Entry 8: Bless, Address and Press

 This weeks blog post I will be referring to Thalia Cruz's excellent entry, Disengaged or Disinterested? based on the knowledge and understanding of written and oral language of early learners and how Thalia has connected this learning to a sixth grade classroom that she has been observing. 

Bless

First of all, I want to commend Thalia for her excellent understanding and work that she put into the blog post as well and the personal experiences that she extended to us to show the understanding and implementation of Language Experience Approach and the problems that teachers, and us as future teachers, might come across. I want to also state that I admire Thalia's kindness towards her students and how she helped the student even though the host teacher did not and said that she shouldn't help them with their work because they were "lazy"; Thalia wanting to help her students is something that I also strive for in my future classroom! 

Address

One of the questions I have for Thalia is since some teachers find that the Language Experience Approach is ineffective how can we go around that "laziness" ideology and instead use the LEA to be able to further students ability not only in the classroom setting with reading and writing but also connecting it to Muhammad and her HRL framework? It states on page 135 of Tompkins that part of the Language Experience Approach is the ability to create individual booklets, "... children create individual booklets. They draw pictures on each page or cut pictures from magazines to glue to each page, and then they dictate the text that the teacher writes besides each illustration. Children can also make collaborative books, where each child creates one page to be added to the class book" (Tompkins, p.135). These collaborative books could be used as a way to continue to integrate Muhammad's HRL framework into the classroom. An example could be that you could you the collaborative book and each child could use a page to draw their family- where they came from and have them express their culture. This could help the children create/ continue creating a sense of identity through a book. Then you would be able to share the book with the class and share each child's background and history, creating shared knowledge of different cultures, backgrounds and families. 

Press

I want to press Thalia's thoughts on what other activities we can do as educators to be able to engage those students that are disengaged or uninterested in the topic that we have to teach- especially if it is a state mandated lesson. How can we as educators engage our students to make sure that they are using reading and writing skills without them feeling forced to do so. Also how would Thalia use the method of the Language Experience Approach in her future classroom? What activities can she provide to ensure that all of her students eventually read and write for themselves without the extra hand? How can we pair the Language Experience Approach with Muhammad's HRL framework with identity, skill, intellect and criticality? 

References

Tompkins, G.E. (2017). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (7th Edition). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Entry 7: Phonics

Phonemic awareness is extremely important in the education of every person. I agree with the fact that phonemic awareness should be integrated throughout our education and teaching. I also believe that we should use our instruction and group activities to do these activities instead of worksheets to ensure that students are successful in their education. In the article Everything you wanted to know about phonics (but were afraid to ask), the authors state that, "What seems to work in phonics instruction is direct teacher instruction, not practice on worksheets" (Stahl et. al., 342). Continuing on to say, "This may be because completing worksheets takes students time away from reading stories or content material, and because instructional aspects of worksheets are often poorly designed" (Stahl, et. al., 342). I believe that worksheets are not important in the way they have been in the past when looking at phonics and spelling. Instead we can use other activities that are stated by both Stahl et. al., and Tompkins such as Elkonin boxes, sound segmentation activities, sound blending activities, sound addition activities, sound subtraction activities, and sound matching activities as well as other activities that instead of giving a child a worksheet where they are mindlessly writing words out, I want the children to be engaged in the learning so that they can get the most from the lesson being taught. 

Making sure that as a teacher I incorporate activities and educational fun ways to learn is important to my teaching, especially teaching youth who are all different in their ways of learning. I will make sure to incorporate all activities and include graphic organizers to make sure children get all forms of teaching for the best result! I would also include different books from different cultures in the classroom library to make sure the children are exposed to multiple different words that have different meanings. Some of these books include; Same But Different by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw, Esquivel! Space age sound artist by Susan Wood, and Magic Trash: A Story of Tyree Guyton and His Art by J.H. Shapiro, along with other books! These books would help the children create a larger vocabulary, and have them experience life through others lives and bring awareness to others backgrounds. 

These activities that are listed above are several activities that I am going to incorporate into my future classroom! My goal is to have a 3rd grade classroom when I get my own classroom and using these exercises and having a fluent knowledge of the English language will help all students in their schoolwork and readings. If there is a student that is below the average for third grade as well I would also use these exercises to help the child create an understanding for early phonics and literacy so they can understand better instead of them just getting worksheets. Using these different activities for the students that are in need of extra help can help the students go from sound blending to reading words to reading texts that are provided in class.

