Final Considerations

 Throughout the semester, we spent most of our time discussing aspects of literacy development and how to teach best and discuss these elements of literacy with our future students. At the beginning of the semester, we were asked to think about our definition of literacy. Also, throughout the semester, we worked on our literacy autobiography, which asked us to go back to the original meaning we had for literacy and make adjustments to it to reflect on what we have learned about literacy. Although I came into the education program with a background in communication sciences and disorders, I still learned much about literacy from different perspectives. I saw how it is not only essential to teach literacy and all of its components but also include the four pillars from Ghouldy Muhammad's framework as well. Including ways for children to build on their identity, criticality, intellect and skill are all important for the overall development of students' learning. I not only have a new definition of literacy, but I also now have a deeper understanding of other elements due to our deeper dive discussions in class and reflective blog posts that were completed almost every week. 

One topic I have a better understanding, or more profound understanding of, is phonemic awareness. I did have some knowledge about phonemic awareness due to my speech background, but I had never educationally explored the topic. I chose to do my deeper dive discussion on this topic because I had some background knowledge, but also because it interested me. Phonemic awareness is the awareness that the speech stream consists of a sequence of sounds- specifically phonemes, the smallest unit of sound that makes a difference in communication. (Yopp & Yopp, 2000 p. 130) After understanding this definition, you should realize that phonemic awareness is crucial and essential to language learning. It is the building block to learning and understanding language. Suppose educators only spend the bare minimum amount of time on these concepts. This could cause significant issues and delays in students' language and literacy learning process. Also, phonemic awareness needs to be covered more or in-depth; students will be able to develop meta-linguistic awareness. Meta-linguistic awareness is the ability to recognize and control one's language. If students are provided with the proper tools to build their language capacities, they will be able to handle their language and have control and understanding over it. As a future educator with a background in speech-language pathology, I want to be a good educator and provide my students with the correct tools to succeed. I will be sure to spend enough time on phonemic awareness and other language-learning skills, including fluency, spelling, reading, and writing. I will also ensure that I am going at a decent pace so that students can understand each concept entirely and not get "left behind" by my moving too fast or not spending enough time on something. From my deeper dive discussion, everyone realized that time needs to be spent on learning this skill for students to succeed in their literacy development and that it is necessary to highlight this topic frequently in the classroom.

Another topic that I learned more about through class discussions was print awareness and print in the classroom. Before becoming an education major, I had not heared much about the importance of having print in the school and classrooms that is co-created by teachers and students, made by students, or easy for them to read and identify. For this topic, Dr. Jones was our deeper dive discussion leader. She covered Tompkins chapter 2 and an article titled Using print in the Environment to Promote Early Writing. Something from the article that I found to be interesting and that I had not heard much about prior to reading the assigned texts was the co-creation of print within the classroom. Both Tompkins and the authors of the article highlight the idea of having the print in the school that the teachers and students collaboratively create. For example, on page 283 of the article, the author mentions, "Mr. Edwards has prepared a print-rich environment with meaningful and functional print posted in his classroom. Further, he and the children will work together to create more print to add to the environment throughout the school year". (Bingham, Gerde, Goetsch, pg. 183) This quote gives us an idea of how not only can the teacher in the classroom be intentional with the print that is provided for the children in the classroom, but how we can also create a print with our students. I was previously unaware of this idea as I have yet to see many teachers actively do this with their students in the schools and classrooms that I have been in. The article provides countless examples of things I can do as a future educator to encourage my students to interact with and create the print. As a future teacher, I want to ensure that my students have many opportunities to interact with and generate print within the classroom. I want to encourage my students to look for print in their environments and make meaningful connections to the print they see. 

