11.6.13 Blog Post

11.6.13  Blog Post

 

Workshops

            I think you asked us to blog about how this is going for us.  I forgot to include it for last week, so will combine them both.  When Hollie presented, it was wide open – which I think was good for all of us.  We had the time to look in an “unmotivated” way and discuss what we were, seeing, what we thought was interesting etc.  We talked a lot about questioning and the point it served, and we talked a great deal about the student’s response/or lack thereof…which has made me think about my data, I will get there in a bit.

            I was absolutely fascinated by Emily’s data.  Students from TSD were videotaped having a book discussion.  Emily had transcribed all of the signing that took place in the discussion.  The video was of little use (so we thought) to Hollie and I, as we don’t know how to sign.  We poured over the transcript together and talked to Emily about what we were noticing – how different students took the floor, how much wait time there seemed to be between turns etc.   Then, we all started to watch the video.  I was blown away.  I have never thought about how much gesture and eye contact matters within the deaf community (sounds ridiculous, I know).  There was one section where a student was talking (signing) and the girl to her right was paying no attention at all.  Not looking at her, not turned toward her etc.  She was missing all the signs.   I thought about how that is so different from a “hearing” high school class.  You don’t have to look like you are paying attention (turned toward the speaker, making eye contact) to be taking something away from the conversation.  So different in the deaf community.  I wondered about including more about gestures etc. in Emily’s work. 

            Both of these data sessions have given me insight into my own work.  I have read the transcript and watched the video of my little guy and me.  I noticed that I ask a lot of questions – some of them are rhetorical, some really mean..do this, and some are genuine in the sense that I don’t know the answer and I need him to tell me.  It might be interesting to look at the questions I ask and the purpose they serve.   I also notice that he asks me lots of questions – “How I did?” to get me to assess his reading, “What dat mean?” when he noticed bold print at the end of a line, and “How dat go?” when he can’t remember a particular language structure.

            From Emily’s data, I have thought more about gestures. The little guy in the video has difficulty with his speech.  He is very hard to understand sometimes.  I can see his frustration at times, and his confusion about things through his expressions.  I can also see how much we smile, or laugh or appear generally positive with one another through our body language. I wonder how to include that kind of information because so much of the info is inferential. I haven’t recorded a great deal of gesture in my transcript and wonder if I should.

 

 

 

Since you shared these articles with us  in DP, I have been wondering about what kind of on-line or textual data I could analyze with Reading Recovery.  Next year, I will have a training group of Teacher Leaders, and I remember as a TL having to write reflections about my work with students to my trainer.   These are similar to the portfolio reflections I read about in one of my lit review articles.  The researcher looked at graduate students who were teaching for the first time and saw how they changed over the course of a year.  I could do this sort of thing with RR reflections from teacher leaders.  Might be very interesting.

 

The article about the undergraduate students made me think about my students in REED 430 who write reflections on the readings they do each week.  Though they are allowed to write about whatever they notice, whatever they have questions about, whatever they think is interesting, I find that they write summaries.  For many of them, they do not escape this and write summaries the whole semester.  For others, they let go as our time together progresses and we just communicate about the material with one another. I find that their responses get more authentic as the semester progresses and as they let go of the “right” way to do a reading response.   I would like to look at the responses I have gathered over the 3 semesters I have taught.  I wonder what is going on in those exchanges!  

 

Looking forward to class tomorrow night and getting some feedback on my data.