Ladybugs, Tornadoes, and Swirling Galaxies (Part II)
As I read further into Ladybugs, I have found that a clearer picture is created of this inquiry-focused classroom, and I absolutely love it! In chapter four the authors discuss how imperative it is that books, magazines, and other reading materials are made easily accessible to the students. The response from parents after entering their classroom asking, “Is this the library?” (page 69), perfectly illustrates how I envision my future classroom to look like. The more a child reads and is exposed to different types of literature, the better writers they will become, which demonstrates how fostering a love of books at an early age is a necessity in the classroom. One practice that Buhrow and Garcia utilize is that of cutting apart books and pasting the pages onto large posters. This is a completely new concept to me, as I grew up with the idea that it would be a sin to mark up or take apart any book, but I actually really enjoy this concept and would be interested to see it in action. The teachers discuss how this allows greater access to the books by multiple children, and allows them to focus on a few pages at a time so they can first process the information before moving on. This develops a deeper understanding of the book as they can slowly move through it rather than trying to finish a book quickly. Another teaching strategy that is discussed in the fourth chapter is how to expose students to nonfiction books. They discuss creating nonfiction feature posters, which focuses on one image or idea, as well as practicing nonfiction features and language with the kids so they can develop a deeper understanding initially of how to approach a nonfiction book and draw the most information from it. They continually fall back upon the gradual release of responsibility model, and stress how imperative it is as teachers to model every aspect of what is expected of the students. For example, in chapter four Buhrow and Garcia model together what it looks like to write captions for pictures in nonfiction texts.
Teaching practices that are discussed in chapter five build upon several ideas of chapter four, such as building upon schema, having students choose topics to write about that they are interested in, and creating connections between the text and self and the text and other texts. They use language frames often, which is a teaching principle that I think is extremely effective, to lead students to create questions about the text they read. Just like in chapter four, the teachers model questioning for students which is different from a traditional classroom where the teachers are “supposed” to know everything. I love how Buhrow and Garcia introduce the idea of taking notes to their students with the structured columns of “I learned” and “I wonder”, along with student drawings to go along with their observations and questions. I had never thought of how effective it would be to introduce the practice of note taking at a young age, and allowing it to go hand-in-hand with creating questions about a topic.