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.