All about blogging…and me

Blogging reading responses has provided a unique experience. For me, blogging allowed a new way to articulate my own thoughts that could then be shared with others. It was a much more interactive process than just preparing written responses to turn in. I appreciated being able to not only share my thoughts, but also learn from the thoughts of my colleagues. As I read their blogs each week it gave me new ideas and insights as well as made me feel that many of my feelings are shared by others.  While there were certainly differences of opinions of issues I became aware that while we may see “best practice” differently there is not one person participating that doesn’t want the best for their students. The style of writing creating an online conversation that I felt like I learned as much from as some class discussions.  

As I went back and reread my responses I realized just how much I was able to apply the reading to my teaching. Through my blogging responses I was able to find connections between research and literature to my own classroom. I was able to reflect on my classroom practices in terms of the literature and analyze what I do through not only my reflection but also the blogs of my colleagues and their responses to my blogs. This creates a kind of congruency between my teaching and the greater research and education communities. The application of knowledge from the readings and my colleagues will allow me to better explain my teaching practices to families, colleagues, and administration.    

It’s more work than they think…

I love it when my friends, family, strangers tell me how good I have it with a summer vacation, long holidays, getting out of work at 3(like that ever happens). I wish they could read just a few of the materials we’ve read this semester. The readings were full of great ideas about creating the congruency between home and school and all of them focused on teachers being responsible for creating the bridge. As the famous Gandhi quote says, “Be the change you want to see in the word.” That is the daily job for teachers, being the change we wish to see. We can get so caught up in what we can’t do or control as we make our best efforts to adapt the classroom, ourselves, our teaching to fit the students who walk through our doors. This weeks reading were full of suggestions, forms, facts and ideas determined to move us from our deficit thinking into creating avenues of change through awareness. What I took from each reading is about developing awareness of genres, of families beliefs about success and literacy, of school practices, and ways to create congruency. To be the change I want to see in the world,of education at least, I have to develop my awareness and teaching practices that build congruency, that create the most beneficial learning environment.

Making Connections

This weeks reading and video about ELL children reaffirmed much of what happens in my classroom and made new connections for me. I made a connection between the McGee and Schickendaz multiple reading techniques and the literacy training I attended with many of the techniques discussed in the video.  The focus is on making connections, which is so important to all children. Bringing books and their messages into center play activities, providing multiple opportunities to experience and interpret books, and PLANNING all seemed to be central ideas for me this week. As I have been using the multiple read techniques and the project approach to planning I have seen a change in the ELL children in my classroom.  All of them participate more during read alouds, whether they speak in thier home language or English or use nonverbal communication. I have also begun using the project approach, which allows children to determine the course and content of our units of study. As I have used this, recently with worms, I have seen ELL children become more invovled in the classroom activities and building vocabulary. All the ELL children can tell you about worms in English! And they have made connections from the books Inch by Inch and Diary of a Worm as we’ve brought them into our center and small group play.
When you work with ELL children, the teaching practices mentioned in the book and the video become part of who you are as a teacher. Many of the suggestions in the chapter I have always employed, whether working with ELL or not. This is certainly attributed to the Early Childhood Rating Scale as well as my undergraduate training, and just my general experience. In using these techinques like matching pictures with names, allowing children to bring in special objects from home, and taking pictures of families during home visits are all ways that I have seen create an environment that children learn to feel safe in. This year many of my ELL children had never been away from their mothers and allowing them to carry pictures of their families and of the daily schedule made a vast improvement in thier school experience. With these items in hand they were more easily soothed. That is not to say it happened over night, all three cried much of the first month of school. For me, that is where establishing relationships with families come into play. I had not known this was thier first expereince away from home I might not have been as prepared for thier reaction to school. As we know from last weeks class discussion working with families and building relationships is certainly my soapbox and something I’m really passionate about, so I won’t go on forever about it.
So I guess really this blog is about making the connection between doing what I do and knowing why it is important and why it works.  

Multilingualism and Literacy

In finding an article of interest on literacy difficulties I focused on multilingualism because so many cultures are represented in my classroom from year to year. As we discuss frequently in class, the article discussed creating congruency between home and school. Multilingual learners and families create an additional element to developing congruency. This piece of the article was particularly interesting to me because it made me reflectmore on the idea that even how we teach varies from culture to culture and effort has to be made in order to develop understanding. The article provided a list of twelve questions related to communication and literacy that would be greatly beneficial to creating school-home congruency by initiating conversations about literacy.

