Reflection: Talking, Reading, and Writing by Marie M. Clay

Last week Katy handed out a reading (Talking, Reading, and Writing) during our meeting to have a read over. What was a great read. It has also given me many ideas going forward. I strongly believe it is essential for teachers to connect reading, writing and oral language together.

I thought it was interesting when Clay talked about choosing texts for children. "Teachers should not avoid authors whose texts are hard to read. Rather, they should find ways to prepare their pupils ahead of time to work with new, unexpected, and unusual structures." (Clay, p.g 5). As teachers we should always be finding ways for children to progress in these very important curriculum areas. Different texts provides more variation between day to day reading and promotes new experiences. 

As a beginning teacher and having taken a few reading groups this week, I found getting through all of Virginia's reading groups a struggle. After reading I reflected on the lessons and felt I could have discussed parts of the text further to make the learning even more beneficial. "Conversations create opportunities for language to be expanded." (Clay, p.g 3). I ask myself, is it more important to see 3-4 groups to enable me to discuss the text in depth instead of all 5? Should we be spending a couple of days on the same book for those harder texts? If we are to not avoid more tricky texts do we need to allow more time for groups to get through those texts in depth? 

"Young children talk a lot, read aloud, mumble as they write, and reread their work aloud so teachers have opportunities to engage with language progress." (Clay, p.g 11). I love getting a few students to share at the end of a writing lesson. It enables students to read aloud to their peers. I feel I can then promote opportunities for greater thinking by asking questions to expand their learning and give them opportunities to want to write more about their story. We can be quiet a noisy classroom. I'm not really one to be able to handle a lot of noise in a classroom  as I feel when working in a group it's important for those children to be working in a quieter environment to enhance their learning. I had an aha moment when reading this as maybe I need to rethink how I feel about noise levels in a class. Obviously we are only talking minimal loudness anyway but when I do whole class writing my expectation has always been without any noise. 

Lastly we have been focusing a lot around the planning of our writing. Who, what, where, why, how and why? Clay mentiones why and how to be the most difficult question words in English. More focus around these two question words when modelling may allow children to find the task easier due to a few in the class finding this task challenging.