Choral Reading and Participation in Class on Jan. 27th

During class on January 27, 2009 we were split into groups to discuss different chapters we were assigned to read for the class. I was put into a group that was o discuss the packet reading A New View of Discussion by Almasi. In our group we discussed the many different ways that we as teachers could assess English Language Learners (ELL). ELL students have a hard time with standard tests in their class room for many different reasons. The two main reasons could be that the student needs the question read out loud to understand the question or it could be that the student has hard time writing, so the student could state his answers orally instead of writing the answer down on paper. I currently have no ELL students in my classroom at the time, but I feel that this assigned reading was beneficial in giving me knowledge for the future.

We also participated in reading and discussing poems, that described "Where I'm From". As I read through a couple of these poems I could pick distinctive features that told me about this exact person. My group used a choral reading method to take turns and one person had thier own paragraph to read. This worked out for our group because we only had four paragraphs as well as four people. This method also worked because we were all confident enough to read on our own. There are other methods used in choral reading. Such as reading all together or split the reading into two parts with two groups. The options are endless. After performing our choral reading with my group and the class it helped me to have a better understanding of different methods to use when working with poems and students. I also realized that you can tell so much about a person in action words. After discussing our own poems and characteristics, we learned that this could be a great activity to do with the students in the classroom.Then once all students are finished, you could make a class book for reference and keepsake.I would one day like to do this activity in my own classroom.