Sam Englert - LLED

[samenglert]

Fostering Growth Through Planning

            In the past Miller has focused on read alouds.  In this chapter, she talks more about think alouds as related to read alouds.  She writes, “I make sure my think-alouds are genuine, my language is precise, and my focus is clear” (p.70).  That sounds simple enough, but actually making those things happen seems to provide more difficulty than one would think.  Goals are a major part of making those previous words a reality.  Goals require planning, or at least in most cases.  I really liked how Miller has the goal of providing her students with information that will last a lifetime, not just what might appear on a test.  When it comes to planning in a goal-oriented fashion, I think it is important to consider the high value of flexibility.    As Miller writes, “Every child deserves a year’s growth…” (p.71), and I believe flexibility in planning is the way to achieve this.  She continues to say that getting to know each child is the first step in helping them grow.  I feel that any teacher’s relationships with his or her students should be first priority, everything else follows naturally because he or she then cares enough about their students to ensure they live up to their full potential. 

            We watched the Miller video in awe as one of her first grade students said she inferred something from the reading.  I love that Miller uses ‘real language’ with her students.  She teaches them the actual terms right off the bat.  By doing this, it seems as though they are at an advantage because they now can have the ability to speak more concisely and with strong vocabulary.  Conciseness from teachers helps students gain focus; this focus is only intensified when they learn to think and speak that way themselves. 

            Miller writes, “I’ve learned that children love to grapple with complex social and moral issues…” (p.89).  This concept is evident in the Crafton reading as well.  I really like the idea of giving children enough credit to be trusted with what are often seen as adult topics.  Making this idea come alive in the activities teachers plan for students is key.  Recognizing these thoughts and ideas is essential to supporting growth, which in the end is what all teachers should strive to help their students achieve.  

[samenglert]

Pros and Cons of Writing Workshops

When writing workshops are a great tool for teaching and nurturing the writing process.  Fletcher and Portalupi touched on three short-term goals of writing workshops that I wholeheartedly agree with:  (p.22)

Getting students to love writing time

Establishing a safe environment so that kids can take risks in their writing

Setting up a workable management system to handle the flow of papers, folders, and so forth

While I do agree with the last goal (mostly because I like the idea of writing folders), I think it is the least important of the three.  I also believe that establishing a safe environment is not only a precursor for students loving to write, but it also allows students to feel the freedom they need to pursue their own interest and be themselves – which I think can help any child academically.  To quote Fletcher and Portalupi, “Students will love to write if they believe they are in a safe place where they can do so” (p.22).  No student will want to write about something they are interested in if he or she thinks it will lead to torment.  Following that, if students cannot write about something they are interested in – and make meaning - writing may lose significance for them.  Choice is a key factor when it comes to interest.  Fletcher and Portalupi quote Poeton when they write, “choice leads to voice”.  I do not think it could be said any better.  They continue on with, “We know that young writers work best when they feel a sense of ownership…”(p.23).  It all leads back to choice.  It is when options are given that passion has a chance to develop.  Engagement is a product of the passion that can result because choice exists.   

“If you want it to be alive, truly alive, your kids have to feel that, in the most fundamental sense, the writing workshop belongs to them” (p.24).

As mentioned in Samway’s article (and in class), some classes engage in peer review during workshop time.  While this can be beneficial, I cannot help but see the negative side to peer review.  I do not like how the teacher in Samway’s article had a tutor system in place as a workshop.  Peer tutoring often sets some children up to either feel superior because they are selected to help a peer, or feel less because the teacher singles them out for needing help.  Peer tutoring is not always entirely beneficial to the tutors either because they are helping peers with concepts the tutors themselves have already mastered, therefore neglecting to focus on their personal writing or writing issues they themselves might have.  I do not think that ‘more advanced’ students should be penalized for lack of adult aid in the classroom.  As Samway mentioned, to improve, writing needs to happen often and on a regular basis.  I do not quite understand how that can happen when teachers are depending on students to act as teachers.  However, I am not saying that there are not benefits to learning from or teaching someone your own age; it just seems as though the writing workshop is not he place for this (most of the time). 

I believe that when teachers share their own writing, students can benefit immensely from writing workshops.  This point came up numerous times in several readings for good reason: it gives students a tangible evidence of what a writer can be.  Students often look up to their teachers and incorporating this into a writing workshop can give them an example to from which they can learn.  Hopefully teachers continue to improve as writers themselves and inspire their students to do the same.  

[samenglert]

Writing Development

The Bissex readings were insightful in a number of ways.  Explaining differentiation and decentration in way that highlights how children’s writing develops in forms/features as opposed to stages was interesting.  Using the term form/feature instead of stages makes it so that children are not limited when adults assess writing levels.  In that light, it seems to take some of the pressure off of the child to be ‘in the right stage’.  Bissex gives the example of Paul who’s “writing development was expressed not only in progressions within forms, but in the disappearance of some early compositional forms and the later addition of other kinds of forms”(p.200).  Bissex goes on to talk about decentration a feature children’s writing gains as they age.  This involves being able to take another person’s point of view and therefore recognizing the difference between writer and audience.  

Children’s ability to ‘develop theories’ on writing should inspire teachers to not only encourage writing, but provide their students with all the necessary tools to become a successful writer. When children are younger, a lot of times “the focus is on what the child does not yet know rather than on the knowledge the child has demonstrated…” (p.99).  Teachers need to look beyond these so called mistakes and acknowledge that these theories are part of the learning process.  Bissex uses the example of non-existent words like goed or mouses.  Teachers should focus on the fact that students know the meaning of those ‘words’ and are trying to make meaning out of a writing system they are still in the process of mastering.  Those type of mistakes will dissolve in time as children gain more and more experience with word usage in their everyday lives. 

