Why I Am My Top Strengths And My Greatest Weakness

Creating engaging literacy lesson plans takes a combination of effective instruction and material interesting to students. Knowing your students is essential in the planning and implementing of any lesson to ensure it reaches all students .Reading Comprehension: What Every Teacher Needs to Know, states” Influential teachers are highly valued participants in the reading process. They know the importance of every student comprehending successfully.”(McLaughlin,2012 p. 433). Ensuring all students have the opportunity to learn and comprehend the information presented in a lesson is important to lesson creation.

Starting from the parents, the child must inherit the instinct of wanting to learn to read, developing the curiosity that comes with the increase of knowledge, interaction with others and building positive memories, that motivate the child’s learning to read. An approach that Vygotsky supported promoting scaffolding, a guided process that adults use to teach students how to master a skill, in this case a reading and writing skills. Children begin from the womb recognizing parent’s voices, singing tone for then building connections through prints and letter sounds in an environment that promotes literacy with stories, songs, games, group activities with families, “All about me” share, and “Show and tell”, to display and build a sense of belonging in the class. Nevertheless, incorporating strategies or methods that facilitate learning to read stimulated by own personal learning style. Most young children learn kinesthetically and are visually-sensory prompted to hands on experiences, using appropriate materials in a different setting. Foremost, with an ongoing informal and formal assessment to evaluate students’ pre-knowledge at the beginning of the scholastic year, students’ way of learning, feelings, and connections through the year, and at every lesson, check for understanding, and ways to improve the next step. Ongoing assessment is part of the whole learning process, it will tell you how the students learn, and achieve appropriate reading and writing goals. A good reader promotes a good writer and vice versa, but a firm stepping stone during the developmental stages, in rich literacy environments, attempting to positive interactive experiences, and always monitored, influences the chances of the child sense of wanting to learn to

Motivation will be key for my literacy program. I know that if the students are highly motivated then they will learn more readily. I will build motivation in my classroom by having a positive, warm learning environment. I will have a variety of literature of different genres and of different levels within my classroom. I will also have a variety of areas and centers for the students to participate in.

For this assignment, I chose the article Motivating Students to Read in the Content Classroom: Six Evidence-Based Principles by William Brozo and Sutton Flynt. This article first talks about how a survey of motivation to read showed a large majority of fourth graders say reading was not their favorite activity and they did not like to read frequently. The authors proposed six ways to get children more involved in reading, starting with elevating their self-efficiency. Students who possess high, school-related self-efficiency outperform their less-engaged peers. Teachers can create conditions for students that are associated with increased perceptions of competence and the student will consequently sustain an effort to be successful. The next point made in this article is to engage interest in new learning. Basically this means to generate interest in new content, making students more likely to put forth necessary efforts to read and learn the new material. “This realization should lead teachers to incorporate a variety of instructional practices that embrace multiple forms of literacy, multiple sources of information, and student choice

Graves, M. F., Juel, C., & Graves, B. B. (2011). Teaching Reading in the 21st Century. Motivating All Learners (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

In advanced classes, books are used to help demonstrate and reiterate what has been taught. A Critical Handbook of Children’s Literature by Rebecca J. Lukens, Jacquelin J. Smith, and Cynthia Miller Coffel is a great utensil in digging deeper into the world of writing. One of the main goals of the Lukens text is to give readers a more in depth understanding of what exactly makes a written piece quality literature.

Throughout my first year as a middle school Language Arts teacher, I have developed a theoretical understanding of what I believe are the necessary components to providing a meaningful and generative environment in which students develop and expand literacy skills. The teaching of literacy needs to include a balance of reading, writing, speaking and listening activities, and needs to be a social endeavor that provides a variety of instructional strategies to meet the needs of all diverse learners. My teaching strategies, beliefs and personality that I bring to my classroom can be characterized as a blend of two types of philosophical theories: social constructivism and relational teaching and

I have well-developed people skills and excellent relationships, though possessing the Feeling (F) trait, having excellent analytical abilities; though Introverted (I), being the defender of others. Consequently, possessing this particular personality trait could be very beneficial as I will continue my career in the healthcare field. Furthermore, with the distinct preference of sensing over intuition focusing on the present, the "here and now" aspects of situations and approach, see things as they are, nonetheless, a concrete thinker. Moreover, with an introversion traits as well, which is beneficial personality strength, focusing more on patients care

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)

This article was about the result of a survey that was conducted to 1,765 sixth-grade students in language arts classroom in 23 different schools in northeastern United States. The students were the primary informants about what motivates them to read in their language arts classroom. They concluded that students enjoy independent reading the most in their language arts classroom. The students also enjoy when the teacher does a read aloud. Finally, the main reason why students are motivated to read at school is because they enjoy the quality and diversity of reading material and that the classroom setting and other people do not have the biggest effect on them.

One thing that I would do in my classroom to ensure book appreciation and motivation to read would

“Our Role as Mentors, demonstrating a Love of Literacy, this says it all! A teacher who foster literacy in his or her classroom will help “expand a student breadth of experience in reading and writing”. Students will start to take on the value system of their teachers. So it is important as educators to be a good role model, especially when it comes to helping children learn to love reading and writing. Teachers who take time to read a book that has nothing to do with the curriculum and allowing students to write about their own life experiences will give students experience in the wonderful world of reading. Teachers who model the value system when it comes to reading and writing, will only heighten the joy students get from literacy activities.

My philosophy of literacy is centered on providing a learning environment rich in authentic literature, instruction that is engaging, fun, and balanced, collaborative, and also involving families in the child’s education. My ultimate goal of literacy instruction is to help children become lifelong readers and writers by providing the skills necessary to comprehend, construct, and make meaning of text, speak, and write. (Torgesen, 2002). According to the National Reading Panel, there are five essential components that must be taught in effective reading programs: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. (Reading Horizons). According to Konza (2014), reading instruction should be changed to six foundational reading elements, adding oral language and early literacy. I also believe that early literacy should be

I am a science major and I have always minimized English Language courses because I thought I was already very good at writing. I did not think I would ever really need to use what I would acquire from such a course. When I came to Montgomery College and I was going to take the course English 101, my expectations were that I would have no difficulty scoring good grades in the course and I would learn nothing really helpful from it. This is because in high school, I put very little effort into my English class, but I had impressive scores in writing. I began to understand that I am not as good as I thought I was at writing when I started taking english courses in college. During my previous English course, English 102, I was able to improve certain aspects of my writing which I am glad for. For instance I am confident that my essay structures are well built. But some things in writing remained a challenge for me. I am glad that I am taking an English course that would permit me to work on things I thought I was already good at like awareness in writing essays and proper use of grammar and punctuation

As a communicator, I acknowledge that I have strengths and weaknesses. I was raised in a small country town and had an ethnocentric view on other cultures. After learning from lectures, I have become aware of this barrier and realised I needed to learn to understand other cultures. Now, I reflect on my behaviours and interactions. I acknowledge biases and plan to improve on difficult situations. I request feedback from my friends, family on my communication. This is now a strength, and has influenced my above average Meta-Cognition score of 5.5.