Week 6! Andrea Delise

This week, I have noticed the students learning to use strategies that we have been teaching prior to this week. The students were taught explicitly to stop while reading a story to make connections. My MT modeled this strategy for a while before having the students make connections on their own. During other subjects, students would raise their hands to tell a story that may (or may not) relate to what we are learning about. My MT would let them finish their story, and then say, "Good, you made a connection." Since we have taught that, students have been raising their hands to say that they would like to make a connection. This sounds so much better than hearing the students say that they want to tell us a story. They understand that there is a purpose behind what they are sharing, and that they understand what we are learning, because they are able to make a connection. I believe this is a case of teaching connections over and over. The fact that we model making connections and explicitly teach the thoughts that we have while making a connection, students are able to connect to what we are learning across the curriculum. This week we started to learn about the features of non fiction books. When discussing what non fiction books are, a student was able to make a connection by saying that when we write in our science journals, we write facts about air (that is what we are studying), just like non fiction books. This shows me that he understands that we only write facts in our science journal, and that he understands that non fiction books contain facts as well. He was able to make this connection, so the next time he goes to write in his science journal, he will hopefully remember that he is writing non fiction. I hope that the lessons and strategies we teach will carry on through the days, weeks, and months as well as across all subjects that we teach. I think it would be beneficial to relate something new, to something old that we have already learned about.