https://ila-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.libproxy.lib.ilstu.edu/doi/epdf/10.1002/trtr.1392 

Moses_et_al-2015-The_Reading_Teacher_20(1).pdf

Overview

I read the article “Facilitating Meaningful Discussion Groups in the Primary Grades” by Lindsey Moses, Meridith Ogden, and Laura Beth Kelly. This article emphasizes the importance of purposeful reading discussions even in the younger grades. Many times primary teachers are focused on learning to read, but the authors argue that they should not disregard the importance of students talking about their reading. The goals of the discussion groups were to help students “(1) develop a positive view of reading, (2) understand that the goal of reading is to construct meaning, (3) independently apply and reflect on comprehension skills across a range of texts, and (4) engage in meaningful discussions about literature with interpretive responses” (Moses, Ogden, & Kelly, 2015, p. 233). The discussion groups were designed to make sure that students from different backgrounds and varying reading levels are able to get together to share their thoughts and participate in higher level thinking. In these groups, they do not have assigned roles in order to maintain the idea that each voice is valued and everyone had something important to add.

The article goes on to discuss how they implemented these discussion groups in a first grade classroom. The teacher makes sure to introduce the idea with clear expectations about how to engage in meaningful discussion about a text with your peers. They begin the reading discussion as a whole group and then they are split into small groups once the teacher feels that they will be able to do it on their own. Each student brings a book to the carpet that they want to discuss. They use some discussion language to help each voice be respected. Later in the year they establish a sticky note code that helps the others visually see what they are going to talk about. The sticky notes were not enforced, but the children seemed to take to it quickly and even commented on what most students were looking to discuss that day. They used their small discussion groups to focus on different ideas such as informational texts, author studies, and how some books use humor to convey a message. The small groups were an authentic way for students to use the comprehension strategies they had learned in whole group and apply them to their own books. In the last section of the article, the authors remark that students were really learning these strategies on a deeper level and it showed when students took Accelerated Reader quizzes and thought them to be easy because they did not require them to infer, only answer literal questions about what they read.

Article Organization

Moses, Ogden, and Kelly started their article by stating common questions primary teachers might ask about reading comprehension. They then introduce their reading discussion groups and the goals they hoped to achieve through this approach. Their article was split into sections with subheadings that clearly stated what the reader could anticipate learning about. They offer four figures of anchor charts and sticky note options to help the reader see how they used different tools to teach expectations and strategies to their students. This was one area where I had some conflicting responses. I really appreciated the figures, but sometimes did not appreciate the placing because it would break up thoughts and interrupt the flow and it distracted me from their message for a moment. The authors do a good job of including actual student conversations that illustrate different aspects of the discussion groups. Moses, Ogden, and Kelly end their article with a reflection section to wrap up the important ideas in their article and offer final thoughts and student observations. This section really helps the reader see the benefits of this approach.

Application

Overall, I liked how the authors formatted their article. I liked that the sections were not very long and they stayed focused on that particular topic. I liked that they included several figures to help the reader implement it in their own classroom, but I did not always appreciate where the figures were placed because I felt that it disrupted the flow. In my article, I want to include several figures, but I want to be more careful of placement and not interrupt a sentence with them. One of my favorite parts of the article were the records of student conversation. I always think that hearing from the students speaks volumes for a practice. I want to make sure to include student examples and conversations in my own article. I will also make sure to have a sort of “reflection” or “wrap up” section at the end of my article to really impress upon the importance and benefits, while leaving the reader with something to think about.

Works Cited

Moses, L., Ogden, M., & Kelly, L. B. (2015). Facilitating Meaningful Discussion Groups in the Primary Grades. The Reading Teacher, 69(2), 233-237. doi:10.1002/trtr.1392