Week #1 - Blog #1

Sylvia Ashton-Warner, quoted by  Lesley Mandel Morrow in her text Literacy Development in the Early Years:  Helping Children Read and Write, has said "What a dangerous activity reading is:  teaching is.  All this plastering of foreign stuff.  Why plaster on at all when there's so much inside already?  So much locked in?  If only I could draw it out and use it as working material.  If I had a light enough touch, it would just come out under its own volcanic power."   With this in mind I decided to have a conversation with a teacher in my building about teaching literacy and the light touch we need to draw it out of our students.   

I had a great conversation with Lauren West, our Language Arts department coordinator.  She completed her Master's in Reading last year through the University of Colorado, Denver.  Below are the highlighted musts for her in regards to teaching literacy:

 

*We must have high expectations for all literacy learners and provide lessons to meet all learning levels. 

 *Teachers must be enthusiastic about literacy to motivate and deeply engage students.

*Teachers must model fluent reading to students daily to promote successful reading and a greater awareness of what fluent reading is like.

*Reading growth is fostered when learners are engaged in literacy instruction that involves real, authentic reading activities. This would include: newspapers, magazines, advertisements, travel brochures, the World Wide Web, etc. Authentic materials motivate students at all levels because it gives them a sense that they really are able to use the language.

*Students should develop a reading habit. This involves learners being promoted to read independently daily. 

*Lighted, comfortable, and literacy rich environments are essential to welcome students to read and write.

*Reading should be connected to writing.

*Texts should tap into students' interests.

I definitely felt a connection to her must haves for teaching literacy in the classroom.  Certainly many of the above resonated within me as imperative for my classroom as well, a classroom designed to teach literacy to all my students!!!  The above certainly speaks of things we can do to help draw literacy out of our students on their road to becoming proficient, engaged readers and writers.