Katie’s Blog

In rereading my blog posts, I discovered that as the semester progressed, I got better at incorporating what we were reading into my life, either with past experiences or ideas for future projects.  I’m not sure it came across as a steady growth in my blogs, but, I definitely feel a difference in my teaching of young literacy learners.  I now have some ideas that I probably would never have thought of, and a better understanding of what kids are capable of at what ages, and also some techniques that I was doing just because that’s the way I’ve always seen kids interacted with and they seemed like effective techniques were discussed in the class and now I know the reasoning behind them and that they really do serve a purpose.  As a blogger, I feel like I became more comfortable with having and expressing opinions about the subjects, and sharing my personal experiences.  In rereading, I wish I had thought of more questions to pose to the class through my blogs.

In rereading my colleagues’ blogs and my comments, I discovered that sometimes it was easier than others to really be a full participant in a community of learners, teachers, and bloggers.  When I would read others’ blogs, I enjoyed hearing what they had to say and often agreed with them, but found myself only really saying that I agree with what they’d posted (which, while true, didn’t do much to spark discussion or challenge any of us to take our thoughts one step further)  I also don’t think I expressed how much I liked hearing about other people’s experiences, but that was one of the most interesting parts to me – to see how we all took a common reading, and how it had played out in other situations that I had never been in.

I like the messages about trying to blend home and school, and incorporate aspects of home learning into school learning.  I like the idea that this approach would help children learn more in general, and be able to apply things they learned in either situation to new challenges in either situation.  I think especially in early childhood, so much of what children are learning, they are learning from both home and school – emotional intelligence, how to navigate social situations, literacy and its value, expressing themselves in constructive ways…  I think I am totally on board with the idea of “bridging the gap” between home and school, I think the challenge for me is finding the confidence to do that.  Maybe it’s because I’m a relatively new teacher, maybe it’s because I’m shy in general and am always scared I’ll impose on people, maybe it’s because our “obsessed with diversity but also not wanting to single anyone out” generation doesn’t know how to deal with differences except to pretend they don’t exist but – I find it hard to actually ask the questions of parents, “What is your home life like?”  “What kinds of things do you do at home?”  “What holidays do you celebrate?”  I think I need to read a few articles about how to stop worrying about offending someone or imposing on someone and how to just sincerely ask these questions, putting aside all preconceptions of “right” things to do at home or at school, but just honestly wanting to know, without judgment, so that we can all benefit (not just the kids, the parents and teachers too)

I have to admit, ELL really interests me.  In high school I spent my summers working at a day camp for elementary school aged children, and we would very often have at least one ELL per session.  It was challenging, but so exciting to watch them become (and hopefully help them to become) less shy, more comfortable with the language, and even experiment with forms of literacy in the new language.  I have to admit that most of the summer camp experience wasn’t focused terribly much on literacy, besides maybe a few games of tic-tac-toe or coloring activities, but an indirect part of literacy is mastering the spoken language, so it was still exciting to see.

It interested me so much, that in college I took a few classes on teaching English for ELLs.  The classes were helpful in getting me to think about the different components of language – reading, writing, speaking, and listening – as well as the different purposes of language, and the different ways to organize a language lesson (centered around a grammar point, centered around a theme, around a purpose, etc)  I think a lot of the activities we discussed and ways of approaching teaching would be helpful to non-ELLs, as well, especially those learning to read and write.

One thing I liked about this article was how upfront they were about admitting the problems and hesitations in this method.  They went right out and said, it can be time consuming at first.  Ahh.  Refreshing honesty.  I feel like so many things are time consuming at first, and with practice get easier, but it was just so nice to have someone acknowledge that, someone who is in fact trying to convince you to do this procedure.  They also mentioned the concern for authentic assessment opportunities, in conjunction with the use of the kits.  I appreciated also how they offered some solutions to the hesitations, so while not all their suggestions will work in every classroom, it was nice to be told more than just “This might not fit into your classroom.  Good luck figuring out how to adapt it.”