Bless, Address or Press Lida Moore Entry #9

 

In Lida’s entry 9, Supporting Students Construction of Vocabulary Knowledge, she discusses the importance of teaching students a variety of strategies for vocabulary development and word learning. Lida was also the deeper dive discussion leader this week. Her entry focuses on the realization that students need to be supplied with a variety of strategies for word learning in order to be successful. This was a realization that I had as well, as when I was in elementary school learning vocabulary words, I do not recall being provided with a variety of strategies in case the strategy provided was not working. Lida also discusses how she recalls often being told to look something up in a thesaurus or dictionary, and I agree with this as well. Sadly many of my teachers did not provide a variety of strategies for looking at and understanding words, but we see in both Tompkins and the Graves article that strategies can vary and we can provide words around the classroom, like word walls or character posters relating to vocabulary, in order to help students understand the meanings of words and broaden their vocabulary. I also found it interesting in the readings that the program in the article provides vocabulary instruction 3 times a week for 30 minutes and how this amount of time and the frequency, did have positive effects on students ability to learn and understand vocabulary words. Lida also discusses how when students are prompted to look up words and write sentences from a list of unknown words can be dull and detrimental to their learning because they feel as though they are just checking off a box. I would also agree with this point and relate this back to the article and how they provide posters with step by step instructions for word learning strategies and allows students to think more creatively and critically about words rather than simply looking them up in the dictionary. We also need to provide students with experiences that allow for vocabulary learning, and these can be provided through multiple strategies, such as word maps, word sorts, using context clues in books, etc. Allowing students to explore vocabulary and what works for them and what does not inspires them to keep learning and expanding their vocabulary. 

The main point in Lida’s response that I would like to bless and address is as follows; “This discussion of teaching vocabulary strategies to students has made me more aware of how I encounter and deal with words in texts that I read and don't understand. As a teacher, I think it is essential to think about my own strategies and learn new techniques that I can teach to my students as they expand their vocabularies. It will be so important as both Tompkins et al. (2022) and Graves et al. (2017) stress to use Think Alouds and to discuss with students the processes and strategies to use when coming across unfamiliar vocabulary. I want my students to believe that they can stretch their minds and use all they know to figure out what they are reading. Of course, putting into place rhythms of silent sustained reading and reading aloud to my students will be critical for them to expand their vocabularies.” (Moore,2022) I would like to address this and bless it because I completely agree with this statement. I believe that this article and the Tompkins chapter allowed me to reflect on the strategies I used and the ones provided to me when I was learning vocabulary in elementary school, as well as how I decipher unfamiliar words now as well. These strategies have grown and changed for me over the years as I was exposed to them and the context in which they are used. I also agree that using think aloud strategies, as well as the strategy Dr. Jones mentioned in class and the activity that we did where we looked at a text and pulled words that may be unfamiliar to students, need a deeper explanation, or a brief explanation can be beneficial to use as a future educator teaching vocabulary. Overall, I do strongly believe that I will need to implement strategies for myself and my students that will allow them to explore vocabulary and become affluent readers and writers. 

Fox Entry 9, Spelling Strategies and Variation

 For this week's class, session 10, we had a deeper dive discussion focused on the Tompkins chapter, Learning to Spell, and an article by Amanda C., titled Connecting Developmental Word Study with Classroom Writing: Children's Descriptions of Spelling Strategies. Both of these readings allowed insight into how children learn to spell and what is beneficial for them during this learning process and what is not. The article discusses how they conducted a research study and interviewed students to see what children would tell them about their strategies for spelling and to gain insight into connections between spelling instruction and writing. The study included fifteen teachers across three elementary schools. Tompkins provides strategies for spelling for children and instructional methods for teaching spelling that teachers can use. While conducting the research study, the researchers found that children used multiple techniques and that these strategies differed across the developmental stages. I was intrigued to read and learn about the five developmental stages of spelling and how we should differentiate the process we use to teach spelling and provide various techniques for the children. I had never heard of interviewing students to find out about their learning and how they are learning, especially not in spelling. During these interviews, students looked at a current piece of writing, circled difficult words, and discussed strategies for figuring out how to spell the word. Each method was coded, and the researchers created a figure for the spelling strategies. Within the figure, the strategies used were visualizing, remembering words from books, picturing words, trying alternatives, making connections, focusing on sounds, reflecting, and combining information. This allows educators to see that we can not use a "one size fits all" strategy for teaching spelling. We should encourage students to use techniques that make the most sense for them and allow them to do derivation relations spelling, stage five of spelling development.