If “children use their knowledge of speech sounds and of the alphabet, combined with some information requested from adults, to devise a spelling system”, then a teacher’s purgative should be to ‘request’ the most helpful information possible in an effort to aid in their student’s learning.  The Luongo-Orlando chapter mentions how teachers should encourage writing from an early age and provide daily opportunities to write.  Some examples were activities like morning message or writing games (p.134).  Teachers can provide these types of opportunities by discovering “what children already know about written language in order to tell where effective instruction can start”(p.103).  A good example of this is writing portfolios because they can track progress throughout the year.  It is important to note that “teachers will learn much about their student’s concerns and interests as they draw and write if children generally CHOOSE their own topics rather than respond to assigned topics”(p.104).  

[samenglert]

Phonemic Awareness

“Children learn by doing” is a central idea in Parr and Campbell’s article (p.25).  They continue on my emphasizing just how important active learning is for not only students, but their teachers too.  When children engage in active learning teachers can craft lessons and approaches specifically designed to help students take away meaningful knowledge that can help them develop literacy skills.  While I do believe that “independent student learning and practice are at the core of the literacy workshop” (p.27), I think it is the cooperative learning factor that truly cements the learning students are involved with during literacy workshops.  I have witnessed the conduction of centers for weeks at a time and it seems that children really thrive off working on their independent skills as a team.  When it is time to share with the entire class, the unity between group members seems to do nothing but build upon the concepts they worked on together.  Building literacy portfolios together gives students the chance to reflect on what they learned.  More importantly, portfolios can track their learning in a way that provides evidence of individual progress.  Aside from physical evidence, teachers can measure learning my simply talking to their students.  Monitoring literacy growth through conversation and observation helps teachers better understand how their students are doing with concepts being taught over long or short periods of time. 

Luongo-Orlando focuses more on development of phonemic awareness as a process than how to develop it as a teacher.  That is not saying that she does not list ways in which teachers can promote phonemic awareness; rather her central point moreso involves phonemic awareness as a state and how children get there. 

Again, there are a number of quotes from the Luongo-Orlando article that sum up what the chapter conveys:

-       “Developing a strong language base in vocabulary and storytelling is central to emergent literacy” (p.55).

-       “To become literate and be able to read, children need to gain a deeper understanding of language – a knowledge that gros with an awareness of sounds and other language features” (p.55).

-       “Children learn language through repetition, rhyming, chanting, and playing with words” (p.55).

-       “As children engage in playful language events with lively texts, they gain linguistic knowledge and language proficiency in ways that make literacy learning active, engaging, and fun” (p.55).

[samenglert]

Language Development

The most prevalent theme in the Patè and Luongo-Orlando readings was development of language through opportunity, more specifically how teachers can provide that opportunity for their students to become literate.  Each reading mentions the natural approach to teaching language.  With this approach, young students are expected to be the stereotypical sponge and pick of new language easily.  While that is a very valid approach, I still think opportunity is key in learning language.  Experiences, social experiences in particular, are extraordinarily important in learning and developing language.  Teachers need to be able to create situations like Patè’s projects so as to introduce new experiences to their students. 

Patè focuses primarily on the project she introduces, but there is so much within that project that facilitates language learning.  She made in known that it is important for the receiver in the conversation to understand what is being conveyed, not necessarily the language.  I agree with that because I think the language comprehension will follow after relationships and social interaction continue.  It is critical for teachers to create environments that foster interactions which can sustain opportunities to learn language.   The wrap-up of the article related to these concepts, but managed to reach further into teaching philosophy as a whole when she remarks on adapting to situations in the classroom.  Teachers need to be able to find the problems in their classroom and solve them in ways that benefit their students.  Improvements are  constant in classrooms because each group of students is different. 

There are three quotes on the first page of the Luongo-Orlando reading that I feel sum up most of chapter:

“Talk builds a strong foundation for literacy learning” (p.33).

“The development of spoken language in the early childhood years must be a priority in homes and classrooms” (p.33)

“Oral language events help young people build vocabulary, grammar, narrative, and storytelling skills and give them understanding, confidence, and ability to move into reading and writing” (p.33).

[samenglert]

Connecting Play and Literacy

Play and literacy go hand in hand in a multitude of ways.  Luongo-Orlando writes, “The building blocks for life are found in play activities where children can rehearse roles and social practices needed for the future.  Play prepares youngsters for the later years by laying the groundwork for literacy learning” (p.11).  Play helps children establish a base for literacy skills.  Meaning making occurs first in play, and then eventually carries over into literacy when children make connections between themselves and the story.  Luongo-Orlando also talks about metaplay.  Metaplay promotes literacy because children are thinking and or talking about how they are playing, thereby strengthening their ability to use language to express themselves (p.17).  Providing opportunities for students to learn new language and language uses is essential.  However, it is imperative that teachers are providing students opportunities to use their imaginations, not simply feeding them information (p.24).  If teachers can build on literacy experiences by allowing students to partake in play, then students will continue to draw meaning and increase literacy.

Allowing students to compare and contrast stories with their own lives is key in  Sipe’s “expressive, performance engagement”.  Any area of engagement that Sipe talks about allows students to be involved with the literature, as well as feel the freedom to claim and take ownership of it.  Teachers have to be sure to give value to any sort of engagement so as to encourage further literacy development. 

Holdaway’s article more specifically touches on read alouds.  He refers to how students, again, take away their own meanings from each story; therefore, letting them draw their own illustrations helps them make connections between themselves and the story.  As we have often experienced, many students what to share with the class how they connect to the book, so allowing them to make their own illustrations is a good way to do this.  When teachers pick books that appeal to many children in their class, students are more likely to learn new language and language uses by exploring the text more thoroughly.