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.