 

If we want all of our students to be successful in reading and writing, they need to be good at spelling. It is crucial to their spelling development to allow them to use multiple strategies to identify and decode words that may be unfamiliar as they are learning to spell. We must provide students with the tools to become fluent spellers and remember that one strategy may only work for some students. The article also discusses how strategies will shift and change as children move through the different developmental stages of spelling. They discuss how when students move out of the emerging steps. Into the higher level developmental period, they shift from sounding it out and thinking like chunking into making connections to reading. I found this interesting because students no longer depend on sounding it out because they know all the sounds that letters make and can identify spelling patterns. Hence, they then make connections when they see a new word to something they may have seen or read in the past. The researchers also noticed that children use original ways of working and combining information to figure out tricky spellings and that this was encouraged. When I was learning how to spell, I was taught to sound it out or use the dictionary and was not encouraged to use other strategies like the children involved in this study. As a future educator, I want to encourage and teach my students to use multiple methods for spelling so that they have various tools that can help them and so that they can become successful in spelling and their overall literacy development.

Entry 8, Bless, Press or Address- Adelaine's Entry 6

 

I chose to look at Adelaine's response to blog entry six, which she titled "Entry 6. Treating Speech as an Object". This blog post was in response to what we had done in class that week. I was the leader of the deeper dive for session eight and focused on phonics and phonemic awareness, aligning with Tompkins's chapter 4. I enjoyed reading Adelaines blog post as it showed me that she could reflect on what she had learned during our discussion and new understandings about some of the topics. I like how she began her entry by explaining that before reading the assigned texts for that week, she had very little phonics and phonemic awareness knowledge and then moved into what she learned and what stuck out to her the most. She included a quote from the article assigned that week that held meaning for her and guided her thinking and learning as she was reading. The section that she has from the Yopp article is, "Furthermore, teachers must recognize that while sensitivity to the sound basis of language supports literacy development, it is also an outcome of literacy experiences. Therefore, to overemphasize this component of literacy instruction in the initial years of schooling is to limit children's opportunities for more comprehensive literacy development" (Yopp, 2022, p.132). I also found this quote interesting as I decided what to include in my selections and what I planned to discuss with the class. One question I would pose to Adelaine would be, why do you believe it is essential to recognize sound basis and literacy experiences within children? And, How do these variables affect literacy development/why? 

 Adelaine then explains how this quote and the article relate to other class readings we have analyzed and how they all highlight the importance of literacy development. They all focus on ensuring we, as educators, follow the proper steps to ensure that our students have a strong foundation for literacy development. She did a great job connecting these points and the articles we have used. She also mentions, "All of these points from the different articles helped me reflect on the different experiences of my previous classmates, current students, and even myself. Thinking back, I can see where much of the curriculum was based on students with similar lives, whereas some of my classmates may have been excluded by the exclusive material." (Reale, 2022) I agree with this statement and that many of the readings we have done similar share views on literacy development, its importance, and the process by which we teach and learn reading and writing literacy and fluency. Relating to my deeper dive discussion, we discussed how it is crucial to follow the steps for teaching phonics and phonological awareness. Another question I may pose to Adelaine is how does phonological awareness help to shape literacy development? Adelaine also includes this quote: "Phonemic awareness requires that students treat speech as an object, to shift their attention away from the meanings of words to examine the linguistic features of speech" (Tompkins et al., 2022). "This stood out to me because it presented another way to consider and view the steps to literacy and being phonetically aware." (Reale, 2022) I would have liked to see her expand on this a bit more so I could see some deep reflection on what we discussed in class, but I do like that she included that this presents another way to view the steps to literacy. Overall, I enjoyed reading Adelaines post and learning about how she was able to draw connections between the readings I chose for the deeper dive discussion as well as other texts from the course.

Fox, Phonemic Awareness; What is it? How much time should we spend learning it?

