn how helpful technology can be for them.

I also wanted to mention the idea of taking a quiz on the story they read. I think it is excellent to assess student’s comprehension on stories they just read but I don’t think that we should stop there. As I learned while reading the Langer article, “Understanding Literature” there are four major stances in the way that readers interpret the text; being out and stepping in, being in and moving through, being in and stepping out, and stepping out and objectifying the experience. Being out and stepping in are the initial responses to the text, being in and moving through are making inferences and using background knowledge to develop meaning, being in and stepping out is making text to self comparisons, and lastly, stepping out an objectifying the experience is where the students judge and evaluate the text. As Langer states in the article, “There is an ever emerging new horizon of possibilities that defines what the literary text means to the individual reader”. This is important because in order for students to truly interpret what they read they need to go through these four stances. What are the questions asking in the quiz that the students take after reading online? I wonder if they ask students to make text to self comparisons or if the questions are based on things explicitly said within the text.