Are you a dragonfly?

Now, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
A man is born, he’s a man of means.
Then along come two, they got nothing but their jeans.

But they got, Diff’rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.

Everybody’s got a special kind of story
Everybody finds a way to shine,
It don’t matter that you got not alot
So what,
They’ll have theirs, and you’ll have yours, and I’ll have mine.
And together we’ll be fine….

Because it takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.
Yes it does.
It takes, Diff’rent Strokes to move the world.

Yes, I did just quote the Different Strokes theme song, but that was the first thing that popped into my head when I read the chapter in the book and the article by Gaskins. Each child is just that an individual child and must be evaluated and taught as such. The article did a good job being quite critical, but in an evaluative maner, of the Handbook of Early Literacy and backed up the reasoning behind the criticisms. We all must acknowledge and appreciate that each child starts at a different point and will eventually make it to where he or she needs to be, in his or her own due time.

My thoughts instantly went back to my own childhood. I often think about my brother, who was diagnosed with dyslexia, at a very young age. In this case, higher compensated teachers and educational consultants may have allowed better facilitation of services, because if it were not for my mom’s valient efforts to fight for her son, he would have slipped through the cracks of the educational system. I would like to say that parents often overstep the boundaries set up by schools, fighting for testing and assessments, but in this case, where services were definitely needed my mom’s assertiveness eventually paid off. Everyone learns differently and she saw that I had no problem sailing through Kindergarten and moving into the “advanced” reading group in 1st grade, but knew that my brother needed an extra nudge to get there. He eventually did (of course, not without fights during homework time and extreme struggles along the way) and was the first student in our city’s school system with an IEP to be in the National Honor Society. I think the biggest take away message from this would be that all parties need to work together in a collaborative team effort to allow children to get what’s needed and to learn in a way that’s best for them.

The world of literacy and education definitely does NOT move to the beat of one drum…. if it did, school would be a very boring place.

When we first set out on our literary blogadventure, not so many weeks ago, just as one year ended and another began, we didn’t know what to expect. I have to say, I was excited about a different way of “communicating” with my peers, while still being afforded the opportunity to add my own personal flair. I approached using the blog in just that way, make it my own unique place where I could write about what I needed to for class, but still have fun with it. With that being said, I’ve learned quite a bit about myself as a teacher, learner, and blogger and the community of each of those around me.

I think that I can summarize my thoughts in 3 statements.

1. Teachers have as much desire to learn as their students do.
I learned quite a bit about emergent literacy. I have learned more about why we do what we do while we’re reading aloud to young children and how we can include ELLs in our classroom so that everyone is granted an equal opportunity at high quality literacy experiences. A good amount of my questions and comments were about how others used a technique in their classroom and how I’d like to use something similar in mine. I feel like this class allowed us to question what we didn’t know and explore from there.

2. Learning is best accomplished in a “community.”
Blogging about your own literacy and teaching experiences would be pointless if no one read it. I feel like once I found the blogs I enjoyed reading the most and commented on them, that act was reciprocated. I think that it just so happened, that a majority of us found ourselves commenting on our group members’ blogs, because it was easier since every week they got a snipet into our current “happenings” when we talked in our PLTs and because of this, had a better idea about what we were referring to. Within our larger classroom community, we had created little bloghoods, if you will. To break it down, EDUC 662 = Fairview and our PLT = Wisteria Lane… If you watch Desperate Housewives, you’ll understand.

3. There’s always more to learn.
This thought seems to be self explanatory. I think that I learned quite a bit about teaching young literacy learners, about how others use different practices in their classrooms, and about how to explore the other blogs and use this method of learning accordingly.

The blogging process itself was interesting to use. I, personally liked being able to have a medium to express myself. I usually am able to express myself better in writing than verbally, so it was somewhat more enjoyable than opening up the floor in the class and having the same 5 people make comments and tell stories. It was a way to allow everyone to have a voice. Was it always enjoyable? Definitely not, but it was a learning experience, none the less.

Also, I’m pretty sure someone needs to come up with a name for blogging about blogging. I googled that with no results. Urbandictionary didn’t even have it, but they did note “bloghood,” so I can’t take credit for that one.

This is the end of the blog as we know it.

