Supporting All Literacy Learners

When it comes to reading and writing, we know that children are all on different levels. Some read and write at a high level, some could read at a high level but write on a low level. Some children might not even know how to read or write in English, which becomes quiet a problem. I know from experience how hard reading and writing is in schools if you do not really know how to speak English. I have a cousin who did not know English when he started school and I remember how much trouble he had with school. He would sometimes get frustrated with the work if he could not do it. Eventually he learned English and everything turned out fine for him.

            “The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book.” That is one of my favorite quote and something I truly believe. I will follow that quote once I become a teacher. I want to make sure that my students excel in reading and writing.  I will arrange my classroom and lessons that I have in order to support all the different learners I have in my classroom.

            I am currently majoring in Bilingual Elementary Education and I am taking my first Bilingual class this semester. I am sure that once I finish this class I will learn a lot of new things on how to help bilingual kids with reading and writing. I will have concept maps, introduce ways of thinking things through, use focus/target questions, and have the children work in groups of different reading/writing levels so that they can each help each other out. I also think it is important to use some kind of technology. For example, the text to speech software is something that I will use for students who have trouble reading. Using that will provide my students with flexible learning experiences. When I assign my students a reading, I will have them read in groups. I feel working in groups helps children learn more.
       I found "balanced literacy" interesting in the article I just read for class. Balanced literally was stated as presenting skill based teaching and meaning based teaching. It includes read alouds, guided reading, shared reading, and independent reading. By giving my students all these different options to choose from on how they would like to read will help them a lot. They will feel comfortable and be able to read well in the form that they want.  

My Perfect Classroom

          I look forward to the day when I have the opportunity to set up my classroom for my students when I become a teacher. I hope that the way I set up my classroom will help my students learn to their greatest ability. I want to create a room where positive learning will be challenged. Students prefer different settings in which to learn, and as a teacher, we are the ones who have to create that perfect classroom for them. Well we all know that everything is not perfect, so lets say we have to TRY to create that perfect classroom.

 In my classroom, I want to provide different materials for my students to do a lot of hands on activities to accompany what they are learning. This will help them better understand the things that I will be teaching them. I want to offer my students some group work when I assign them some assignments. I feel that this will give them an opportunity to better express themselves on what they think, get feedback from their classmates, or even get help from each other.

The physical aspect of my perfect classroom would consist of many different learning areas. I will have a reading area with beanbags and a nice soft carpet where my students can go and read. I will have my bookshelf in the reading area that will consist of many different books so that they have a lot of choices and they will be arranged alphabetically. There will be a computer section so my students can do research. I would have a smart board on one side of the classroom and a white board in the front of the classroom. I prefer a whiteboard over a chalkboard because chalk gets too messy. Next to the smart board, there will be a TV.I will have a certain section of the classroom for just class materials. That section will have paper, pens, pencils, highlighters, scissors, rulers, and a pencil sharpener. I will have all the materials locked except the pencil sharpener because I don’t want my students getting hurt if they pick up a pair of scissors or grab too many materials that they will not need. I will have control over that section. I will also have what I would call a “discover lab area” where my students can go to after they complete their assignment and they are well behaved.

My classroom will have at least three windows so that we will have some natural light inside. The windows will have blinds allowing me to control how much light coming in for certain activities. There will be a sink in my classroom so my students don’t have to leave the classroom if they ever need to wash their hands. For storage purposes, I will have a closet that has cubbies and hooks. I will also have a good amount of cabinets to store my materials. Here they can examine different science artifacts or even see some cool animals like worms or butterflies.

When it comes to desk placement, I will first have the students arranged in groups. I believe that students work better in groups, it motivates them, and makes it easier for them to reach out to their classmates. I will move the students around in different groups depending on how they perform in the classroom. Their chairs wont be the normal chairs, I will provide them with nice comfortable cushioned chairs.

            I want to make sure that my students enjoy learning. I want them to feel comfortable to voice their opinions. My classroom will be a fun place to learn and explore new things.

My Memory of Language Arts

We can all agree that language arts is an important area of education, since reading, writing, listening, and speaking is spread throughout schools’ curriculums. It is important because throughout our life we are always speaking and listening, and while in school, doing homework, or at work we are either readying or writing. Studying literature teaches us how to analyze how people think, while the study of writing teaches us how to organize our thoughts and write them down on a sheet of paper.

I am positive that I have had a lot of encounters with Language Arts throughout my life, but I honestly do not remember them. However, I do have this one memory of my Language Arts experience when I was in second grade. I remember walking into my second grade classroom for the first time and the first thing that caught my attention was the bookshelf that my teacher had. I had never seen so many books in a classroom before and I thought it was awesome that my classroom sort of resembled a library! All the books were neatly stacked and organized alphabetically, if I remember correctly. Next to the bookshelf there was a sign that read “Classroom Library” and there was a paper on the wall by the sign, which was where we wrote our names to check out the book we were going to read.

One day during the first week of class, my teacher told us to go pick out a book from the bookshelf. Sadly, I do not remember what book I picked out; it was just too long ago. We had a week to complete the book, and once we were finished with our book, we had a fun project to do and a writing assignment. I enjoyed doing the project because I was able to color! The task for our project was to draw and color our favorite part of the book. After I finished my project, I had to present it to the class. I had to tell them what I drew and why it was my favorite part of the book. The writing part of the assignment consisted of me writing what the book was about. I loved the fact that the teacher let us pick out what book we wanted to read rather then assign us a book. It made me more interested in what I was reading and it made it easier for me to summarize the book because it was something I enjoyed reading. This honestly made me want to read more because I was introduced to books that really caught my attention. I started to take out a book from the library to read on my own every so often.

When I become a teacher, I want to be able to have a very nice library for my kids just like I had in seconds grade. I want to be able to offer them a variety of books to read that will interest them. I have already started saving some books that were handed down to me and that I have bought from bookstores when they were on sale.