Summary of Field Advisory, March 2009
Nicolle, a UIC student looks at the portrait
created by a student in Alex's class. The
portrait was one of the options on the choice
board to demonstrate understanding of a
character in the book.
On March, 10, 2009, we held the second field advisory meeting for the
semester. We share a few highlights from the discussions around
literacy artifacts and descriptions of partner and student artifacts.
Dave Rench, CPS partner, brought informational books such as National
Geographic or Scholastic News and talked about how to use them in
instruction with 12 year old students. He asked what are some
things that teachers can teach using such books and what teachers
could do to help kids comprehend the text. UIC students offered many
ideas: explicitly teach about the organization of the text (e.g., how
to interpret bold face type and section headings), how to use the
table of contents, when and how to read the colored text sections that
are separate from the expository text flow. Dave emphasized part of
pre-reading -- so essential to teach about (through strategies) before
reading text -- is to help students connect the text organization with
the content.
Carlitta Tucker, CPS partner, brought in a great example to illustrate
literacy in community settings. She showed pictures of her students on
a visit to the recent auto show at the convention center. She tied
their visit to literacy instruction by focusing on identifying
specific car makes and models, asking convention presenters some
questions and recording answers, and thinking about what questions
they would need to ask as a consumer. UIC students recognized that
learning to speak, listen, understand and communicate in real world
situations is an essential part of literacy instruction. Literacy is
key to daily living skills.
Donn Simon, another CPS partner, brought colorful movie posters that
students from his class made. He used them to make assessments of
students' comprehension, to help them build vocabulary, and to make
connections between the movie plot and characters with their own life
experiences. In the discussion he highlighted that both literal
and inferential comprehension can be demonstrated by creating
non-print contextual clues (e.g., drawings). The student work he
showed demonstrated students' memories of movie plot sequences.
Mary Stalzer brought examples of students' persuasive writing after
students read a newspaper article on teenage dating violence. She
shared with UIC students the use of various graphic organizers and
pre-reading strategies to help her students comprehend the newspaper
article and the major importance of the themes. She emphasized that
one way of differentiating the instruction is to allow students to
have a choice of graphic organizers that they find useful.
Toni brought in an envelope containing sentences that have to be put
in sequential order. She illustrated that it challenges students like
a puzzle and she uses it to support understanding sequencing. Alex
Horn-Lichtenfeld brought a poem that her class read and the drawings
her students made in response to the reading. The drawings depicted
something that stayed in their mind after listening to the poem.
UIC students presented artifacts from their classrooms, too. Kevin
HIller shared a vocabulary test he created for his students, and asked
for suggestions to make it better. Martin Gallagher shared an example
of an organizer students use to distinguish elements of "formal" and
"informal" conversations. Kelly Guenther talked about how to use
context clues to help students decipher challenging expository text
(e.g. using unfamiliar words in familiar contexts, pulling out phrases
for them to discuss before they read.)
Mary Stalzer shares how she used graphic organizers to help students
think about a newspaper article on teenage violence.
Carlitta Tuckers shares pictures from community trips her students
took and how she ties this into literacy instruction.
UIC Students ponder about the artifact brought by David Rench
and the
questions he posed.
Tasha McShan talks about the graphic organizers she uses with her
students,
as another UIC student looks at them.
Donn Simon gives a moment for everyone in his group to look at
the
student work he brought to the meeting.
Kelly Guenther, UIC student, shares an anecdote from her class to
illustrate
how she uses context clues for understanding expository
text.
