Saturday, January 25, 2014
Blog Post 2.5
I found the Mcgee article to be intellectually bankrupt and devoid of any useful insights.
On page 9 Mcgee tells us that, “The real purpose of response centered talk is to use children’s responses or ideas as a springboard to reasoning and problem solving”. Reasoning and problem solving are admirable goals to have for teaching students of any age, but response centered talk as it is described in the article won’t contribute to this in the slightest. On page 3 Mcgee tells us that, “fleeting images, feelings, impressions, and thoughts work along with their respective responses to form the reader’s unique and personal understanding of the literary work.” Feelings, impressions, and thoughts are based on nothing. Just because someone feels as though something is true, doesn’t mean that it actually is. Things that are true are testable, conceivable, and arguable. Arguments can be falsified, feelings cannot. The worldview advocated by Mcgee is one where there is no truth, only feelings. On page 5 Mcgee tells us that “Carlos… suggests that her cockscomb could be a spying device. “Although I have not read the book referenced in the article, I can be sure that the idea that the hen had an electronic listening device implanted in her body was completely invented by the student.
I am perfectly fine with having a literary text in class where there are different points of view about the motivations of the characters, or why something happened. But to claim that there are no wrong answers so long as you persuade others of what you believe is nonsense.
The Almasi article takes a different approach in advocating for a subjective/relativistic view of reading literary texts. Almasi gives us many reasons for why discussions, are better than recitations. These reasons include cognitive, social, and emotional benefits to working with other students. I can see no reason though for why these benefits can’t be realized while still maintaining that the information lies in the text and not the person reading it. In reading a particular text there can be more than one interpretation of what is written, and working collaboratively can help students understand and enjoy the reading more. However, a person’s culture or background, or whatever only acts as a filter through which the information contained within the text is understood. Those characteristics can cause the person to not understand, or misunderstand the text, but no additional information is added to the text based on the reader’s filters.
Unfortunately, I have not seen classroom discussions taking place in the classroom I do my service learning in. I would not have response-centered talk as it is described in either of the articles in my classroom, because they both suppose that there is nothing that is objectively true. I do think though that having students learn concepts through the discovery process is a great way for them to learn. As a teacher it will be my job to guide the students in an experiment, or class discussion to learn whatever it is we are studying. Something that is a useful strategy for getting quiet students to participate in class discussions is to have the teacher draw popsicles with the student’s names on them, so that a student could have to respond to something that is said at any time. Students in this system all participate equally, because they all have an equal chance to be called on.
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Madi Strong
ReplyDeleteWow, your response to the reading was very interesting to read. I did not see the reading from your perspective as I was reading, but you make some very valid points in your statement. I agree that the discussions could be something very challenging to do with your classroom. So when a student does make a misconception about something in the discussion, you are supposed to let it continue on without intervening? That seems like it would just have a negative outcome because the other students will remember that misconception said and may believe it to be true as well. I do think discussions can be a great way to further the learning of students, but I think the teacher needs to be more involved. The teacher should lead the conversation and add in details throughout the conversation to make sure the students are receiving the correct information you want them to, so that any misconceptions, confusion, or lack of information can be eliminated.
In TE 403 last semester, we actually were able to experience the effects of discussions with our students from our placements. We had to conduct three different science talks, which were small group discussions with a few students about a certain science topic. It was a very good tool to learn what the students’ background knowledge of the subject was, but that is all I got from it. Specifically, I did one of my science talks on the topic of weather before giving my lesson on weather, and it helped me a lot with planning my lesson because I had an idea of what the students knew and what they needed to learn in order to reach my lesson objectives. After receiving their background knowledge, though, only misconceptions were being given through responses as we further talked about the subject. When the students were unsure of the actual answer, they made a response up. This, to me, is leading the other students to believe that the misconception is true as well. This may have only been what I experienced with my class, though, since I am working in a class of pre-kindergarteners and kindergarteners. I would love to be able to have a discussion with maybe an upper elementary or middle school class to see if the discussion technique leads to be more effective than I have seen so myself.
I think that’s an excellent point that misconceptions can be perpetuated by other students if it isn’t corrected by the teacher. The thing I remember best from the text is the listening device inside the hen, which is completely baseless, and very memorable.
DeleteI enjoyed reading both of your posts and the ideas you had on the Mcgee article. I found the article interesting. I do think that small classroom discussions are good to have with students, but I also think it is very difficult determining where to draw the line on letting the students say what they think and telling them when an idea that they have is wrong. I did science talks with students as well and many of them gave wrong ideas. I didn't say they were wrong, but if possible I tried to ask them another question to lead them into the right direction. This was a challenge for me and I think all teachers need practice. Even in the Mcgee article the teacher noticed certain things that she wants to fix for next time after listening back on the discussion. I think it was smart of the article to show certain mistakes that were made so we can learn from reading it.
ReplyDeleteI think the place to draw the line is simply to have a student justify their claim. One of the skills that this type of learning is supposed to strengthen is logical reasoning. Therefore, if a student claims that something is true, then a teacher can ask them to justify their claim. In so doing students will learn how to argue using facts from the text.
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