Entry 7 ~ Gradual Release of Responsibility

Mrs. Grigg gradually releases responsibility by starting off the day with a read-aloud, which promotes community and "I do, you watch" mentality. She is great about getting the students predicting and thinking about the story. She does guided reading with small groups of students. She makes them feel safe and that they are in a community so that the students aren't afraid to read or speak. She also promotes independent reading, which the students love! They are happy to read independently while waiting for the rest of the class to finish an assignment. My goal as a teacher is to have independent reading be enjoyable for my students, like it is for these students. For reading, Mrs. Grigg should include shared readings, because then she would be fully gradually releasing responsibility. I can see that there are many times when students do not understand math problems, so they ask her for help. If they learned how to do read and comprehend the problems together in a group for a shared reading, they would not be spending as much time on math because everyone would not have questions.

For writing, Mrs. Grigg models writing for the students well and makes sure they understand what to write about, but then jumps to having them independently write. She does do some scaffolding, like what Bruner says to do, by having them write a rough draft first so that she can look over it and help them edit it before putting it onto "fancy paper". Something that I have noticed is that a lot of Mrs. Grigg's teaching is compartmentalized. When focusing on writing, it is just WRITING. Not writing and phonics, etc.

One lesson that stands out in my mind where she gradually released responsibility with her students was when they went to the computer lab for the first time this year. When she brought them into the lab, she showed them where to go on the computers to get to the website she wanted them to get to. Then she assisted them while they went to the website by giving guiding instructions and showing them how to type in their names and passwords, etc. By the next week, the students were in stages three and four of the GRR. I like how she implemented Pearson's theory in an avenue of learning that is not directly related to language arts, though listening and comprehending are big parts of that.