Literacy Matters: Teachers Role In The Classroom

The vocabulary lesson for my EDU 363 (Literacy Across the Curriculum) was co-taught and co-created with two of my classmates. Our lesson demonstrates that standard 5 has been met. The standard says, “Teachers create instructional opportunities to encourage all students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, performance skills, and literacy across content areas.” This means that teachers must create materials that encourage students to fully analyze and evaluate material to form their own ideas and opinions. Teachers must understand which role they need to take at what time, and to allow students to actually practice what they are being taught, rather than to just witness it. Our lesson particularly applies to standard 5.3 that says, “[teachers] make instructional

One of the most eye opening experiences of my life occurred in the second grade. I would have never thought that doing one simple assignment in elementary school could change my whole perspective on literacy. My understanding of literacy was sparked when I had read my first real book. I remember sitting down on the vividly colorful carpet day dreaming about playing Mario Cart on my Nintendo 64 while everyone was obediently listening to the teacher read a book out loud. It wasn’t that I did not know how to read or listen, I just didn’t care. Reading to me used to be tedious because I did not understand the purpose of it. I did not grow up with the luxury of my parents reading to me because they weren’t literate in English, so I had to figure out for myself why literacy is vital in everyday life. My ongoing learning experience with literacy can be traced back to one simple visit to library.

The literacy narratives were not only a means to base where my writing skills are at, but take in information about people I barely know. Amongst my group, I would have to say the two foreign students had my attention indefinitely the entire time, because I was intrigued to hear about their journey to the U.S. The both of them had suffered great culture shock and went through the tedious process of learning American English. I can only assume that the difficulty was astronomical at first, due to the fact that we don’t speak proper English a majority of the time, which conflicts with the rigid learning that comes with learning a secondary language. It’s something about that culture shock that interests me as it shows a certain determination

Literacy is defined as being literate, that is, being able to read and write in a language. My personal experience with literacy began at an early age, at the age of 4 when I began to sit and read words and letters in the back of my mother’s car. Soon enough, she would bring me a magazine called “Majed” which, in the 90’s, was a popular magazine. With this, I began even more interested in reading and writing and reviewed every word in the magazine associated with each of the short pictured stories. It was the first memory I deeply recall of literacy and it was what laid the foundation for my personal love of reading and writing. The methodology used for this is an interview. There are three interviews which are analyzed and brought together in the form of a narrative. This narrative serves to better explain the emotions and thoughts that the interviewees had about the idea of literacy.

The literacy crisis is a very prevalent issue in the United States of America. Many Americans are not proficient in basic skills, such as reading and writing. Sara Gilgore, a writer for Education Week, interviews two early learning experts, Lisa Guernsey and Michael H. Levine. Guernsey states that, “more than two-thirds of American 4th graders are not reading at grade level in this country” (Gilgore). It is important for children at young ages to start building basic literacy skills because as children get older it will be harder for them to learn. This in turn will affect the child’s ability to learn and comprehend more advanced subjects in the future. Guernsey is surely right about elementary school students not being proficient in literacy because, as she may not be aware, recent studies have shown that twelfth grade students are also not adept at reading. Lynn Olson, a writer for Education Week, describes the results from a recent twelfth grade National Assessment of Educational Progress, “31 percent scored ‘below basic’ in mathematics, and 23 percent performed below basic in reading” (Olson). The percentages are already significant and if the U.S. continues not to do anything, then the amount of low performing students will continue to increase. Those unfamiliar with school systems may be interested to know that the type and quality of education a student is given, basically boils down to whether or not the school is located in an urban district and if the school

Educators are charged with not only teaching the content of their subject, but also responsible for creating a learning environments that fosters communication, engagement, and reflection so that the students will be prepared for their future careers and learning. Creating a classroom that fosters reading and writing is one way to engage students while promoting that they reflect on the material and communicate their understanding or misconceptions of the content. In order to form a literacy-rich classroom educators need to increase the amount of time students interact with all forms of print and literacy and the classroom environment is an essential key to setting the precedent and model behaviors that will make students more successful and capable of high level learning. (Tyson, 2013)

My learning so far for this unit has been very informative, interesting and most of all useful for my everyday work. The focus during week one was on language and the importance of being literate. Language is more than communication and can be seen as cognitive, material or social. We use language to express our emotions, thoughts and to communicate with family and friends. During week two the topics explored context, shared meaning and interaction. There are four concepts that underpin approaches to literacy teaching and learning. These include that language is a socio-cultural practice; there are multiple ways of being literate; literacy involves more than the recognition of symbols and classroom literacies need to be learned in a meaningful

