Changing Approaches of a Literacy Fanatic

 

          I have always considered myself to be a literacy fanatic.  As a child, some of my fondest moments were reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books with my dad every night before bed.  As a teenager, I developed a stronger passion for literacy when I volunteered and later worked in the children’s room of my local library.  I spent every Saturday in high school and every summer in college surrounded by children’s literature and fell in love with helping children find the perfect book to dive into.  My passion for literacy has carried into my career as a teacher.  The most rewarding part of my job is watching my students become readers and writers.  Literacy instruction has been my passion, which is why I decided to focus on literacy education for my Master’s of education program.  I wanted to learn best literacy practices, coach my colleagues in literacy, and introduce my students to the joys and wonders of literacy, as I explain in my Goal Reflection essay.  After two years as a student, my passion for literacy has only grown stronger and now I feel even more confident in my instruction and ability to support all of my students.

           

          This program has given me the knowledge to support all of the readers in my classroom.  I can identify areas where students are struggling and now have a plethora of strategies to implement to support my developing readers.   While my passion for reading education has always been strong, throughout this program I have developed an equal enthusiasm for writing.  Writing has become a focus in my planning and instruction and I have seen my students transform from reluctant to avid writers.   Through this experience, I have also changed the way I approach supporting my English Language Learners.  I feel more confident in engaging my students and now have concrete ways to support language learners in my classroom.

           

          Prior to this program, I though I was a good reading teacher.  I knew how to implement Reader’s Workshop in my classroom, was familiar with many reading assessments, and taught differentiated Guided Reading lessons.  Each year, the majority of my students would meet the grade level reading benchmark.  However, I would always have a group of struggling readers that were challenging to support.  This is because I lacked the knowledge to diagnose exactly what was holding them back.  Through courses in my Master’s program, like Accommodating Differences in Literacy Learners and Elementary Reading Assessment and Instruction, I now feel confident in my ability to support all of my readers, especially students who are struggling.

          

          In both of these courses, we learned about the importance of assessments.  I not only became familiar with assessments, including the Qualitative Reading Inventory and Words Their Way Spelling Inventory, but also learned how to thoughtfully analyze the data that was collected.  I learned how to compare data from different assessments and use it to plan targeted lessons.  We practiced by analyzing data from case studies and then tried this with data collected in our own classrooms.  Through these experiences, I become more and more comfortable at pinpointing a student’s strengths and areas for growth.  I also learned strategies to target a student’s specific needs.  In some ways, I became a reading ‘doctor’, using my assessments and data to discover what was ailing my students, and then implemented targeted lessons and strategies to ‘cure’ them. 

 

          Using data to plan my instruction has changed how I approach my job as a reading teacher.  Instead of collecting data once a term for report cards, data driven instruction has now become part of my daily routine.  I consistently record anecdotal data, for example about comprehension during read aloud and decoding abilities during Guided Reading, and then spend significant time analyzing and discussing data trends with colleagues.   Additionally I now understand how to use the data to plan differentiated lessons to meet student’s needs and am well versed in many strategies to support my students.  I am more familiar with characteristics of each reading level and am able to discern if a student is struggling with phonics and decoding, vocabulary, fluency, or comprehension.  With this new knowledge, I feel more comfortable and adept at differentiating lessons.  In my classroom, I constantly use data to flexibly group my students so they receive exactly what they need.  While the majority of my students meet the end of the year benchmark, I do continue to have a small group of struggle readers.  However, after this program, the biggest difference is that I am much more proficient at supporting these students.  These courses have taught me that data driven instruction is not just important, but absolutely essential in order to meet students’ needs and have provided me with resources and strategies to support all of my students, including my struggling readers.

 

          Not only has this program shaped my approach as a reading teacher, but also it has immensely impacted my abilities as a writing teacher.  At my school, the focus is consistently on reading instruction, possibly because it is easier to measure reading growth by using a school wide reading assessment.  Many professional development sessions focus on reading and because of this, writing instruction often takes a backseat.  My mentality was that reading was the priority and before enrolling in this program, I never worked to better my own practice as a writing teacher.   

