Week 7: Beyond Basic Literacy

 Hi all! 

After reviewing the materials from this week, I see so many ways that my mentor teacher implements them into her classroom! 

My 1st graders have been working on opinion writing about space for the past week, and we noticed that in their writing and explanations they were making-up things rather than providing details that they learned from the text. For example, one student wrote that “They did not want to go to the moon because they could fall off the moon and never come back” - which are two things that are false and were not read to them in the story or incorporated in our discussion. For the second half of the week, we tried to emphasize that students would need to use reasons to support their opinions that were directly related in the text. To say this in a kid-friendly way, before reading each of the texts I would tell students the prompt that they would be responding to (do you want to be an astronaut, do you want to go to the moon, etc.). and tell them that it was there job to be listening to the story to find evidence that would back-up their opinions. Telling students the prompt before reading the story and telling them what their specific ‘job’ was while listening to the text helped them dive deeper into the materials and use evidence to back-up their opinions that they were writing about. As stated in C3 framework for social studies state standards “even the youngest children understand they need to give a reason for their ideas” and this was directly shown through my experience this week (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013). 

Given that I am in a 1st grade classroom, usually when we read long texts they are read aloud by myself or my mentor teacher- however, I do see aspects of disciplinary literacy incorporated into our daily instruction. Through our ELA curriculum, students are taught to think critically about social studies and science aspects- for example, we have had a unit on ancient civilizations and one on space/the solar system. Through these texts, students are taught to think deeper about the content they are being provided. We have also done lessons with our students where they need to distinguish different attributes between texts. For example, last week, we read an informational text about stars. After answering comprehension questions on the information text, students were read 2 poems about stars- “twinkle twinkle little star” and “star light, star bright”. Students needed to fill out in a Venn diagram the differences and similarities between the two texts. This directly reflects what was mentioned in the text about how “elementary teachers can teach students to read informational text, distinguish the differences among them and between informational texts” (Shanaham &. Shanahan, n.d.). Another aspect that was mentioned in the text that I see play out in the classroom I am student teaching in is that “elementary teachers can teach vocabulary not only from stories but also from science, social studies, or even mathematic texts” (Shanaham &. Shanahan, n.d.). Last week while teaching out students about outer space, they were introduced to the words rotate and abundant- which are words that can be used across multiple disciplines. 

Overall, the materials that have been provided to use this week have really shed light on the importance of disciplinary literacy and how to incorporate it into our instruction! Also, it has shown how to teach students how to develop a sense of learning about claims and evidence during the primary years!