The gap can be bridged between home literacy learning and school literacy and language learning. The articles addressed the very important issue of using familiar “genres” or objects that the children are already aware of. This is probably the most realistic “goal” to set and reach when exploring ways to bridge the gap between home life and school life. It’s also a good idea to note that you, as a teacher, should be able to accomplish this without losing or compromising anything that might be important culturally or socially to the family dynamic of the family involved. The overall idea of the book, the video, and the articles was to help teachers find a way to include, involve, engage, and appreciate the child’s family in the learning experience. This rings especially true for literacy activities.

My Inquiry Project was designed in the same manner as the “Book Bag” acitivity that is suggested as part of the Kidwatching Project. The main goal of the “take home” aspect of the newest addition into our classroom was just that, to add a link between home life and school life. The books that we focused on as our lesson plan for the week went home with a selected child. Then, at the end of the week, it was show and tell, and also a huge language opportunity for the child to “share” a bit of home with his or her peers. The parents were overly excited and more than willing to work with the children on the activity to bring to school. My suggestions from a “teaching” perspective were often overridden from a “parent” perspective or the child’s perspective about what they should share with the class.

Linking early literacy learning between home and school seems to be vital to exposing the children to “text-rich” learning environments. Using things that are already present in the home are important to allowing the children to see a variety of words on a variety of familiar items. It was interesting to me that a suggestion was to label everything in the home. I don’t think much of this in the school/classroom enviroment, but was intrigued by using a similar approach at home. I would like to see what a “text-rich” home looked like. Could you imagine, the couch, the lamp, the bathroom, and the refrigerator being labeled in your home? Funny stuff. But evidently highly beneficial.

It’s also important that they discussed that there needs to be a happy medium and compromise between the parents and the teachers working together to find a common ground for the child’s literacy experience. The incongruence can easily become congruent and there would be no gap to mind. (Just don’t tell our friends in London.)

Sarah should have receieved the bilingual teacher of the year award the year her classroom was observed for research purposes. She used really key techniques to including rather than excluding the children who spoke a native language other than English. I think the other children in the classroom probably took the cues from her as well as the other bilingual children to include and appreciate their peers in the most accepting ways. The facilitation of positive relationships between peers and teachers in the classroom “family” is awarded 5 stars in my eyes. Teachers who are unsure about teaching English Language Learners and are thrown into sitautions such as this one should be required to read this article as well as some of the other ones we have read this semester to gain a better understanding that it’s an extremely realistic goal to include all learners in the learning process.

The other article was especially helpful, because it looked at an aspect of ELL that may often be OVERLOOKED. It’s important to outline, research, and understand what factors play a role in determining whether or not a child does in fact have a learning disability. I would imagine that often times, ELLs are thought about in a different way than native English learners. I think Gersten’s information regarding how a teacher should approach teaching methods in a classroom with ELLs is a good guideline. Also, the six reading instructions for ELLs at the first grade level should be distributed to all first grade teachers. (I’m not sayin, I’m just sayin…) Someone should get right on top of that.

The video on English Language Learners was very interesting. It was especially interesting to see the different teaching methods in action. The children seem to bring the most experience to the table when there are ELLs in a classroom. I think that support is key to validating the children’s other languages. I think that in any ideal situation, having an aide who speaks the children’s home language would be most beneficial, but when that is not feasible, learning little words, songs, or phrases to help throughout the day is not too much to ask of a teacher.

In my experiences with ELLs, I have found that meeting the child where he or she is has proven most useful in a language inclusive setting. The other children in the class are often just as excited to participate in activities in another language as is the child who speaks that language. I would like to think that because I teach in a preschool setting, that the very young children who are being exposed to bilingualism will benefit the most once they are thrown into a new literacy environment. The chapter in the book also gives some great suggestions as to how to approach creating lesson plans for classes with ELLs such as using high interest themes and repeated concepts and familiar words. It’s often just a nice helpful reminder to think about these things more consciously when planning for daily activities.

March Madness would have to be my (extremely pathetic and unexcusable) excuse for not blogging at all. I actually thought that I already blogged about Running Records last week, which makes it even worse (slowly going crazy). So, now that I’ve cleared that up, I’ll just lump it all together.

