The readings for this week were enlightening and engaging for me as a future educator. By reading the plethora of uses of reading and writing in one family, it helped me see the endless ways of incorporating reading and writing into my cross-curricular classroom approach. The main idea that grabbed my attention were the six T's of time, text, teaching, talk, task, and testing. It was helpful to see how "effective teachers" used the six T's in their classroom. They had children engaging in writing for most of the day, used writing as a cross-curricular tool and as a way to prepare children for testing rather than preparing them the formal way, and graded on improvement rather than achievement. By grading each child according to their improvement, we are tailoring our teaching to the needs of each specific child and are encouraging the best work our children have to offer.
Discussion Questions:
1. How would you incorporate the six T's into your classroom?
2. What would you add in addition to the six T's to make you a more effective teacher?
Haley,
ReplyDeleteWhile reading the article about the 6 T's, I thought the part about grading for effort and improvement was interesting because I have never seen this done. I feel, as the Allington (2002) states, "Students could not assign bad grades to "unluckiness"" (p. 746). I think that a large amount of the student body that regularly receives poor grades believes the teacher is to blame or that they are "just not smart enough"--grading for improvement and effort takes that away. Even more so, grading this way gives students a hope and helps them try harder.
I like that you mentioned the cross-curricular classroom approach. Learning really is so holistic and it's encouraging to see that effective teachers know this and are able to utilize it in their classrooms.
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