 

          The course, Writing Assessment and Instruction with a PreK-5 Focus, completely changed my approach to writing in my classroom.  Through the semester, we experienced the writing process as adult writers and had the opportunity to explore a variety of genres.  This impactful experience helped me understand how it feels to take a piece of writing through the process and allowed me to reflect on how this might feel for my young students. I also gained a new perspective on introducing my students to many genres, instead of just narrative and informational writing.  This course brought writing into the forefront of my planning and instruction.  I now understand how important it is that my students have substantial time to write, discover each part of the process, and have opportunities to explore multiple genres.

 

          By participating in this course, I enhanced my practice and made significant changes and improvements in my classroom.  After falling in love with writing poetry, I added a poetry-writing unit to my term plan in order for my students to experience a new, creative genre.  I also implemented a very structured writing rotation schedule, which allows me to conference with my students on their writing.  I researched best practices around conferencing, learned how to conduct strong writing conferences, and therefore was able to maximize writing instruction in my classroom.  After the success with this schedule in my own classroom, I have had the opportunity to share these improvements with my colleagues and am working on making writing instruction a focus at my school.  I have learned that even a small, very focused change, such as implementing a writing conference schedule, can have tremendous impacts on students’ attitudes towards writing.  This course shifted my mindset and I have become a writing enthusiast, which is contagious among my students.  Because of the knowledge I gained in this class, my students have transformed from apathetic to eager writers who are proud of their accomplishments.   

While this program has given me the opportunity to better my reading and writing instruction and further my love for literacy, the course that has most considerably changed my approach in the classroom is Language Diversity and Literacy Instruction.  For the last five years, I have worked at a school with nearly 80% English Language Learners.  Prior to taking this class, I acknowledged that I taught many ELL students, however, did not actively adapt my instruction to meet their needs.  In fact, I was under-serving these students because I lacked the necessary knowledge to support ELLs.

 

          This course led me to completely reexamine my role as a teacher in classroom with a significant ELL population.  I now feel more equipped to support these students and have made this my focus this year.  I learned many ways to support ELL students and families by participating in this class but I also realized there was still more I could learn.  Because of this, I have collaborated very closely with new ELL coordinator at my school to become familiar more strategies and best practices to support my students.  

 

          I have become more thoughtful in my planning and am constantly thinking about how I can engage my ELL students.  Now when I am planning, I deliberately work to incorporate strategies.  For example, last year during our American Symbols unit, I launched the lesson about the American flag by doing a read aloud.  This year, I completed reworked the unit, in order to give students time to talk and develop vocabulary.  I launched the unit this year by having students study pictures of the American flag and then reflect on what they noticed using specific ELL strategies, including a strategy called “I See, I Think, I Wonder”.  I have seen a tremendous difference in my student’s engagement and ability to use academic vocabulary.  Using the strategies I learned in this class have provided entry points for learners at all stages of language development, gotten my students talking, built up their vocabulary and engaged all of my students.

 

          My Master’s program has been extremely influential providing me with the resources and knowledge to support all of my students.  The knowledge I have gained and the opportunities afford to me in this program have greatly impacted my instruction in reading, writing, and language.  Going forward in my career, I am now more confident in working with all readers.  I have developed my capacity to assess students and use the data to plan instruction.  I understand reading development and can better diagnose challenges facing my struggling readers.  Additionally, I feel more confident in planning and teaching targeted lessons to support all readers.  Not only have I learned how to improve my reading instruction, I have also learned how to strengthen my writing instruction.  I see it as my responsibility to value reading and writing education equally and to give my students authentic opportunities to plan, write, revise, edit and publish their work.  I also understand the importance of introducing my students to a variety of genres.   In order to provide my students with a well-rounded literacy education, it is my prerogative to give them equally strong reading and writing instruction.   Lastly, I have a new approach to supporting the language learners in my classroom.  I have gained an understanding of how to support ELL students and have learned concrete strategies that I can apply in my classroom.  I have the resources and skills I need to make supporting this population a priority in my planning and instruction. 

 

          When I began the program in summer of 2014, I never thought that the classes I took would positively impact so many parts of my planning and instruction and help me better support all of my students.  I feel very confident in my abilities as a literacy teacher as I look forward to the seventh year of my career and am excited to continue to develop my passion for literacy in the future, as explain in my Future Goals essay.  I am grateful for the opportunity to experience a program that has strengthened my love of literacy and has impacted me approaches in my classroom, from the way I support my ELL students, to the way I use data to plan targeted reading lessons, and to the way I lead effective writing conferences.