During my time at my placement, I have noticed multiple instances
where literature was being promoted. My classroom has currently been working on
the alphabet. The teacher has a display of each of the letters with pictures
underneath that have objects that start with the specific letter. The class is
currently working on the letter “s”. My teacher gives each of the children one
of the letters that they will use in a class discussion. Each child is
instructed to go home and bring in several objects that they can find that
begin with their letter. They then bring the objects into the classroom and the
children have to say what the object is, and if it begins with the correct
letter. I have found this activity to be very effective because the students
love to bring in their own objects from home. The children also get extremely
excited and anxious to see what their classmates have brought in for the day.
It allows the students to have fun while correlating the letters of the
alphabet to different words/objects.
Another literature based activity my teacher uses is the morning
calendar. Every week she chooses different students for different jobs around
the classroom. One of the jobs is to do the morning routines. This includes one
of the students using a pointer on the calendar as the class says the month and
date out loud. This routine sounds something like this, “Today is Wednesday, February
the 10th, 2016”. While each of the words are being announced, the
student in charge points to the correct word on the calendar. The teacher
repeats this line about 4-5 times and eventually lets the students say the
statement without her help. I really
enjoy this activity because I can tell the children are beginning to understand
what the calendar means. By saying the information out loud and looking to
where the plastic finger is being pointed, they are able to make a connection.
The Whitehurt article explains emergent literacy in child
development. Some of the components I feel that my program uses from this
article would be emergent reading, and knowledge of letters. I have noticed
that a lot of my kids partake in emergent reading. After observing a multitude
of students and asking them to read their books out loud, I noticed a lot of
them look at the pictures and make up their own narrative to the story. Although
a lot of the students did not understand what the words were saying on the
pages, they still understood that the print was telling a story or gives
direction. According to the Whitehurt article this means that these children
have a higher level of print intentionality. Children who have lower levels of
print intentionality do not understand that the print on the page is a symbol
system with linguistic meaning.
The other component I noticed in my classroom was knowledge of
letters. As I discussed before, my classroom is really focused on learning the
alphabet at this point in the year. They spend a lot of time thinking of words
that start with some of the different letters and the teacher tests their
knowledge with different activities. Sometimes she will give them a choice of
words and they will have to decide which one begins with the correct letter she
is asking for. These activities are crucial because the Whitehurt article
discussed that if a beginning reader does not know the letters of the alphabet,
they cannot learn the sounds the letters make. I believe my teacher does a
great job with helping the children understand the sounds that each letter
makes.
My classroom does have a literacy based center. One corner of the
room includes a bookshelf with dozens of books for the children to choose from.
There are cozy chairs for the students to sit in as they read as well as a nice
big carpet area. The Bullard text talks about how it is important to have this type
of comfortable and aesthetic environment when creating an effective literacy
center. Whenever the children either complete an activity before everyone else
is finished or finish their snacks before the rest of the class, they
immediately go over to the literacy corner and begin reading. During this time
the children are extremely quiet and make sure to respect their other
classmates. The Bullard text also states how a literacy center should be
well-stocked with quality books. While the students were working the other day
I looked into the literacy center to find many different genres and difficulty
levels within the books. Needless to say, each child has a variety of books to
choose from. One thing I did notice was that a lot of the children seemed to
have their favorite book(s) that they would go back to every day.
If I was using the ELLCO, I think my classroom would do best in Section
4 which is Books and Book Reading. This section includes organization of book
areas, characteristic of books, books for learning, approaches to book reading,
and quality of book reading. My classroom would do well in this section because
there is a multitude of different books to choose from with different genres, the
teacher spends a lot of time reading out loud to the students, and the teacher
reads different educational books with follow up materials for the students to
engage in. My classroom would not do very well in Section 5 which is Print and
Early Writing. This section includes an early writing environment, support for
children’s writing, and environmental print. My program would not do well in
this section because I have not seen a lot of my students writing. The teacher
always writes the students names on their materials before passing it out so
they do not have a chance to do it themselves. Although they do a lot of
reading in my classroom, I still have yet to see my students attempt any form
of writing.
No comments:
Post a Comment