Chapter Five

I thought that this chapter was interesting because it was a really new outlook on literacy that I hadn't thought of before.  When Probst said, "Teachers talk and students listen," I think it was something that made so much sense to me, but I hadn't considered it before.  When I think about all of my own personal classroom experiences, that is how most of them were.  It seemed like the teachers were always talking to us and we just listened and took notes.  I did not have a lot of times when my classes would have really deep conservations.  I was surprised to find out that "recitation is not discussion, interrogation is not conservation; the back-and-forth of question-and-answer is not the same as the give-and-take of egalitarian discourse" (46).  These are how so many of the classrooms that I have been in are.  I realized that most of my time spent in a classroom as a student was not spent in meaningful discussion.  Knowing this now, I know I really want to change this in my future classroom.  I am really hoping that I can have conservations in my classrooms that my students will learn and be able to talk openly.  He said, "the participants need to at least feel comfortable with one another" (48).  I think this is crucial because how the students feel around each other can either make or break how the feel in the classroom.  I don't want students to feel like they can't say what is on his or her mind because I think that is the worst thing for a classroom.  I think the ideas of annotated text and forced freewriting are really good ideas because they really get the students thinking and gets their thoughts flowing.  It is a good way to get their thoughts started and then they can expand on them in the classroom discussions.