Running Records:
As I seem to let you all know over and over again, my kids are young, very, very young. They “read,” but they don’t read by running record standards. I’ve recently made a point of talking more about who wrote the words and drew the pictures in the books we’re reading. I would like to think that this coupled with their own ability to track the stories with their fingers as they grow older will be beneficial to them and their future teachers when running records must be completed. It seems like quite the valuable tool. I also appreciated the explanations for everything, including some guides for completing an aided retelling of the story that the child has read. On a side note, what child knows the word inauguration to confuse it with imagination? I found that curious. Anyway, I would love to know how valuable teachers and other educational professionals find running records. It really does appear to have highly functional qualities and seems to be convenient and easy enough for most users to find it beneficial. I hope that I will eventually have some first hand experience with it in an older grade setting.

Learning to Read for the Visually Impaired:
This article struck me as particularly interesting. I’ve actually had some experience, not quite as intense as some of the sitations described, but experience none the less, with a child in my class who was temporarily visually impaired. Over the span of 3-4 months one child in our class lost vision due to cataracts in both eyes to the point that they needed to be removed. During this time, we were faced with multiple challenges. We were in one classroom when they began to progress, so she was aware enough of the arrangement of the room and placement of objects that we didn’t have too much trouble. We had to adjust how we read to her, helped her color and do other detailed activities such as manips. The majority of the problems arose when we transitioned into our new classroom and she still had not had the surgery. Along with this transition, also came the “big playground,” unchartered territory for the ex-toddlers. We found ourselves shadowing her closely outside, but often gave her a shopping cart to push around outside so that she would be alerted before she collided with something or someone. Additionally, descriptions IN the classroom were never more important than right before she left for surgery and then again when she returned with one eye patched and the other still awaiting surgery. I found myself describing everything she came in contact with in great details, color, textures, tastes, smells, you know everything you can give descriptive words to in order to help a 2 year old understand. We noticed that during this time, her verbal skills increased 10 fold. We encouraged more word clarity and awareness because we knew her hearing acuity was increased. I think it’s telling of the times we live in that so many advances have been made over the years to increase awareness and recognition of people with needs outside the “normal” range of development. The last page is definitely a helpful take away from the article.

I’m proud to say that last week we focused on “Where The Whild Things Are” and used the concept of dialogic reading as described in Doyle and Bramwell’s article.  We took the book and ran with it.  While my children didn’t completely understand the concept of Max’s imaginary adventure, they LOVED everything about it.  We read the book little by little the first couple days as our room transformed into “Max’s room.”  We painted stars and made it look like night on one of our windows, then while they slept… vines grew!  The next day, we went on a sensory hunt for the “wild things” in cotton and rice and gooey cornflower and other textures!  By day 3, we held circle time in our boat and acted out everything that Max did!  They each had a stuffed Wild Thing or a Max to hold onto and blew bubbles at their friends in the boat after we finished reading the book.  I asked questions along the way pointing out the dragon and asked them what they thought was happening next.  The last day (we had a short week), as part of my Inquiry Project, I had one child take home the book and bring back an activity she had completed at home to get that “family involvement.”  She brought back a really cool crown and wand and got to be Queen of the Wild Things.  As we read the book one last time (in the boat again!), I heard things like “LOOK OUT THE DRAGON” “GO AWAY WILD THINGS” and the best one that we seemed to say all week long, “I’LL EAT YOU UP!”  I was really happy to also see them going into the boat with the Wild Things throughout the day and recreating it as well as saying stuff like “there’s the boat, like we have a boat” when we weren’t by it.

So enough about my class, I just really had fun with that and so did they.  They’re gradually becoming more and more engaged in repeated books and are extra interactive during read alouds.  I would hope that after they leave my class and move into preschool, they’ll expand their love for fictional reading to informational texts about specific subjects as discussed in the Duke reading.  I would also like to think that my kids are still on the brink of being able to recreate the interactive read-alouds that McGee and Schickedanz suggest.  I think that once they are able to increase the amount of time that they are sitting and waiting to engage in the interactive part, it will be just as beneficial to their literacy development as the dialogic readings seem to be.  The activities that we implemented in my class throughout last week seems to have been a combination of the ideals of an interactive read-alound and of the dialogic readings.  If the children were older, I probably would have tried to more properly introduce, question children about, and reconstruct with them… We’re getting there!  The video did a pretty good job of recreating this concept as well… as usual though, I wonder how many children in that class have IEPs.

