Jaime's Ch. 13 Reflection

In Chapter 13, Taberski focuses on children’s oral and written responses to texts. One thing that I can relate to is improving my questioning technique. This wasn’t an easy thing to do even when I did my Clinical Studies for Math. I think one of my problems I had was that I wasn’t giving them enough time to respond after a question. After they answered my question, I quickly asked another question without elaborating on their response and I noticed that in these instances I got off subject many times. Usually it was because one student wouldn’t answer my question with the kind of response I was expecting and then, especially with Kindergarteners, they would relate it to some experience in their lives and then all the students would shout out, “Me too, me too….”

One good point that Taberski makes, which I also learned in one of my Early Childhood courses, is that we (parents, teachers) need to keep questions and instruction simple. We should just get to the point, especially with the younger children. That was a mistake I made when I taught my Health lesson with the ‘little ones.’ I was explaining their assessment sheet with just too much unnecessary instruction.

I’m glad Taberski made templates for her Response Sheets and her Guided Reading Planning Sheets. She just saved me lots of time from having to make my own templates. I will definitely have this book as one of my resources in my future classroom.