Fostering great literacy in the classroom

I have been very fortunate this quarter to get the opportunity to observe and work in an amazing English classroom.  Unlike any other classroom I have experienced, the walls are lined with student art work and popular bumper stickers such as Kill Your Television, and a particularly large banner stating Skateboarding is Not a Crime.  The classroom embraces all who enter it and turns no one away.  Here I have been able to experience some phenomenal teaching as well as learning.  These students become facilitators of their own learning, with the teacher simply guiding them.

I have obtained many helpful tips when it comes to teaching literacy at the higher grade levels, here are some of the more helpful:

1. It is incredibly important for students to learn how to interpret and understand meaning within their text.  A method for teaching students how to successfully interpret their text is by encouraging them to make notations in their books (or on sticky notes) while they are reading; students read and mark for evidence, meaning their notations should back up their understandings.

2.  Creating a Writing Comments to Remember paper.  This paper consists of three categories, punctuation, spelling, and writing techniques.  Here students are required to record notes made by the teacher regarding their writing in hopes that the same mistakes won’t be made twice. For example, if the student has made an error through the use of comas, the student would record that error under writing techniques.  Here the student would reference this paper every time a new writing piece was due, to ensure that their errors were not repeated.  I love this idea; students are held accountable for their own work and learn to edit their own writing. 

3.  Another idea that I love is the idea of “Hawk Eyes.”  This is what I would call small writing groups or peer editing.  Here are the expectations:

Purpose:

Have fun sharing

Proofread

Constructive feedback

Process:

Positive comments

            Velcro words

            Specific plot and description

Questions or suggestions

Share comments orally

            Positive first

            Then questions (clarification)

Afterwards:

Staple peer comments to paper

            Put in notebook

Exit ticket:

Tell teacher one thing that worked

Tell teacher one thing that needs to be changed or worked on

These are just a few of the many amazing ideas that I have had the opportunity to experience.   

Tech Posting

I love this

What about Phonics

          According to Barbra Fox, author of the 4^th edition, Word Identification Strategies: Building Phonics into a Classroom Reading Program, people whom read and learn to read must know phonics in order to understand that letters represent individual sounds.  Fox believes that words are a combination of patterns and interpretations in addition to the idea that letters and sounds form a relationship, along with onsets and rimes.  In chapter four, Fox discusses the importance of children learning how to identify onsets and rimes in words which can help children to “sidestep the need to learn exceptions to the conventional way letters represent sounds in the English words” (Fox, pp. 94).  In other words when children learn how to say a family of onsets and rimes they can apply that knowledge to other words that they do not know to help give them clues about how to read the new word. 

          I mentioned in an earlier post, that I did not grow up learning phonics, but as an emergent teacher and mother of a developing reader, phonics helps support readers of all levels.  As a beginner to the many aspects of teaching, I am finding a lot of comfort in books like Fox’s.  I look forward to the many experiences that I will encounter as a new teacher and all the things that I expect my students will teach me, yet getting the opportunity to read books that explain in detail how to best serve a specific child’s need is incredibly helpful. 

         

Learning to write

As children we were taught the proper formation of letters of the alphabet, lower and upper case, and in most instances we were taught cursive.  We were taught proper syntactic and semantics of writing along with the various formats of essay writing, but what for?  As I have grown older and experienced the required practice of assignment writing, it was not until I began to write without a purpose, or for an assignment, that I understood the individual satisfaction of writing.  It is not to say that I do not appreciate the rigor of practicing format and structure, but was content, creativity and descriptive writing forgotten?  Maybe not, but for me as a child, those things definitely took back seat to being grammatically correct. As I have begun the process to teach others about writing, I have begun to think about writing differently.  Does being a writer mean being a booklover?  Does reading correlate to being a better writer?  I am not sure of the answer to these questions, but from what I am learning, it definitely does not hurt to be a person who reads, when it comes to writing. 