The Rowe article finally addressed what I’ve been waiting to read about… children’s literacy development between birth and 3 years of age.  This is very relevant to my daily classroom life, since my kids are 2 and 3 years old.  RIght now, many of my children are labeling their “pictures” but not quite at the point when they are making letter marks to name their creations.  I was reading the “All Around Us” series with my kidwatching girl on Thursday morning.  We were on “Above Us, In the Sky” and I started to point to each word as I read along to see what she would do and how she would react.  She started to ask me “What that say?” after I read the first page about rainbows shimmering on each subsequent page.  The best part was when she said, “What that little dot right there say?!”  She was of course referring to the period at the end of the sentence.  I explained to her that it meant the words in the sentence were all done and we read what we needed to know about the pictures and that we could turn the page.  She was alright with this explaination. 

Drawing on social and cultural views of learning, the present study assumes that as soon as children begin to participate in the writing practices of their homes, schools, and communities-however peripheral their participation may be at first- they begin to learn which textual interactions (ie, the kinds of meaning recorded with print), procedures, and reading and writing procesesses are vlaued for use in specific kinds of literacy events. 

I’m pretty sure that the “social contracts” that occur on a daily basis are getting longer and more detailed with time as the children begin to realize and actively participate in the literacy activities that make up the contract.  I would like to think that our social contracts go beyond “we write on paper,” although, that one is used pretty frequently with my 2’s.  Other literacy social contracts include “We keep the pages IN the book,” ”We read the book, we don’t hit our friends with the book,” “We won’t have anymore books to read if you hurt the books,” etc. I would also like to think that because most of us work with very diverse populations, we would not be creating the same social contracts that we read about at the Walker, we wouldn’t know diversity if it hit us in the face, Preschool, but it definitley offered insight and a different way of defining what we do without even thinking about it.  We have created many social contracts without the formalities of writing, editing, and following the ”rules” of the contractual obligations. 

The LEA approach to learning is spectacular and can definitely be used in a variety of ways in a large age range.  I can remember writing “journal” entries such as “Today is *insert date* My favorite holiday is *whatever* I like this holiday because *I need something to write about* in first grade.  Looking back now, I suppose my teacher was advancing our language experiences.  Also, while I cannot recall group efforts, such as those noted where the group creates a book, I know many teachers that effectively use this method today.  In the process writing article, the “sloppy copy” method is helpful in teaching children that mistakes are going to happen and that as part of the learning process they will be able to edit before the final product. 

Overall, our readings this week were very meaningful and helpful for those of us not QUITE at the “preschool” level of learning, reading, and writing.  I was pleased that the red carpet was finally rolled out for us…     

My friends (usually teacherish ones) and I seem to be visiting this topic quite often these days.  There’s only a 6ish year gap between me and 2 of these awesome “older” (wiser ) friends, but they seem to believe that somewhere between 1995 and 2005, they got lost in the mix and I became an extremely skilled stalker… I mean, “Googler.”  So, reading about the great advances in technology is always interesting to me.  I didn’t “grow up” with the same computer-rich text that children today experience.  I slowly advanced WITH the technologies of the time and learned as I went.  I think that because of its ever-evolving nature, technology will be beneficial for the students of the “now.”  It’s somewhat scary, yes, to think about the who, what, when, where, why and how of technology in the future… and couple that with the children that have developed with it.  However, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, so we must embrace, utilize, and foster a love for it starting at the earliest of learning experiences.  When used properly, for enriching academic experiences, technology at it’s finest is amazing.  I worry that written text will change eventually, but who knows, that might be for the better.  It might be really awesome to teach children to print in Comic Sans instead of Times New Roman… and if you’re really skilled, Wingdings.  I said MIGHT.  In my head, this all makes sense… Anyway, so when someone says “AYYYYYYYYYYO, I’m tired of using technology” you can tell 50 and Justin, that it’s encouraging emergent literacy.  Don’t hate. 

Short and sweet… the BICS/CALP framework has set the stage for a discussion about ELL and ELL TEACHERS to expand knowlege and appreciation for the language learning process.  It’s definitely better late than never that the framework supported teachers in providing a classroom with the “essential element of relevance that characterized the situations in which the students displayed their greatest competencies.”  From this we have gathered different, more productive ways to aid our ELL in the class.  Reduce, reuse, recontextualize.  It’s the newest way to go green