After reading "Insights from Teachers Who Analyzed Transcripts of Their Own Classroom Discussions"

1) How would you describe the kind of classroom conversations/discussions you have with your students?
After reading this article, I know exactly what kinds of questions I ask. During Shared Reading, or Teacher Directed Reading, I use a lot of retrieval questions- things that students can easily find in the text.I also use a lot of prediction questions while reading the text.I do use connections, but not within the text it self.I use connections to their life.I know that I am not using very many relating, explaining or inferring questions. I rarely use evaluation questions during Shared Reading.During this time, I am supposed to be teaching a specific skill, and sometimes I feel as though this limits me. During Read Aloud, I use a lot more evaluation questions.I try to get them to make judgments about the text, or situations that are happening in the text.I also probe students a lot more during read aloud.During Guided Reading, because of its nature, I only ask retrieval questions.Sometimes I feel as though I am limited, especially as a first grade teacher.During this guided reading time I feel like I can only ask the most basic questions, because I am teaching decoding.

2) What are some key ideas for you as a teacher in this article?
The key ideas in this article are the types of questions and coding that this professor had her students use.These are very helpful for me in understanding, with examples, what the questions are really asking.Also, the fact that the professor had her students do it twice was really important.I think you need to know where you are at now, and what you need to do as an educator to move forward.


3) What are some questions this article raised for you about classroom conversations? About this method?
The biggest question that popped into my head were, why can’t I ask different question types during Teacher Directed Reading and Guided Reading.Who is stopping me?It’s great if they can read the text in a leveled reading group, but more important than that, what can they take away from the text?I really like this method, and I am very excited to use it.I have already spoken with a 3rd grade teacher, and I am going to use sliderocket.com to do a read aloud, for black history month.She has a flip camera, and is going to videotape my lesson.I feel this is better than audiotape because I am not familiar with the students.

4) What strategies do you think you use most during class discussions?
There are several strategies that I use during classroom discussions.I have “magic cards”.Each student has their name on a magic card.I use the cards to call on students.In this way, I can make sure that every student is called on, and that I am not answering the same 4 students over and over.I also watch my wait time.Very early on, I learn which students take longer than others.I can also read their facial expressions. I try to probe for answers, but if I know they are lost, or just don’t know, or are too shy to answer, then I ask them if they would like to pick a friend to help them answer.This has proved to be very effective in my room.During guided reading, I do not let students raise their hands.Because we are in a small setting, they may choose to speak whenever they like.However, when we are doing TDR or Read Aloud, they do have to raise their hands.I encourage them to ask me questions too about the text if they are not understanding something.