Literature in the Classroom

In my placement classroom, there is a lot of literacy that is included in the curriculum. The students do "Read to Self" time two or three times a day, for about 20-25 minutes each session. During read to self, each student has a set of books in a book bin, and they go to an assigned area in the classroom and read. While the students are doing Read to Self time, my CT works with groups of students on reading skills or she does testing.

My CT also reads picture books to the class quite frequently throughout the day. She uses read alouds as a segway between activities. Sometimes, she identifies themes or writing styles that were in the book, and asks the students to apply these aspects of writing to their own writing. Some examples of these themes and styles are using groups of three, stretching out big ideas, and using the picture to describe the details of your writing. During writing time, the students can write about whatever they want, but my CT tries to encourage them to use the skills and themes that they talked about. Once or twice a month, my CT does a writer's showcase, where the students can pick one of their stories and they share it with the class.

As far as integrating literacy into the curriculum, I don't think there is any problem with the amount of literacy that is taught in my classroom. When I am in the classroom, literacy is the only subject that is taught, besides math, which is taught for about 30-45 minutes per day. However, I have never seen my CT teach social studies or science, which I think could be done using literacy. I think my CT could integrate these subjects very easily using literacy, since literacy is taught throughout most of the day. Some ideas could be using a book about science as a read aloud book, and then talk about the science concepts that were brought up in that book. Or, she could take it one step further and have the students use their writing time to write a scientific journal, story, or an experiment. My CT could easily do the same thing for history, and have the students write about a specific event in history, or something that the student remembers in his or her own history. I think that these ideas could easily be implemented into my CT's curriculum, and she would be able to integrate other subjects, that she normally doesn't teach, by using literacy as a base. 

Goals for Learning in TE 402 Literacy

After finishing the assigned readings I am excited for what I hope to be learning in TE 402 literacy this semester. Based on the first readings and the syllabus my goals are to have a better understanding of how to work with second language learners and gain more knowledge about how to be the best language/literacy teacher possible. I have had some experience working with students who are learning English as their second language, but feel that anything that I learn this semester will help me immensely in working with students who are learning English as their second language in the future. Overall I hope to learn skills on how to teach literacy to variety of students, including second language learners, students who may have disabilities, etc.

My major is deaf education, so I hope to be working with students who have a hearing loss in my future teaching career. Ideally I would like to work as an itinerant teacher with all students who have a hearing loss in one school district, and the main component of this job is to aid students in using the hearing that they have to hear speech and to use speech themselves to communicate and support these students with their language learning. Therefore, working with students who have a hearing loss will be the focus of my attention while in TE 402 literacy. I am sure that this course will provide me with many ideas on how to teach literacy/language to all students well.

Throughout this semester I want to learn a variety of ways to teach literacy well. After this course I want to be full of ideas on how I can teach language/literacy effectively. I have had experience in helping students with comprehension and fluency while reading, vocabulary and writing. I would like to learn some ideas of how to teach grammar and different ways that I can help students to become better writers.

I know how to read and write well myself, but teaching students to write well and with a purpose and how to read fluently and comprehend what they are reading is a completely different concept. I have had several experiences in helping students to become better language learners and readers. But, this semester I hope to bloom in my understanding of how to teach reading, writing and all of the components of literacy well to a wide variety of students.