Children are already readers and writers

     Through the readings this week, it became apparent that children are already readers and writers before they enter into a schooling environment. Realizing this is important because not giving children literacy experiences until they are school age severely limits their reading and writing levels they will attain in the future. It is important for teachers to realize that even though students are not exhibiting reading and writing production skills, they begin to understand the concepts of             literacy and its functions at a very early age. The IRA/NAEYC reading showed that the most important period for literacy development for children is from birth-8 years old. These readings also showed that in order to develop the ability to read and write, children need regular interaction with reading and writing. The most important of these interactions for young children is reading aloud. 

     The most interesting thing I took from these three readings is that literacy is everywhere. This was shown especially in the Bell and Jarvis reading. Children don't just learn about reading and writing through story books, they also learn a lot from labels and signs, such as bulletin boards in the classroom. Reading is not just about reading words, it's about reading all kinds of symbols that help us to relate to the world around us. Therefore, it is vital to provide students with a rich environment full of written and spoken language, this was shown in the Yopp and Yopp reading on phonemic awareness. Literacy instruction should be should be playful and engaging, interactive and social, and should stimulate curiosity and experimentation with language. In my future as a teacher, I hope to engage my students in reading and writing by letting them know that they can already read and write before they even begin school. In addition, I plan to fill my classroom with all types of text so that my students are constantly interacting with it in a variety of ways.

What were some of your favorite activities from the Yopp reading for building sensitivity to sounds of speech?

What kinds of things do you think are important to have in your classroom to make it a rich text environment?

Here are some fun bulletin boards in classrooms that help contribute to providing a rich text environment!

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The Literacy Foundation

     Chapter 3 of "Classrooms That Work" focuses on building the literacy foundation. I agree with the fact that the chapter states that when we are asked when we learned to read our answers mostly reflect our experiences in kindergarten and first grade. However, I found it really interesting that the chapter puts into perspective that learning begins much earlier than that. It is important to realize that children want to do everything that adults can do. If you remember this key point then it will make perfect sense to you that if children grow up in homes where adults read and write, they will want to read and write too. Not only is it important to read to children starting at young ages, but it is also important to encourage early attempts at writing. 
     I really enjoyed all the examples this chapter provided on different ways to build your students' foundation of literacy. Not only were all of these activities interactive and easy, they also took part in making each student feel special which encourages them to have positive feelings about reading and writing. My favorite example provided was the "special child' activity. With this activity, you build the foundation of literacy with each day providing a new example just by using the names of the students in your classroom. As a future teacher, I found all these examples extremely useful and will carry these on into my own classroom. 
     Overall, this chapter helps to tie into the article "The Jones Family's Culture of Literacy" by providing an example of how parental interaction with their children at young ages creates a firm foundation for learning. The article states, "children enter schools with a legacy of meaning about literacy and educational achievement that is not easily transformed." This was interesting to me because it highlights the importance of the roles that parents play in their children's life. My favorite part about this article is that through investigating the value of literacy in the Jones family you get to see all the different ways that literacy was used in their day-to-day life. It was interesting to me to see how large of a role literacy does play and how as parents and teachers we can highlight these roles and integrate them into our teaching. 
     Do you think that parental involvement at a young age significantly helps to build children's       literacy foundation?
     What do you think can be done for students who don't have a literacy background upon entering school?

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This website provides a fun and interactive game called the Chute Shuffle that helps to teach many of the concepts of literacy foundation. For example you can build sentences that focus only on the "sh" sound and have your students pick out what words in the sentence have the "sh" sound.

Effectively teaching students to love reading!

     Through the readings this week, it has become clear that many factors go into making an effective classroom environment through which students can learn to love reading. Chapters 1 and 2 of "Classrooms That Work" shows through many different studies the factors that create an effective classroom. Of these factors, the ones found to contribute most to high literacy achievement are: time spent reading and writing, the engagement of students in the literacy activities, and the students' perseverance. 
     Classrooms that work must provide large amounts of balance, comprehensive instruction. Too often our curriculum today focuses on one component at a time. As the book explains, this causes the development of other important components to suffer. Classrooms that work also do a lot of reading and writing throughout the entire class day and not just during the reading and language arts lesson. As both of these chapters go to show, the amount of reading and writing children do has a direct correlation with how well they read and write. Effective classrooms also emphasize higher-level thinking skills. This involves teachers asking questions that do not have just one answer, rather these questions engage the students in conversations. These classrooms also teach students to problem solve, self-regulate, and keep track of their individual comprehension. Teachers in these effective classrooms also provide a variety of instructions like whole-class, small-group, and individual instruction. Most importantly, these classrooms are well managed and involve high levels of engagements. It is imperative  that children be in a safe and orderly environment in order for them to successfully learn. Teachers expecting their students to act a certain way provides a structure for the class. 
     Chapter 2 goes on to provide ways in which we, as educators, can create enthusiastic, independent readers. This was my favorite chapter because I loved seeing all the creative ways to encourage my future students to become lovers of reading. For instance, teachers reading aloud to their students is one of the major motivators for children's desire to read. It is also important as a teacher, to read a variety of materials to your students in order to engage the interests of all of your students and not just some. I loved the idea of keeping a teacher record sheet to ensure that you are introducing a plethora of materials to your students. As the Allington reading showed, teachers often feel that independent reading is a waste of class time and therefore don't provide their students the opportunity to become avid readers. I think Allington brought up a good point that maybe one or two entire days of the school week should be dedicated to reading and writing in order to allow plenty of time to teach lengthy lesson plans and provide your students time to share and respond with you and their peers. 
   In closing I would like to leave you with some questions to think about and provide you with fun examples of what effective classrooms, in my opinion, look like. What do you think are the best ways to teach your students to become avid readers and writers? Do you have any specific memories from your elementary teachers of things they did to make you love reading?

 Who wouldn't want to learn in here!
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 Comfortable set up for small-groups!
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A reading treehouse how fun!
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