I have begun reading the book titled Bird by Bird, written by Anne Lamott, a realistic and funny guide to the challenges that writing can bring; the title comes from the idea that writing comes in steps, processes and ideas.  Lamott describes her struggle with choosing writing as her career path, but she finds value in teaching others about the truth of writing.  As Lamott describes, “good writing is about telling the truth….(yet) telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat” (pp.3).  From reading parts of her book, I understand that teaching others to love writing can be challenging, because writing is challenging.  Most people want to be good at new things immediately, but most of us are not; we need practice, and more practice and most importantly we need connection to what we are writing. 

I am currently working with a young reader and writer, whom is just at the beginning stages of the writing process.  According to Barbara Fox, and her book ,“Word Identification Strategies, he is in the stage of partial alphabetic, meaning he is just beginning to understand the alphabetic principle  (Fox p.18).  As I have begun to work with him, I quickly learned that his favorite thing in the world is SpongeBob.    I have decided to use this knowledge to help gain his attention, by incorporating SpongeBob literature and books into our interactions.  Through his own personal interest in SpongeBob I hope to gain his curiosity in learning more about reading and writing.  My goal as a teacher is to help motivate and facilitate honest, creative ideas while maintaining the principle that we all make mistakes and we just need to use those mistakes to help us learn.   

Week 2

As a child, I learned to read typically, meaning that I do not remember struggling with reading or having any negative memories associated with learning to read.   I also do not remember the method or methods that I was taught to read, phonics maybe, but I cannot be sure.  After reading “Word Identification Strategies,” by Barbra Fox, I was surprised by the amount of phonemic strategies used to help all types of learners at any level to read. 

What I have learned is that to teach someone to read requires very specific intentions, what I mean by this is that the strategies teachers use to facilitate a reader will be specific to their reading needs; there are a lot of ways to read and there are a lot of ways to teach kids to read.  According to Fox, it is important to use phonics and teach phonic awareness to young readers.  Phonics is helpful to young readers because it connects what the students already know, spoken language, and connects it to identifying written words that they do not recognize. 

As a teacher, it is so important to understand the stages associated with learning to read, with this knowledge comes the ability to apply different strategies to best help the stage the specific learner is at.  The quicker a reader can learn word identification strategies, the quicker they can develop their comprehension skills. 

Week One, Post One

What does being literate in our country mean?


When I heard this question, the first thing that popped into my head was power; being literate in our country means to be at an advantage. To better understand why I feel this way, I cannot help but think about the feelings I have had in foreign countries where I was unable to make sense of texts that surrounded me; I felt nervous, insecure, and vulnerable, I was dependent on those around me to make sense of what I could not. These feelings were unknown to me and scary, being able to read is vital. I cannot help but wonder if those people in our country who are unable to read English feel this same way; whether they are young children learning or people who are learning English as a second language.

As a member of a culture that values literacy, I learned how to read pretty young. I developed typically for my age, learning in a series of steps; although I do not remember frustration, I am sure I felt it. As a soon to be educator, I am beginning to experience the challenges that exist for those learning to read. I am confident that this quarter I will learn a lot about the process of reading and strategies to help best accommodate all types of learners.

Part 2

Read-aloud books have always been an important part of my life. I have many fond memories of being read to, both at home and in the classroom. As I continue my journey into teaching, I value my many life experiences with read-alouds and believe that I will continue this form of education in my own classroom some day; but being new in the world of education, I have grappled with the challenges of wanting to teach a really awesome lesson, or book, but lacking academic substance that integrates into the curriculum. As I become savvier with my teaching, I understand that really great ideas can be modified to include standards and read-aloud storybooks can contain curriculum.

I just finished reading the article titled “Brining the Ice Maiden to life: Engaging adolescents in learning through picture book read-alouds in content areas,” this article states that it is possible to stimulate a higher level of thinking through the use of read-aloud books, while covering curriculum. As I aim to teach middle level humanities, I am fascinated by the option of using picture books as a means of supplementing content areas and stimulating a higher level of learning. Stated in the article, the author suggests approaching read-alouds with a three step process: step 1 planning, step 2 preparing, and step 3 producing. Through the combination of these three steps students engage, discuss, and become acquainted with a story’s place and time. Through choosing an appropriate book, teachers are able to facilitate learning through a story book, instead of through a regular style of instruction.

As I learn more throughout our program, I become more and more excited upon learning about the different ways to engage my students.