Journal #7

Double Entry Journal- Chapter 7:  Listening

Kimberly Artman- October 27, 2012

I really liked this chapter.  I believe skills in listening are needed in our society now more than ever.  Students are inundated with sound from cell phones, television, games, computers, iPods, and other interactive media.  I like that Farris mentions the different levels of listening like marginal, appreciative, attentive and critical.  Most people believe listening is just an on and off activity like a light switch.  I was also encouraged to use a higher level thinking technique by answering questions about the book that is going to be read like describing characters, sequence, cause and effect, compare and contrast, making predictions, and solving problems.  I believe by telling the students that these questions will be forthcoming it makes the student anticipate finding the answers.  Another thing I think people (teachers) forget to do on a daily basis is to create an environment for listening.  Some of the ways mentioned in chapter 7 included providing a purpose, providing follow up, and listening to other students when they are speaking.  I enjoy readers theater for this purpose because the students are waiting for their part to come up and have to follow along in the skit to know their place.  I am also going to incorporate the hand and finger method to make sure that special need and ELL students know the 5 given questions after a story is read (setting, characters, problem, plot, and resolution).

I don’t think I told you the story about one of the kindergarten classes that I teach once a week.  Well actually I have many stories and kindergartners are usually the main characters (so this is an additional story to ones I have already told you about).  At the beginning of the year I know kindergarten students don’t work long on manners or behavior in the classroom as they are new to the school environment.  A major component of classroom management is getting and keeping the students attention.  Kindergartners are very exuberant and it is hard to keep their attention for more than a few minutes at a time.  I wanted them to listen and told them I couldn't hear all their voices at once and needed to have them raise their hand when they want to talk.  As soon as I said this about half of their hands were in the air talking as if I had given them permission.  I said “why are you all talking at once?  I told you to raise your hands if you wanted to talk” and one boy said “we were raising our hand and talking” and then I knew it was the way I phrase the question.  This of course made me smile and shake my head.  I began my lesson after rephrasing the way I needed to talk before they were allowed to talk.  I was talking about colors and the feelings each color may portray.  I explained warm and cool colors on the color wheel and told them that the warm colors are happy, exciting, and fun and the cool colors were calm, relaxing, and even sad.  I then asked the kids to cut out pictures that had cool colors like purple, green, and blue from magazines and that they could only use cool colors.  One little boy was seated at the table and was pasting pictures very fast and full of excitement.  I looked at his paper and there wasn’t any cool colors but pictures of sneakers, sports cars, and music.  I asked him how those were cool colors and he said “you said to cut out the cool pictures and these things are cool to me”.  Then the kids in the classroom started to make comments like “Well I want a car on my paper” or “ I can add jewelry then” and I explained that it had to be one of the cool colors.  One student asked “cool to you and other art people or cool to kids?”  I started laughing and said that I didn’t make up the color wheel and I would like to stick to the rules of art.  I guess cool is different when you're 5 then when you are 42.