Jada-Marie Tucker

EDU 6706Professor Linda Holcomb

Creating an Environment Rich in

Literacy

A Literate Environment

Creating a literate environment requires patience and diligence. Educators are required to provide rich-text environments with interesting and engaging texts that exposes students to narrative and informational texts.

Literacy Environment

Students must be able to relate to the text, experience it and respond to it in a meaningful way. This can include verbal responses, written responses, or students can respond in writing prompts. When students have authentic experiences with the text, it enables them to comprehend a little better. I’m looking forward to the connections my students will continue to make in and out the classroom.

Understanding the Students

Finding out about students’ interests and identities and understanding what matters to students and who they are as individuals. I find myself really connecting with my students. I often listen to their conversations as they discuss certain topics with peers in the classroom and during recess. I find out a lot about my students by having authentic conversations about their home lives, the current music trends, and the things they enjoy doing after school. This enables me to choose text that they are interested in. For example, from a recent conversation, I found that one of my emergent readers is really interested in animals. So I have included many new texts in our class library about different types of animals and often ask him to share additional information about the topic during whole-group discussions.

Texts

Literacy Tools

Purpose of Assessments

Assessment data provides valuable information that informs instruction and enables educators to provide timely interventions where necessary. With data, teachers are able to choose appropriate activities, methods of instruction, and appropriate strategies that will be most beneficial.

Formal and Summative

AssessmentsUsing a variety of informal and formal assessments to determine areas of strength and need in literacy development. For example, my grade level uses a variety of assessments to assist students in meeting goals. For instance, all students are assessed at the end of each reading unit to determine their level of understanding of narrative and informational texts. Students are assessed on vocabulary, reading comprehension, and utilizing information from the text to answer a short-answer question. I also informally assess my students by questioning to determine what information they still need to reach goals.

Assessments

During my literacy instruction, I address a multitude of needs that are essential to the literacy development of my students and it provides the foundation to effective teaching. For instance, I administer multiple formative and summative assessments that tells me my students levels in reading, writing, fluency, and comprehension. I consistently provide a story test at the end of every story to test these things. I also utilize DIBELS, writing prompts, fluency test, etc to inform me of each student’s strengths and weaknesses.

Types of Literacy

http://www.johnettereed.com/blog/2011/12/17/

Choosing Texts

A literacy autobiography consists of the process in which we acquire literacy. My literacy autobiography started with being introduced to reading with bedtime stories. It then stemmed into being introduced to letters, sounds, and reading systems that enabled me to formulate words. I then began to read independently and develop a thirst for reading and found interesting text. As a result, I continue to read and find myself wanting and desiring for my students to develop the same love for reading as I have.

I know that much of their literacy development has to come from me. I have to choose texts that are engaging, relevant, appropriate, and able to connect with students (Afflerbach, 2012). With these, my students can develop essential skills that they need to be successful in literacy.

Texts

When choosing the right texts for students to read in class, it is essential to consider a multitude of things. For instance, student motivation, level of engagement, relevance, connectivity to standards, and student interest (Tompkins, 2010). As educators we have to be mindful that in order for our students to develop a love for reading, they have to first love what they are reading. As we have learned, our literacy autobiographies help shape the readers and non-readers that we are. When we have positive interactions with texts, we develop a true passion for reading and continue that love and reading habits well into adulthood. It’s critical that educators create an environment that is rich in literacy and makes text readily accessible for students.

To do this, teachers have to pay special attention to their students. They have to learn their likes and dislikes, habits, home lives, hobbies, and things they are interested in. From this information, teachers can begin to provide texts that are related to specific to their interests. When a student enjoys the topic they are reading about, they typically do better at focusing and comprehend the text (Tompkins, 2010). Moreover, our school has a multitude of available texts that correlate to student’s interests and national standards. Our students frequently check out books in our school’s library and I often catch them reading during instruction. Of course we do not want students to miss out on instructional material, but we definitely want them to enjoy reading to the point where they do it in their free time.

Critical Perspective

The critical perspective I believe it is important to understand my students thoughts, the problems they face, and the issues they encounter at home. I ask a variety of questions and engage my students in a meaningful conversations that enables me to get to know them on a deeper level. From this information I can have students engage in reading and writing assignments where they can think critically about the text and evaluate it enough to write something meaningful about it.

Critical Perspective

Critical perspectives teaches students how to critically examine text (Tompkins, 2010). This idea can be implemented in my classroom by relating the story to everyday issues that students may encounter. When a whole-group discussion is facilitated, students can share their personal experiences. For instance, a few weeks ago, my students and I read a story about a character who lost a family member. Students were able to share their feelings about when one of their relatives died. They shared their thoughts, feelings, and ways of handling the situation. For those students who had never experienced death, they were able to listen to their peers and gain an understanding of how our character might have felt. They were able to relate feelings and emotions to the story.

Reading for Success

Response Perspective

The response perspective helps me to understand the issues that matter to my students and help shape them as individuals. In order to do this I engage students in small reading group on a particular text and we engage in dialogue in regards to what was read. I ask a variety of questions that allows students to share their comprehension and to talk about how the story and/or characters are like their lives. Depending on the story, students have to complete an assignment that relates, thus showing their knowledge of the story.

Response Perspective

Response perspectives allows children the opportunity to experience and respond to the text (Tompkins, 2010). This idea allows students the opportunity to have an authentic interaction with the story and be able to respond with feelings, thoughtfulness, and experience. I will incorporate this in my class by allowing students to share personal experiences that are related to the selected text. There is great joy in students making a valuable connection with the stories. Students are able better able to fully understand the events taking place in the story. From that they can provide significant value to class discussions and writing prompts.

Response Activities

Lesson Development

To assist in lesson development, I must remain cognizant of the perspectives and ensure that I’m including them in each lesson. When I do this, it enables me to address a variety of needs and allows me to understand my students. It’s important to focus on the content and keep the end goals in mind to assist each student in becoming life-long learners. This helps me develop more meaningful lessons and choose texts that students can learn from, relate to, and grow from. With the skills they acquire, they can apply them in a variety of settings, including when they read independently.

Activating Prior Knowledge

Activating student’s prior knowledge by assisting them in painting pictures for terms teachers want students to remember is a great example. The teacher should help students relate to the vocabulary word to help them remember and make personal connections with it. Teachers should also do this by sharing a lot of her own personal connections with students so they can share things about their life, thus allowing them to see that they can get schema (prior knowledge) outside of a text. For instance, mentioning a relative who is a marine biologist that works and studies coral reef which connects to the story that they are about to read (Laureate Education Inc., 2010).

References

http://www.johnettereed.com/blog/2011/12/17/

Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century a balanced approach. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.