Blog Post #1

Hey everyone,

Welcome to my RDG 370 Literacy Blog. This is my very first blog. I enjoy reading different blogs, so creating one of my own and sharing my personal experiences through this course should be interesting. Creating a blog in literacy education is a little intimidating but  I do like challenges because I feel that the outcome from tough situations out of your comfort zone brings growth to you in areas.

I will be entering my internship and residency this fall. I am really looking forward to being in the classroom and getting hands-on experience. I feel like it's taken me a while to get to this point in my academic studies so being at the finish line, I could not be more excited. During my early field experience I decided to observe in prekindergarten because I felt driven to have the younger crowd of students. Through these last semesters, I have found myself undecided on the grade I want to direct my focus. The subject that I have always been drawn to is Science. I love outer space, how matter changes, and experiments are what I mostly enjoyed in school. I will continue to have an open mind to different grade levels and see the different aspects that each has to offer and the variations in how each class flows. What I hope to learn prior to teaching in my classroom is overall how to handle situations in which students struggle with literacy and how to help students overcome this obstacle. Going into the education field I always saw students as the same level learners and never thought about how everyone is learning differently and children who are introduced for the first time. I feel that these particular questions I have are what I am eager to learn coming into my student teaching.

Personally, the elements in literacy that help a teacher to be the most successful and an effective literacy classroom would be a personal library. I feel that reading is the main key to how students are successful in all subjects, not just reading. I find myself often adding to my Pinterest board what nook or center I will have and how I can make it comfortable for my readers. I feel that making this homey setting and a connected library is what will make my classroom be successful. I want my library to have various genres and texts of different levels so students of different levels can be together as a classroom and learn together. Here are a few ideas of what I think about what I would like to add to my classroom.

Another way to celebrate literacy would be to celebrate my students' work and displaying what we are learning, writing, and conversing about in the classroom. From what I have observed, students love the acknowledgement of their work. Once a child learns something and relates and writes about it,the teacher facilitates it even further by celebrating it in the hallway for everyone to open houses, or other classes to see. I am going to be certified in K-6 and I feel that directing how I will teach younger children will be a lot of charts with high frequency words and word families. Giving students the ability to see different words and opening up that door to the literacy world that they aren't familiar with with help my students grow.