Comments from 4th Grade Students . . .
Students Reflect on Their Own Gains
Well, I learned more to express how I feel about something and not to be that scared in front of people because I was really shy...now I'm not shy and it made me express more of my feelings.
Now since I’ve done the Roundtable a lot, it's helped me like overcome my fears. It’s helped me a lot.
...getting into the middle of it (the Roundtable) I started actually saying what was deep down inside...
Usually like I don't raise my hand a lot and I don’t ask a lot of questions, but then in the Roundtable I got to express what I wanted to say when it got to me and I got to tell people what I wanted to say...
Oh, I like it because it’s interesting and colorful or stuff like that; now I get into the details instead of just, ‘I like it’.
Well, what I learned was that it's okay to share something with somebody else and...it would probably help you more because they might have some advice for you.
I was a little scared when I first did the Roundtable also because I wasn’t quite sure what people would think of my answers and I thought that they would just laugh because that maybe it was like really stupid and my answers weren't all that great, but once I started giving a lot of answers, each time I started getting more and more answers...so now I talk a lot, even if it's not Roundtable.
Well, I thought it was surprising that you think people are the people that they are outside on the playground and stuff...but I learned about other people about the way they say things and stuff like that.
Well, it’s kind of surprising…you might think a lot of people get the same idea as you except they might like…the very smallest detail in the entire book and you don't even notice it...
...I was proud of my literature got better just by doing stuff like that (the Roundtable). I like myself better because I know now that I could find the little details instead of like the bigger, easier to find details...
What I like about the Roundtable is that everybody gets a turn to say something and everyone else is listening and quiet when you talk.
...you get your own time to express what you want to say...
...sometimes I get really frustrated and it helped me to get more patient waiting for everyone to have a turn to go around.
Students Reflect on Gains They Observed in Their Classmates
Well, I think they were learning better because the first couple of times they like said one sentence each and the people that really enjoyed it said like more than one, but then like the third, fourth, fifth, and so on they said like paragraphs and kept on talking about the topic so I knew that they were finding more in their reading...
I think that most people are like learning more things about the topic.
...I noticed a lot of the kids that messed around…during the Roundtable--during the middle they didn't really mess around much…now, some of the kids like totally stopped...I think it was good for behavior.
I saw a lot of changes in the class because like the first time when we did the Roundtable everybody would just keep on saying “pass” because like most of them were too shy or scared and (now)...they are starting to talk more.