First Post: "Finessing & Hybridizing"

Question to think about:

Give specific examples of areas where you feel confident in your planning, teaching, and assessing and areas you feel you need to learn more about. Given what you know so far about your classroom context, what opportunities might be available to you for learning this year? What ideas do you have about how you might want to ‘finesse’ or ‘hybridize’ your literacy practices?

In terms of Language Arts and Literacy, I have always loved reading, and have felt fairly confident in it. With that in mind, I enjoy discussing books, and book discussions were stressed in TE 402. I feel that I could teach meaning, vocabulary, and comprehension through book discussions; however, I would like to become even more confident in that. From 402, I feel I can plan some lessons with Common Core in mind. I need to become more familiar with the Novi Districts Literacy Curriculum though. I think I need to learn in just about every aspect, not in a negative way, but just because I think as teachers we can always be learning and improving and changing methods. I want to specifically learn about assessments, both informal and formal. I would like to gain knowledge on how my mentor teachers manage to balance instruction for standardized tests, as well as their own methods. I am excited to be able to observe how they “finesse” and “hybridize”. My classroom has a couple ELL students, so I will be anxious to see how my mentor teachers tailor to these students’ needs.

I enjoyed many of the ways that Emily and Celina finessed and hybridized their teaching methods. Celina used Writer’s Workshop, which I have already seen in my classroom and I think that is huge. The students are excited to write in writer’s workshop, and express themselves. I also agree with Celina’s idea of integrating writing with reading, “because she could not, in good conscience, teach reading without having students write” (Kertsen & Pardo, 2007, p. 150).  I would also use some of Emily’s methods of hybrid, such as using read-aloud to model fluency, and work on comprehension and vocabulary development (p. 152). She worked to meet the needs of her ELL students that were not getting support through using the Basal Readers. I am struggling to find specific examples of how I would personally finesse and hybridize, because so far I have seen practices in my classroom that I would definitely use myself, and I am still becoming familiar with the curriculum. My teachers were working on “The First 10 Days”, which went through informational text and multiple-choice questions that prepare students for the MEAP. While my mentor teacher, and her teammate are going through the procedures of this, they are using their own words and pace. For example, process of elimination was set-aside for a specific day in these guidelines; however, my mentor teachers just happened to talk about it earlier because it was the natural flow of the instruction and conversation. I think a big part of finesse and hybridizing is keeping the students’ current needs in mind, and making changes as you go. I especially liked Celina’s profile because,
“she was not afraid to abandon ideas that were not working and to try something different. She let her own experiences and her students’ reactions guide her decisions” (p. 150). I think this idea if huge in terms of managing standardized tests, and aligned curriculum and deciding what is best for students.

Since I am a little stumped on how I would finesse and hybridize at this moment in time, I am interested to hear your responses to this question! Thanks :)

Source:

Kersten & Pardo (2007). Finessing and hybridizing: Innovative literacy practices in

reading first classrooms. The Reading Teacher, 61(2), 146-154