Standard English, Untracking, and Literature Cirlces

When I read the article on Standard English I hd a lot of thoughts about if i really should be the standard. I liked that right away the author of the article said that they would replace words they did not know how to pronounce with a word they did.  I think that is a good strategy to tell students because they will not seem as intimidated when talking.  I think that the standard way of speaking is a little too judgemental.  I have a problem saying some words myself.  I say the word "am" wrong apprently.  I never thought I did until a couple weeks ago I said it while practicing a running record in a class and my friend said that it was wrong.  We asked the professor and she said it was but we do have to be careful as teachers because there are so many different dialects.  There are a lot of catchy sayings that can help students memorize how to say words but there are so many of those that memorizing them can be really difficult.  I liked the idea from the article that the students would write everyday about anything they wanted to and then at the end of the week they would polish one off and add more to it to hand in.  I also like that they related it to practice for football and a football game so that it can relate the strategy to students that play sports.  In the article the teacher has an old student come in and talk about her experience in the class and read aloud some of her recent work.  This was a great way to show the students what they will be doing in class and what they can accomplish.  I think that great teachers come from having bad teachers because they know what doesn't work and we learn what can work.  I also think that Standard English is very important but I think that people's home language it important to who they are and they should accept it.  I would say I am a foreigner to the people that came up with Standard English because I don't speak all the words correctly and because I have said them the same way my whole life, I will probably never change.

The second article was about untracking and how it affects students.  Tracking can really hurt students and then it will make the student think they can never get better and won't try because they don't see a reason too.  When I was in high school we had a weird way of splitting kids up I would say.  There was honors classes and AP classes for students that were for students that were way above the average.  Then there were my classes.  I was smart but not like the ones in honors or AP.  We had a mixture of all types of students in there.  This is kind of a mixture of tracking and untracking.  The honors kids mainly get into the type of discussions that would happen in a college class but in the classes I was in we did stuff that way tedious and i didn't see the point to it.  It used to get me angry because I always thought I could have those conversations but I thought they teacher was dumbing it down for the students that were on the "low" side.  I would start to feel like I wasn't capable of doing hard work because school never let me.  I turned into a shy person in class.  The quote from the article that says, "Teachers must see the gifts each student brings to class, not the deficits," it a good way to put how teachers should act in class.  We need to remember that all students have a strength somewhere and we need to find it.  I liked the different strategies the article gives towards the end of it.  I like the Tea Party because it would help most students understand the first chapter or so of the article.  I also liked the Dialogue Journal because I think it would be a different way for students to look at the book and they may be able to think critically by doing this.  My favorite was the improvisations though.  I think students would love to work with their friends and this would also help students that need visuals.  I think to make sure students are on task thought, the teacher needs to meet with a group to see how far they are.  I think that it is a good idea to teach less books in a year but use short stories and a few books to think deeply and talk more about the book.

When I read the two chapters about literature circles I was thinking about how I could implement this into my classroom.  I do agree that students can do good when they have choices, time, responsibility, a little guidance, and a workable structure.  Students are not wanting to read because they don't understand the book and then they feel like if they talk in front of the whole class, everyone will think their question is stupid.  In chapter 1 it said that students are starting to talk about books online and this is exactly what we do in this class.  I thought that was cool to see how it is becoming more popular and I think it is a good way to share our feelings about what we read and we can talk to other students through it as well.  I also think in order to promote the literature circles, or reading in general, teachers need to read.  How can we tell students to read and do other assignments when we dont do it either.  The book did talk about how literature circles would be hard to grade and I agreed when I thought about it.  I think the teacher just need observe and facilitate the room and grade according to how well the students participate and how they seem to be improving in their reading.  I also think that we need to remember that we can't use role sheets all the time for literature circles.  I had a teacher that did that and it became very tedious.  I like the quote from chapter 2 that says, "You can't fall in love with books if someone stuffs it down your throat."  I understand that some teachers do that and I think we as teachers need to realize when it has been long enough on a book.  I liked the idea from chapter two that the teacher could become an equal in the classroom when the class is reading a book that the teacher never read and they can be in a group and discuss and do the same work as the students.  I think the students would love to see that and also I think it would be a good way to observe how groups are doing.  I think literature circles can be a really good use of time in a classroom as long as it is used properly.