I also thought the abbreviations and short hand for recording was fairly intuitive – placing the written word over a line and the spoken word under it when there is a word subsitution, etc.  However, while intuitive, it would still take me a while to remember them all, and be familiar enough with them that I could record the assessment as quickly as the child might be reading (heh, I think I’d need to start out with a child whose reading level is on par with my assessment level, and move up from there)

I really enjoyed the article, “Promoting Emergent Literacy and Social-Emotional Learning Through Dialogic Reading”  I appreciated their acknowledgement that academic skills are important to teach, but so are social-emotional skills, and that while teachers of younger and younger children are getting more and more pressure to teach (and show proof of teaching) academic skills, that there is something to be said for the saying, “All I ever needed to know I learned in kindergarten.”  I think we need more people out there writing and speaking out for the importance of teaching social-emotional skills, especially to young children, and hopefully that component is never forgotten or has to be totally put aside in the face of all the academic learning demands.

I think the article also brings up a good point about how young learners are gaining confidence in their reading abilities.  They are learning – yes, they are learning to read, and that is important, but they are also learning that they are readers, and that is important too.  I think it’s easy to forget the latter, but it seems like an important thing to keep in mind when fostering young readers, and something to keep in mind in the struggle of when to make sure someone is reading absolutely correctly and when to make sure just that someone is reading and enjoying themselves.

While I think it’s something that most of the teachers in our class probably already think about and do, I liked reading about the intersection of reading and social-emotional learning.  It’s true, what and how we read can include social-emotional topics, and yes, we can be building vocabulary and it can be emotion vocabulary.  I think you could make the same kind of case for many subjects – what we read about and how we read it can foster development of math skills, or imagination skills, etc., and also that we can carry social-emotional learning into many areas of children’s lives, not just reading.  It’s good to separate learning into subjects sometimes, and have definite times for learning each, but it’s also good to realize that there can be so much overlapping and interweaving, and sometimes it’s useful to harness that and run with it.

I took a class once called Literacy and Social Change, and one of the readings for that class really stuck with me – it was about an older woman who could not read or write, and as she was learning how, one of her teachers or tutors or someone finally got the idea to ask the woman to tell her a story and she would write it.  And in that simple exercise, the woman was like, “Wow, those are my words.  I never really cared about reading and writing before because it was always someone else’s words”  It’s been a long time since I took that class, and I clearly haven’t done that reading justice, but, the point is just to say that yes, I think it’s very powerful for anyone learning to read and write to see his or her own words in print.  In that regard, I think LEA has hit on a very powerful idea.  I also like the idea of having kids write about an experience they have – the idea that the teacher makes sure they all have had that experience before asking the children to write about it.

I really liked the sentences in the article:

“Kindergarteners are also expected to
understand explanations and directions that are
quite abstract: “the first sound in made,” for instance.
Some children have had experiences prior
to schooling that make such language comprehensible,
particularly if their native language matches
the school language.”

I think that is a good point, and brings in the congruency between school and home that we talk about in class.  It didn’t jump out at me at first how abstract that direction is, because I grew up with directions like that at school and at home.  I’m sure there were countless roadtrips where my mom sounded out words with me and played all sorts of word games and asked “what’s the first sound” and “what else starts with ‘mmmm’” and questions of the like, but, not everyone has experiences like that, and I could imagine how disorienting it might be to encounter that kind of language for the first time at school.  And to encounter it for the first time in a language you aren’t comfortable with…

I had never heard the terms BICS and CALP before, but when I read their definitions, it reminded me of an experience I had as a camp counselor with an ELL.  He was about 8, and spoke Korean at home, and for the first week of camp said absolutely nothing.  At this camp the kids went to different “classes” throughout the day, one of which was a French class, where they learned fun things like the numbers and how to say hello and played a lot of games revolving around those few phrases, like bingo, a circle game with a beach ball, etc.  During this class all the kids were playing Go Fish, with French numbers, and I will never forget how amazing it was to hear him suddenly say, “Do you have any trois?”  I think there’s definitely something to be said for peer interactions as an insentive for language learning.