Another focus of the article was on multilingual children with dyslexia. In part the article focused on the definition of dyslexia. I was unaware of exact definition and the article’s conversation about the definition and the implications for multilingual children and teaching was very informative. There was a focus on a particular strategy. I look forward to discussing the article with colleagues as well as exploring their experiences with multilingual children and literacy.

Lots of Learning

So first of all I got so excited when I began my readings with Repeated interactive read-alouds because that is my inquiry project. In early January I attended a workshop on this technique and how to use it in the classroom. I used the inquiry project as a way to help me initiate actual use of the techniques (because I get get busy and it becomes hard to apply what Ilearned from a conference especially in the middle of the year). Reading the article clarified some key points for me and made me think about how I had been using the techniques. For example, planning questions and having them on hand for readings is something I would like to implement. Also I found that my second reading was becoming more like a third reading and I need to take a step back and really plan the second reading.  For me the reading about emergent literacy and social-emotional development added to this technique the use of small groups. I immediately began thinking about what the repeated interactive readings would like in small groups. And with threes it might be more effective to attempt smaller groups rather than whole group readings. Similar results in terms of attention to stories, peers, and teacher relationships could be a result of intermixing the two strategies. As I continued the readings with the Case for Informational Text I began making more connections. Informational texts are a requirement for preschool classrooms, and I try in my classroom to incorporate them in to all the centers. For example, providing books on construction, construction workers, and homes in blocks and recipe books, phone books, and occupation books in dramatic play. I think and hear about preschool children using these kinds of books to develop play themes. However, the article offered explicit teaching techniques to guide children’s readings of these books. Reflecting on my classroom I can think of opportunities in play areas that I may have missed a teachable moment by not using an informational text to its full potential. The article made a pointed argument how we as teachers and adults use informational text and it makes sense to create an environment where children have the opportunity to begin learning how to use this kind of reading material. Realistically as the grow in to their education there will be more and more information texts, like text books, that they will need to know how to use. At risk children need all the opportunities they can get that provide them withschool-readiness knowledge. This is just one more way to better prepare them for school success. The first three readings were so inspiring and light bulbs were really going off for me, but the third reading was a miss. Before I was a birth through kindergarten major I was a theatre ed major and I just wasn’t loving the article. I couldn’t get in to reading it. I really wanted it to get into more of the “how to.” It could be so easy for teachers to adapt dramatic readings or reader theater in to the school day, in preschool or kindergarten rooms. And while the article made points about the benefits and suggestions for implementation more concrete examples of classroom use would have sparked ideas about individual classroom practices.    

Do I know what I’m doing?

“In general, do we know what we’re doing in preschool when it comes to literacy development?”
-from LitLearner blog
Do I know what I’m doing? I can certainly tell you what I do in my, but articulating the why can be tricky for me. As I read articles about practices like Language Experience Approach and process writing and social contracts for writing I comprehend the message, the meaning of the research, what it shows and what practice looked like. And then I think okay now how do I go about the “doing” of it? Do I know what I’m doing when I go about the teaching, the “doing,” of these practices? Well I will say upfront, and this might just be me, but I have to experiment. I take my comprehended research and I try to figure out a way to make it work in my room of at risk threes. And I go about the doing, the planning, the teaching and then I think wait is this right? is this how this should look? Wouldn’t it be great if every time a teacher implemented new practice some expert came in, observed and said “try it this way” or “I love the way you…..” Then I get anxious about new practice because if I have to defend it will I be able to articulate what the research papers so eloquently presented? When you ask me if I know what I’m doing can I answer that question in way that makes you not just believe but know that I actually do?

New Literacy

How do we know what we know? How do we learn what we learn? The reading this week discussed new literacy in two ways very relevant in my classroom. How can I use technology appropriately and how are children understanding me? This becomes even more relevant as I put it in the context of my at risk three year old students.