 For this week's deeper dive discussion, I was the leader. I focused on phonemic awareness and chapter 4 of the Tompkins text. Coming from a background in communication sciences and disorders, I found it easy to draw connections between my past experiences and knowledge to what I am currently learning as a future educator. The Yopp and Yopp article that I chose to go with the Tompkins chapter allowed for some great insight into phonemic awareness and how important it is to focus on it as a teacher. As I mentioned in class, there is a common misconception about language learning and phonemic awareness that it is the job of a literacy teacher, reading specialist, or an SLP to focus on these topics. Another misconception is that phonemic awareness is not a topic that needs to be learned before learning how to read and write and understanding all of the concepts included in phonemic awareness. From both the article and the textbook, we get a deeper understanding and concise view/description of phonemic awareness and its importance to the language and literacy learning process. I chose the Yopp and Yopp article because it provides detailed reports of these concepts and activities that you could use to teach phonemic awareness. A quote from the article I found interesting and discussed during my deeper dive was related to time spent learning phonemic awareness. "The duration of instruction was anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes per session: in some studies, instruction occurred daily; in other studies, the instruction was less frequent, occurring two or three times a week… Unfortunately, time allocations do not consider individual differences among learners." (Yopp& Yopp, 2000 p. 134) Before reading this article, I had not considered the amount of time that actually needs to be spent focusing on phonemic awareness and honing in on those skills. I also found it interesting that the time spent learning phonemic awareness was not consistent across schools, as well as how little time is spent working on these skills.

 Phonemic awareness is the awareness that the speech stream consists of a sequence of sounds- specifically phonemes, the smallest unit of sound that makes a difference in communication. (Yopp & Yopp, 2000 p. 130) After understanding this definition, you should be able to realize that phonemic awareness is crucial and essential to the language learning process. It is the building block to learning and understanding language. Suppose educators only spend the bare minimum amount of time on these concepts. In that case, I believe this could cause significant issues and even delays in students' language and literacy learning process. Also, if phonemic awareness is not covered enough or in-depth, students will struggle with developing meta-linguistic awareness. Meta-linguistic awareness is the ability to recognize and control one's language. If students are not given the proper tools to build their language capacities, they will struggle with their language and have control and understanding over it. As a future educator with a background in speech-language pathology, I want to be a good educator and provide my students with the correct tools so they can be successful. I will be sure to spend enough time on phonemic awareness and other language-learning skills, including fluency, spelling, reading, and writing. I will also ensure that I am going at a decent pace so that students can understand each concept entirely and not get "left behind" by my moving too fast or not spending enough time on something.

Fox, Print Awareness and Print in the Classroom

Last week Dr. Jones was the leader of our deeper dive discussion. She covered Tompkins chapter 2, Examining Literacy Development, as well as an article titled Using Print in the Environment to Promote Early Writing. I believe that both of these texts allowed me to reflect on some of the things that I learned during my undergraduate education at Nazareth as a communication sciences and disorders major. We focused a lot on the literacy development process and how each step is crucial to a childs understanding and use of literacy. Prior to reading the assigned texts, we were asked to activate and assess background knowledge of images with and without text. This is a skill that allows us to understand print in our environment, which is very important to the literacy development process. We were asked to identify images and write what they meant. For ex. there was a picture of the McDonalds logo, which is a very popular symbol that many people can identify and understand that the gold "M" means McDonalds. Another example that was provided was a picture of a corkboard in a classroom that says "Fall in Love with Learning" and this example connects to the importance of providing print in the classroom that is relevant and allows children to both make connections to things, for example the teacher intentionally put that up with leaves all around it because the season is fall, as well as allowing them to see examples of print that relate to what they are doing and what they are experiencing.