Language can be both seen and heard, it can be written or spoken. Signs, body language, gestures and facial emotions are all visual forms of communication. Whilst, songs, groans and sighs are verbal forms. For many children, Jeanee Chall believes that they “will spend their first three years of school learning to read, and then they will start using reading to learn”. On Chall’s condition, this would signify that visual language has a great importance in a child’s life as it strengthens their ability to learn information beyond basic language and communication. In addition to Chall’s statement, authors behind the ‘Literacy and its Impact on Child’ article expressed the following, “Early education is the time in which young children develop

Coaching can be a useful tool to improve teaching and learning practices. The amount of research to reinforce the usefulness of coaching, when it comes to program implementation, is limited. The author’s wanted to investigate what influence a school’s social resources had on the initial implementation of a literacy-coaching program. The three questions the authors proposed to answer with their study are:

Issues in Facilitating Literacy Development introduced the reading specialist candidate to various Case Studies allowing the candidate to reflect and design a sequence of reading strategies to meet the specific needs of students. The reading candidate became familiar with the roles and responsibilities of the reading specialist by recognizing a literacy issue within the school, creating a survey for colleagues, and analyzing the data from the survey to provide teachers with meaningful professional development. The Case studies and Survey Design project prompted the reading candidate to learn and apply evidence-based research linked to reading strategies, techniques, observations, surveys, and reflections to improve literacy instruction for students and teachers.

Education and literacy are very important and play many roles in everyday lives. Over many years, education and literacy have been viewed as something to be proud of and something to strive towards, this can be seen back in the mid-20th century, while in more recent times, the views have changed to almost the polar opposite of the original views. Today, they aren’t as cherished or valued as they were back in the day. In the time of Malcolm X, the mid-20th century, education and literacy were valued much more because of the perceived difficulty of gaining them. The ease of access now a days, due to technology, to education, such as books, makes the value of education and literacy go down much more than how it was valued back in the times

Everything that teachers do can affect students’ interest and engagement with literacy. Using strategies and resources to encourage students to be more literate and be encouraged to be more literate can determine their success in academics as well as real life. It is important for teachers to make a classroom environment where their students will feel confident about reading and wanting to be successful. There are several ways for a fourth grade teacher’s classroom environment to promote and encourage literacy.

As a special education teacher, I learn to recognize that the way to support the range of diversity in my classroom is to know how to decide which aspects of literacy development to teach. Students must be able to recognize the sounds, or phonology, of language in order to understand how speech is related to print. Children with special needs require assistance in learning to develop phonological awareness and this understanding is essential to learning to read an alphabetic language. Some of the strategies that really work for me are; (1) to model and practice a simple task, such as rhyming, and (2) then complex tasks, such as segmenting and blending. I also use additional strategies to help students manipulate sounds, such as using blocks

Literacy pedagogies have a developing and complex history in education, intertwined with social and cultural change and evolution. Each change has paved a new path for more significant approaches and strategies, which cater to diverse learners allowing them to create meaning and communicate more effectively. These literacy pedagogies brought out by the changes in education have both strengths and weaknesses. As such, educators need to explore and understand the four knowledge processes portrayed by Kalantzis, Cope, Chan and Dalley-Trim; didactic, authentic, functional, and critical literacy approach (2016), to be able to consider how they can influence teaching and learning so they are able to make informed decisions with regards to their students’ literacy learning. Teaching is becoming increasingly complex; this is particularly evident in the area of literacy. This paper will explore the four literacy pedagogies, their limitations and their strengths, and how they have impacted literacy learning within the Australian educational context.

Reading aloud is an important action that teachers, as well as parents and guardians should take. Reading aloud provides very important foundational skills, introduces and expands vocabulary, provides a model of fluency, and helps children recognize the joy of reading. Storybook experiences expand a child’s vocabulary and comprehension skills. Preschoolers enjoy books that contain colorful illustrations, repetitions, rhymes, and actions. These books include a variety of genres, such as fairy tales, picture books, predictable books, nursery rhymes, and wordless books. When selecting storybooks for children, it is important to keep student’s interest in mind and selecting stories that depict enjoyable experiences. Two storybooks I have chosen to share aloud with a preschool classroom is “The Night Before Preschool,” written by Natasha Wing, and Dr. Seuss’s “Hop on Pop.”