Dear Dr.

McKool,

Throughout the semester, one thing that was highly stressed in

class was that teachers should teach with a sense of urgency; there is

a limited amount of time to teach so many important things. This is

especially important with literacy in the early years of school.

I have learned much about literacy from “The Nuts and Bolts of

Teaching Writing” by Lucy Calkins. The first few chapters in the text

are about writing workshops and planning them and managing them.

From these chapters, I learned that structures and systems are very

important. “It is important for each day’s workshop to have a clear,

simple structure. Children should know what to expect. This allows

them to carry on; it frees the teacher from choreographing activities

and allows time for listening. How we structure the workshop is less

important than that we structure it” (Calkins 29). When students have

a set structure to writing workshops, they can focus on their writing. If

students came to class with a new assignment each day that was

taught in a different way, the class would be very unsure of what was

going on and they would spend more time trying to understand the

assignment than they would on their writing. It’s also important that

the class knows where they are going next if they are going from one

station to another. “It is easy to lose a tremendous amount of time in

transitions, and therefore we need to teach students how to get

started on their writing” (Calkins 37). Because time needs to be used

in the most effective ways, transitions need to be simple and quick so

that they take the least amount of time possible.

“Balanced Literacy”, written by Linda Chen, has taught me many

important aspects about literacy development, interactive read-alouds,

and shared reading. In the Literacy Development chapter of the text,

Chen writes about the different literacy development levels. These

different levels include emergent reader, early reader, transitional

reader, self-extending reader, independent level, instructional level,

and frustration level (Chen 20). These different levels are important to

know, especially for early elementary teachers. Because I was in a

kindergarten classroom this semester, they were all on different levels.

Most students are just learning how to read, but their reading abilities

are very varied. Most readers in my class are emergent readers and

early readers. As emergent readers, they “use their oral language and

knowledge of the world to read pictures, images and text…At this

stage of reading, we should present many songs, poems, and chants

containing alliteration” (Chen 18). This information is very useful

because it shows the different methods and ways to teach students at

this level. Early readers “begin to make connections between the

sounds of the letters and their corresponding written form…Early

readers begin to use reading strategies such as rereading when they

lose the meaning of the text…Typically, kindergarten students end the

year at this level” (Chen 19). Through doing running records and
literacy lessons with my kindergarten class, I’ve noticed these same

literacy levels. This book has helped me recognize what level the

students are at, and what they need to do in order to progress to the

next level. When reading with my students, I would use the different

strategies the book stated. Chen states that Early Readers should read

and reread books at their fluency level. I would often have students

read to me, and I would purposely ask them to read me the same book

we had previously read for this reason.

Chen also writes about interactive read-alouds and shared

reading. Read-alouds “condition the child’s brain to associate reading

with pleasure, building vocabulary, and provide a reading role model”

(Chen 33). “Shared reading is the time of day when children learn how

to read text and make meaning when being read to while seeing the

text” (Chen 65). Both read-alouds and shared reading are very

important when it comes to literacy. On an almost a daily basis, my

cooperative teacher would do read-alouds with the class. The students

really enjoyed listening to the story and interacting with the teacher

about the book. As Chen stated, my cooperative teacher was teaching

the class new vocabulary while reading to them. If she came across a

word that she thought the class didn’t know, she would ask them if

anyone knew the meaning, and if they didn’t, she would explain the

definition to the class. While in the field, I never saw my cooperative

teacher do shared reading with students, but it was something that I

frequently did with the students during their free reading time. I would

sit with the student with the book in my lap and make sure that they

could see the words. I would read a little slower than normal and would

run my finger under the words as I read. By doing this, the students

were able to see and hear the text at the same time, connecting the

two and helping the student learn to read.

“The Essential of Teaching Children to Read”, written by Reutzel

and Cooter, had a very important section about reading

comprehension instruction. They list many different reading

comprehension strategies, such as: “graphic organizers,

comprehension monitoring, answering questions, generating

questions, story structure, and summarization” (R&C 158). Many of

these different tactics were used by my cooperative teacher during

and after she did a read-aloud. She would ask the class questions

about what was going on in the story, what would happen next, and

why they think these things. After reading to the class, she frequently

had worksheets for the students to complete about what happened in

the story.

When I have my own classroom one day, I will incorporate all of

these different aspects of literacy development. My cooperative

teacher did not seem to agree with the philosophy that there needs to

be a sense of urgency in the classroom. She spent huge amounts of

time that the students could be learning doing her preparation that
should have been done prior to the arrival of the students. When the

students arrived in the morning, she gave them about fifteen minutes

to get settled in and to talk while she set up for centers. In my own

classroom, I will make sure to have the centers prepared ahead of time

so that the class gets the maximum amount of learning time as

possible. When it comes time for writers workshop, I will make the

same basic schedule for the class to follow for the year so that the

routine will make them feel comfortable and allow them to focus on

writing to the best of their ability. I will also make sure to do interactive

read-alouds and shared reading daily.

I learned so many different useful teaching ideas and methods

this semester involving literacy in class, through the texts, and in the

field. I plan on taking everything that I learned and using it in the

classroom in order to make me the best teacher possible. Literacy is

one of the most important things that children learn in school, and I

want to make sure students leave my class on grade level or higher.