I think the idea of using computers in the classroom is an interesting one, and one that I think brings out different responses based on generational lines.  I remember having a computer lab in my elementary school, and once a month having “Computer Lab” on the schedule, and how exciting that was!  And we’d play “educational” games, like Oregon Trail (which, was the best) and Number Munchers.  In fourth grade we went to the computer lab once a week and learned how to touch-type (I wonder if they still teach kids that in school, or if they assume that kids just pick it up nowadays)  I like the idea of using computers for open ended literacy activities, like typing up stories, or for looking up extra information for questions that came out of a group read aloud.  I think, like all technology, it can be useful, and there certainly is the argument that technology is now part of life, and these kids will need to be familiar with the technology to be able to navigate and make use of it through the rest of their schooling and life.  Just as tv isn’t necessarily bad for a child, but it depends on how much is watched, what is watched, and how much parent involvement there is, I think computers for young children is much the same – I think intentional, meaningful, shared activities involving the computer can be helpful, but parents (and teachers) need to be careful to never start letting the computer be a babysitter.

I like what the N is for Nonsensical article had to say about producing learners and critical thinkers.  There is definitely a difference between, as the article put it, learning to react vs learning to think.  Unfortunately, when the easiest way to measure progress and effectiveness is through standardized tests that pick out specific skills, then there’s going to be a tendency – whether concious or not – to value those skills which the test highlights and says, “You passed the test, you have these skills, and that is good”  It is hard to teach how to think instead of how to react, and I think it only gets harder as kids get older.  When they are young, part of teaching kids to learn is made easier by the fact that kids are excited to learn, and all we have to do is harness that desire.  The longer that children are asked to react instead of learn, the more we contribute to their decreasing desire to learn.

The other thought I had when reading this article was, within a lot of strongly worded statements about the difference between low-income and middle-income experiences for children, the article mentioned that low-income children typically do not utilize the library in the same way middle-income children do, even after we spend lots of money to “level the playing field.”  But their idea of leveling the playing field seemed to be very material.  Which I’m sure matters, but I think the human component of it matters as well.  The article mentioned that parents come in and teach their children how to use the library, and that that component for whatever reason is often not seen with low-income families.  I admit it is not always the best thing when we see something we wish a parent would be involved in, and when parent education and communication is either not possible or not helpful, we then impose even more rules on adults that we feel we can demand certain things from, such as teachers or librarians.  But, all of that having been said, it sounded to me like maybe some of the money to “level the playing field” should have gone to hiring more librarians, so there could be a greater quantity of adults around who could engage children, especially those who came into the library without adults, in meaningful library experiences, helping to set up schemas and “teach” the library and how it relates to the childrens’ lives.

I enjoyed this week’s reading on phonemes.  I have to admit, I’m not very familiar with all the linguistic/literacy terms yet, so I was thankful that the articles made a point to define phonemes.  In particular, to distinguish them from phonics, which, as a child of the 80′s and 90′s, is a term I was well acquainted with – “Hooked on Phonics worked for me!” was a commercial all the kids knew.

It makes sense to me that a child has to understand spoken language if not before than at least in addition to written language.  I took a few classes on teaching English as a foreign language or as a second language, and the emphasis was always on the four components of language – reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  Now, while I know these classes had a different focus because they centered on *language* acquisition, not *reading* acquisition, I think it is still useful for all teachers to keep in mind the four components of language learning.

In high school I took Latin, and I thought it was so pointless that our teacher made us do all sorts of reading aloud and listening/speaking exercises, when, let’s be honest, we were dealing with a dead language.  But she said, “If you can’t pronounce it, you’ll never be able to read and understand it”  Huh, I guess she knew something about phonomes.