Something from the article that I found to be interesting and that I had not heard much about prior to reading this weeks assigned texts, was the co-creation of print within the classroom. Both Tompkins and the authors of the article highlight the idea of having print in the classroom that the teachers and students collaboratively create. For example on page 283 of the article, the author mentions "Mr. Edwards has prepared a print-rich environment with meaningful and functional print posted in his classroom. Further, he and the children will work together to create more print to add to the environment throughout the school year". (Bingham, Gerde, Goetsch, pg. 183) This quote provides us with an idea of how not only the teacher in the classroom can be intentional with the print that is provided for the children in the classroom, but how we can also create print with our students. I was previously unaware of this idea as I have not seen many teachers actively do this with their students in the schools and classrooms that I have been in. The article provides countless examples of things that I can do as a future educator to encourage my students to interact with and create print. Some examples are an attendance chart with spaces for students to write their names, posting print at the eye-level of the students, playing to the students interests, and having student made labels for things like different play areas or cubbies where things are stored. I believe that creating print that is meaningful needs to be intentional toward teaching students the importance of print as well as playing to their interests. I would love to have my students create their own name tags for their seats, labels for their play areas or other areas in the classroom, as well as posting students print around the classroom. Tompkins also highlights the idea of co-creating  print and how it can be beneficial for students as well. For example on page 61 of the textbook, we see the example of children creating a morning message, or their news for the day, collaboratively and the children decide together what to write. Children can also have their own news for the day and share it with the class as well. This activity as well as the ones included in the article, all allow students to have some creative control over what they are doing and will inspire them to interact and engage with print in their environment. Prior to reading these texts I did not understand how important having relevant print in their environment was and how allowing students to create their own print, like labels, can cause a lot more engagement with print to occur. I believe that each teacher should focus on having co-created print in the environment due to the benefits it provides both the teacher and the students. Muhammad also, I believe, would agree that it is important to have co-created text in the classroom because it allows for students to develop reading and writing skills, see themselves and their identities in the classroom, and allow for intellect and understanding of print as well. 

As a future educator, I hope that I can include co-created print all over my classroom and allow my students to be proud of their work and inspire them to create and read print that is in the classroom. I also want to highlight Muhammad's 4 pillars when working on literacy development with my students so that they gain the skills, intellectual development, identity development and criticality development that they will need to be successful, not only just in literacy development but all other areas as well.

Fox Mid-Semester Summary, Entry 5

 
Dear Dr. Jones, 

Now that we are at the semester's midpoint, I thought I would share with you some of the things I have learned. Overall, I feel the course is going well, and I am excited to come to class each week. I love being exposed to so many texts and immersing myself in various types of literature. I like how each week we are asked to read from either the Muhammad text or the Tompkins text alongside other articles that relate to the readings from those texts. I am not so surprised about what I am learning. I am rather grateful for the opportunities I have had to read a text such as Cultivating Genius and learn, as a future educator, how to be historically responsive and culturally competent. Coming from the CSD program, I had little knowledge about being culturally competent and what that meant, but I am now learning how to do that in a classroom setting. I feel that the topics we are covering in this course are foundational for me as a future teacher. How we engage in learning allows us to reflect on what we are reading and learning and make connections that strengthen our understanding. I enjoy the readings that connect to the textbooks and the deeper dive discussions we have been doing. These ways of learning allow me to draw connections and have conversations about what we have learned and what we think of the texts. I enjoy it when we can have conversations and share ideas, as I believe this is a great way to engage in learning and learn from each other. I believe that each component of this course allows for a deeper understanding of the topics we are covering and teaches us how to be successful educators in the future.
I am looking forward to doing my deeper dive discussion as it relates to phonics, and having a speech background allows me to compare and contrast what I already know with what I am learning from the Tompkins text and the article I chose. It will also enable me to share some of the knowledge that I had before entering this program.

I believe that since beginning to take this course, I am much more aware of my literacy habits. I had never been introduced to the SQ4R method and enjoyed using that while reading texts. I believe that a strategy like this allows me to organize my thoughts about what I have read and quickly reflect on it. I also like how the deeper dive discussions are guided by a reading guide provided by you or the student leading the conversation. This also allows me to pay attention to what I am reading and reflect on it critically. I also like how I am now more conscious and intentional about my reading and writing and focusing on what is most important and what I am learning from each text.

I do not feel I am having any struggles with the course currently, and I believe that the amount of work we receive and the assignments we do are balanced and have a purpose. I believe that I am managing the amount of content and assignments well.

 

Sincerely,

Amanda F