Entry 6: Literacy Development

 In both the text by Tompkins' Literacy for the 21st Century and the article Building Preschool Children's Language and Literacy One Storybook at a Time by Beauchat, Blamey and Walpole you can see that there is a shared sense of importance to shared read aloud story time readings for young children. Both of these literary works explained how children are able to read and write in the beginning of their life and how they continue, but I think that shared story time read aloud's are not always focused on. Using shared storybook time can create skills and help basic motor skills develop by simply handling a book and learning to change the page/hold the book. "The storybook reading format complements instruction in concepts of print, providing a natural platform for modeling behaviors such as how to hold a book, turning pages from left to right, identifying a title, and differentiating between words and pictures" (Beauchat et. al., p. 34). Creating and using this read aloud time can also create a time for teachers to help students become informed about different cultures and ideas. I will use this time when I create my own classroom for childhood education in a way that students can identify with the text that is being talked about. The texts that I pick for read aloud will have a meaning to them, and each new reading will be unique from the others; new characters, new scene, and different cultures/ ethnicities/ backgrounds! 

    These read aloud's that children experience should incorporate some kind of identity information that the children are able to relate to. Helping children be able to identify and relate to in literature that we read during class is crucial in the children's self identify and it helps the teacher with student engagement. According to Gholdy Muhammads HRL Framework we must incorporate cultures and backgrounds of our students in our curriculum to be able to create an inclusive classroom.  Tompkins stated "Literacy development has been broadened to incorporate the cultural and social aspects of language learning, and children's experiences with and understanding about written language-- both reading and writing -- are included as part of emergent literacy" (Tompkins p. 211) Multiple sources such as Tompkins and Muhammad have said that in order to create a classroom that is successful we should incorporate culture. I think that this is something to fight for, as a teacher I should create a classroom that helps express all student backgrounds that are in my classroom to help them evolve into better learners. Bringing culture into writing can also be beneficial such as researching a new culture or country and writing a report on it. The students could even write notes about what they researched just to be able to retain the information that they learned about the different culture. 

Creating a classroom where I can celebrate all cultures instead of dulling them down i believe will create learners that will want to read and write, and ultimately celebrate their peers as part of the class. 

Entry 5: Midpoint Reflection

Dear Dr. Jones,

    This semester has been eye and mind opening as the first semester of my graduate school experience. This class has been not what I expected, but I have fully enjoyed your way of teaching. Coming into the class I thought that this class would just mainly be about reading dense materials and writing reflections about the article/book that we read. Instead, I feel as though we have created a classroom community and I am fully engaged with the assigned readings and conversations/ discussions that are held during and after class. There are several pieces of information that stood out to me this semester so far that I feel I will be carrying through the rest of my life. One of these pieces of information is Kucer's definition of literacy. To be able to view literacy as multidimensional creates a new outlook on literacy pieces, what literacy is, and what it means to be literate. To be able to see that literacy has different aspects such as the different dimensions (developmental, sociocultural, linguistic and cognitive) creates a better understanding of what creates literary events. 

    Another piece of information that I found interesting that I learned in class this semester was the SQR4 method for active reading. This method I believe has heavily influenced my way of reading and taking notes on the literature that is presented in class. I have been using the SQR4 method, analyzing what I am reading and creating notes has made me become a more critical thinker instead of just reading for knowledge. The SQR4 strategy has created a way for me to become a better active reader and be able to comprehend class material better, for example, before learning the method I used to only highlight the areas of the text that I deemed important. Now I question the text, create notes for myself, answer the questions that I create from the headings, and try to connect texts to other texts, text to self, or texts to the world to be able to comprehend the article/text material better! 

    Class hasn't been the only thing that has created an impact on my knowledge of literacy and teaching. Liz Kleinrock's presentation on anti-bias was also extremely informational. Liz Kleinrock's presentation supported the idea that we need to include literature that gives the viewpoints of happiness in all cultures. We as teachers need to include books for all ages in all grade levels books that respect and involve happiness for all races, genders, and heritages to create an inclusive classroom. I also learned that even though they are creating new standards for learning that will not let us teach certain subject matters, we can use primary sources so the students can still be educated on certain matters. As a future educator I believe both the presentation by Liz Kleinrock and the articles that we have been reading in class such as Muhammad's Cultivating Genius, articles that we have read for class, and Tompkins text I should find texts that help create and form identity while embracing different backgrounds. 

    Overall this class has been very informational so far. The only thing that I am struggling with slightly is time management which I have been improving with as I now use a planner and write down all assignments that are due! This helps me schedule my time out and visually see how much is due each week!