Let me say here, that sometimes I feel like even my monolingual English speaking children come to school with language and experiences from home that I just don’t understand. The article discusses the great misunderstandings that occur in classrooms and although the article focuses on ELL children I argue it be relevant to all children. As teachers are we really taking a step back and considering what we are saying to children, what we are asking them to understand? If we consider the article and “recontextualizing” would teachers not be so much less frustrated as they approached teaching new concepts? This year I am teaching a Burmese refugee child who when we started school had been in this country just less than a year. It changed my teaching forever. I faced an issue the article portrays, the child had literally no frame of reference for the classroom, the toys, the bathroom (which has the smallest toilet you have ever seen), my language and a multitude of other things. And in writing now I think back to a class conversation about congruency between home and school. I have to create congruency at the same time that I provide new context, new knowledge. Because I had a child this year with little frame of reference for so many seemly everyday tasks I was forced to re-think my teaching and learn through him that everything I do (not just direct teaching, but right down to how I sit in a chair) creates context, a way of understanding. As I develop literacy teaching skills I find this even more relevant. When I take books (rather than just themes) into small group activities, into center play, the children begin to extend play and develop new knowledge from the context created. Like recently I read the children A Letter to Amy and they decided to build a big mailbox for dramatic play because we didn’t have way to mail the letters they were writing in small group. They went as far as to use the illustration of the mailbox in the book to create their own.  

The book reading followed a similar theme of new literacy and developing new context. Because of the age I teach I have been wary of computer technology. So often I have seen it become a place where children are unintentionally ignored by teachers because they’re quiet and engaged. The reading allowed new light to be shed on using it in a way that encourages literacy skills. The abstract idea of spacing became a concrete concept in the book.  For me the readings this week focused on this idea of concreteness, providing children with real relevant experiences that can translate in to language and communication while simultaneously building knowledge.  

The Achievement Gap

I began the four part reading with N is for Nonsensical and within the first paragraph I was nauseous. Here we go with the achievement gap again. The article expressed what I feel frequently, that sometimes the focus is so much on closing the gap that the focus is not on how we are closing it. The NAEYC and IRA joint position statement on learning to read and write offers detailed information on policies and procedure and developmentally appropriate practice. As a professional in the field I wonder are we and the policy makers really comprehending this information? After all the reading on reading and comprehension this week I just have to wonder. If we know what is developmentally appropriate where is the gap between knowledge and classroom procedure?

In Kathy’s blog she mentions a writing assessment that her children experience where they have no background knowledge in order to complete successfully and having to defend her learning centers. As a Head Start preschool three year old teacher I find myself questioning some my own assessment procedures and having to defend my teaching style. I want my goal to be creating life long learners rather than children that can perform really well on a test. If I can commit to interactive storybook read-a-louds, providing experiences and resources that promote knowledge with literacy infused within learning can the children I teach be successful no matter what the assessment is? Kathy’s blog and my experience suggest that that isn’t the case. Sometimes my knowledge of best practice doesn’t match the assessments I am required to give. If I teach to the test, to the assessment, am I doing a disservice if I am also providing new knowledge? Are we creating a generation of children who are so pressurized by testing that they only want to know if that knowledge going to be on the test? And if in preschool I help develop the want to learn is it even possible for the kind of learning in the second classroom of N is for Nonsensical to occur in upper elementary grades as the testing pressure increases not only for the children but for the entire school?

Everything in moderation

My mama used to say, “everything in moderation.” I have found these to be words to live by, both in teaching, and in daily life. The International Reading Association (IRA) seems to also find this saying true. As they mentioned in the phonemic awareness position statement, that while research shows that this is a clear predictor of reading success it also indicates that the greatest impact can be made when there is an interaction of teaching strategies. All to often, as teachers, we are given initiatives, specific curriculum, programs, etc. to follow. The decision has come down from on high that “this is the way to teach literacy” and that way is only thing that should be seen in the classroom. I love that the IRA makes the clear statement that as teaching professionals we should be able to meet the needs of our students without the restraints of policy requirements of specific time slots or training programs. Expect me to teach and I will. Expect me to show you student improvements and I will. Expect me to do it only your way and I might not be able to. Your way may not be the best way for me or for the children in my classroom.   

http://www.reading.org/resources/issues/positions_phonemic.html 

And the first blog begins…

 I’m Kathleen and a preschool teacher, so my job is a daily adventure with three year olds, in Chapel Hill. I’m an MedX student and have been working with children and families for four years. I’ve been teaching here for a little over year and live in Raleigh with my husband and two dogs. So that’s a little about me…