Blog # 1

Entry #1: Discuss with another teacher, his/her philosophies about teaching literacy.

After talking with a 5th grade language arts teacher, this is what I learned about her philosophy on teaching literacy.
 She felt it is her responsibility as a teacher of language arts to challenge, motivate, and support students in becoming proficient readers, writers, speakers, listeners, and thinkers.  She feels this is done with a blend of small group, whole group and individual instruction within the classroom. She feels it is also her job as the teacher to scaffold student learning to ensure students are learning in a classroom that is challenging enough, but not too difficult for each student.  Throughout the year, teachers need to be reflective in their practice, stay current in best practices and continually assess what is working and what isn’t.  She said she tries to follow these steps she found in a reading a few years ago:

1. Lots of passion and enthusiasm – Passion and enthusiasm are contagious! If we
teach literacy and all subjects with lots of passion and enthusiasm, students will respond
with mirrored passion and enthusiasm for learning.
2. Multiple intelligences – Teachers should use a variety of activities and tailor their
instruction to the various intelligences and methods of processing information according
to Howard Gardner (linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, and musical)
3. Differentiated instruction and pacing – No two minds are alike and teachers need to
be cognizant of this fact and strive to meet the learning needs of all students, working
with their strengths and addressing their weaknesses and respecting their cultural
backgrounds. Diversity is the norm…not the exception.
4. Read aloud – read aloud and read aloud OFTEN! - Studies have found that the
single most important activity for building the knowledge required for reading success in
school is “reading aloud” to children.
5. Modeling – Practice what you preach! Students need to see their teachers (and
parents) reading and writing. In addition, teachers need to model “think aloud” strategies
in shared and guided reading and writing activities in order to scaffold students learning
of good reading and writing habits and strategies.
6. Comprehension strategies, including building background knowledge - The
ultimate goal of reading is to make “meaning” from the text we read. Students need to be
taught strategies to pull meaning from the decoded words. Building and using
background knowledge is central to comprehension.
7. Practice, practice, practice! – Students need LOTS of time to independently practice
reading and writing.
8. Strategies for decoding text that include meaning (semantic), structure/language
(syntactic) and visual (graphophonetic) cues – Teachers need to arm their students with
a battery of strategies to figure out unfamiliar words and to monitor their reading. An
example of strategies might be as follows:
To help myself read, I can…
1. Check the picture.
2. Go back and read it again.
3. Get my lips ready.
4. Does it sound right? Does it look right? Does it make sense?
5. Find chunks I know.
9. Word study – working and playing with words – Students need explicit instruction
and lots of practice in sight word recognition, phonics and morphemic analysis. Good
readers are good decoders.
10. Writing – Writing mirrors reading. It is conceptually different to “encode” rather
than to “decode,” and strengthening writing will strengthen reading and vice versa. Writing needs to include immersion into the study of mentor texts and the authors
that write them. It needs to include teaching students to think like writers and to read like
writers.