Literature Circles, Linguistics and Tracking, Oh My!

Starting with the Literature Circles readings, Daniels sheds new light on an age old concept: the book club. When he talks about using this concept to get students reading who normally wouldn't, for some reason it made me think of the movie Mean Girls where Kady is made to join the Mathletes because her grades are so bad. While the circles are a great idea to get students who are lethargic about literature motivated, you don't want to make it a punishment. How to do this? Expanding lit circles into your classroom gets everybody doing it. It may be a little scary as a teacher to allow so much free discussion based on reader response, but Daniels seems to have this practice down to a science so that it is done right. I also like how Daniels says that we need to keep these groups permanent, though members will be mixed up according to what book they choose.

After reading "Untracking Students" I started thinking about the pros and cons to tracking. Basically, I concluded, that tracking is beneficial because students' learning styles can be identified and they can be placed where they are getting the specific attention they need. Tracking is disadvantageous because it labels students and segregates them. Christensen notes that "the notion of great differences in student capacity is false" (171). Students "come with different sets of skills, but not necessarily different sets of intellectual capacities" (172). I used to think that all types of students were being put in the general education classes just to save money in school districts. Even so, this can be a great thing as longs as every student still has his or her individual learning needs met as fully as possible. Daniels offers LCs as a method of detracking because it creates a diverse, yet "heterogeneous" learning environment where these different personalities and "sets of skills" come together.

"When more attention is paid to the way something is written or said than to what is said, students' words and thoughts become devalued" (Christensen 101). This sentence really seemed to sum up the article for me and got me thinking about my place in the argument. Honestly, it is hard for someone like me who plans to teach the importance of grammar, syntax, etc. to read that maybe it is not so important, especially when I already can already feel these lessons slipping out of classrooms. In a txt msg world where proper English seems to have less meaning every day, I must say I don't think we need to put less importance on liguistics to put more emphasis on student voice. If we help students realize their opinions are important by demonstrating this on a daily basis, a grammar lesson is never out of place. I believe that since their opinions are valued, it is their right to be taught how to communicate them correctly.