2nd+grade+classroom

//**2nd Grade Classroom**//

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-Creating Space: Given the reality of set reading/writing units or curriculum in some schools, how can teachers create time and space for "negotiating critical issues and questions that matter for [our] students"? How can teachers do it inside given curriculum? Outside the curriculum? Though at first, negotiated curriculum can feel periphery to central curriculum, how can teachers make it a central part of the curriculum? - What could be next steps to encourage students to take social action? What read aloud titles come to mind? How can I encourage students to take a critical stance on social issues moving forward? - Systemic issues?: My students happened to touch upon an issue that is something that has been raised by administration, parents, and teachers for some time now. They are the ones who experience yard and therefore raised the issue. However, how do I encourage them to make change, when it has been hard for adults to do so? Is it my job as the teacher, then, to do even more action and see what can be done?
 * Discussion Questions:**

After reading about Vasquez's classroom and the ways she implemented negotiated curriculum, I considered the questions she posed to us teachers : //What might be your first steps for negotiating the critical issues and questions that matter for your students? How might you **create spaces** for them to be able to reread and rewrite the world toward becoming the literate people they want and need to be in the new millennium? ~ p. 142//

The idea of creating "spaces" made me realize that there could many ways to go about it. First, I though of the pre-existing curriculum and how it could be molded to help students see text in writing and their world with a critical lens. I found this simultaneously easy, because I could tweak curriculum I had, but also hard because I felt as if I had to justify the "tweaks" I made in my teaching points and read alouds to my grade level colleagues and, if need be, my administration. Within my school's curriculum, there was a 2nd grade fairy tale unit. Though the unit encouraged students to question the text and think about the impact of setting/culture on how fairy tales are told-- I wanted to further engage students to question gender roles, who has power, and who is it fair for? Students were immersed in fairy tale book clubs, and as a class, we read the "traditional" stories. We defined "traditional" as the "version everyone knows. It's not always the original, but that's what we know-- maybe through Disney." As student understood the elements and plot of the traditional fairy tales, I scaffolded and modeled how to question the text with a critical lens. In fact, Vasquez may argue that this kind of curriculum doesn't address real issues in children's lives, but I thought providing ways to look at text would help them look at their social lives critically too.
 * Creating Space: "Inside the Curriculum**"
 * What I Tried: Critical Literacy with Fairy Tales**

Here are some sample teaching points (interestingly, the 3rd grade curriculum contained a more critical perspective than the 2nd grade). However, I argue that 2nd graders are able to think and converse about these issues. I especially pushed the question "Could it be another way?" - Fairy tale readers think about who has power in the story by noticing what's the problem? solution? who does the fixing? - Fairy tales readers can question the story they are reading by noticing parts of the story and asking "is this fair?" "is this true in my life?" "could this part go another way?" -Fairy tale readers notice parts of the story that seem familiar and comfortable to them and also parts of the story that surprise them. Then they can ask, why does this part seem familiar to me? why does this seem surprising to me?

**Creating Space: "Outside the Curriculum" - (Is this what "negotiated" means?)**
However, I grappled with the idea that the work I was doing with fairy tales did not map out with the way Vasquez pulled issues from read alouds and/or real issues (like the vegetarian issue). I just waited and watched for a few weeks to see what students go through in social interactions, especially in yard-- a place of power play and friendships awry, made, and in limbo (aka unstructured time for 100 students to run around on the cement yard.) One day, students from yard expressed a social phenomena of "clubs" forming. These "clubs" required membership and you had to play with kids in your club for recess. One student said "My friend asked me be in her club, but I had to let her know tomorrow. I don't want to be in a club though because then I can't play with everybody." The most famous club called "dummy club" required the member to talk with a silly voice and play certain games. Many students found conflicted between clubs and taking orders from the "leaders" of these clubs. I realized many of my students were negotiating and struggling with how to deal with these new social situations. Therefore, I thought it was appropriate to bring it up during read aloud discussions and morning meeting. I still thought they were not a "central" part of the literacy curriculum as we were well into our fairy tale reading unit and information expert book projects in writing.
 * What I Tried: Critical Literacy with Yard**

//It's not fair!// //Everyone should get to have choice time!// //I'm in the ABC Club. I would be gla// ||
 * Day 1:** What's a Club? We discussed what was a club. Students said "sports clubs, a group of people, friends" Also, we asked "What are good types of clubs? and not so good?" We decided that when people feel left out, that is not a good type of club.
 * Day 2:** Why do people want to be in a club? What should you do in yard? What does include and exclude mean? (in -side is like include. a big X is like exclude.) discussion held before yard time.
 * Quotes that capture our conversation: ||
 * //If I was in the ABC Club, because then I couldn't play with my friends.//


 * Day 3:** ABC Club scenario. (**audio clip above)** The main point of the conversation involved the teacher (me) presenting a scenario to students. I said "pretend that [your teachers] made a club. It's called the ABC Club.The main point of the club is that only students whose name starts with A, B, and C would have Choice Time every Friday. What do you think about this? How will people in the club fee? How about those people not in the club?


 * Day 4:** Respect book. What should we do then? Kids in other classes don't seem to know what we know about club and why we shouldn't exclude people. Students said "tell them in yard" "tell their teachers" and one student said "make posters to hang".
 * Next Steps:** Do I encourage students to make posters? Would it help them understand? Will it work? Interestingly, it happens that the "yard" issue is a much bigger issue affected by many classrooms and something I have been thinking about for some time.

Read Aloud books: Horace and Morace, but mostly Dolores; Recess Queen; others?