Literacy Playshop

The literacy playshop approach focuses on children's interests, strengths, and abilities as the basis of providing opportunities to construct their own learning through play-based creation. The Literacy Playshops that we have been talking about in class are specifically designed to provide children with an opportunity to create a film that is based on popular media that they are interested in. The children are in charge of their own learning because they are making the film independently using their unique set of skills and knowledge.

This is a fun and engaging way for children to utilize and demonstrate their skills and knowledge in order to create a product that will display what they can accomplish. The process of creating the film will allow children to build upon what they already know and can do with literacy because they are making connections between all of the literacy concepts and ideas that they are using to put together a film. As a result of this project, children will be able to see themselves as capable producers who possess important skills and knowledge that allow them to accomplish such a task. They will also see a variety of ways in which literacy can be used while they are making meaning from the film they are creating.

A haiku about a classroom without tables or chairs

Learning is active

Let us explore and create

In an open space

Sounding Out as a Cultural Model

When a child is reading a comes to a word they do not know, what can you do to support them? For many, the first strategy that may come to mind is to "sound it out." It seems like a logical and useful strategy for developing readers to add to their collection, but what is this strategy actually achieving? Sounding it out may help a child to put the letters and sounds together to decode the word successfully, but is that truly reading? We must first make the distinction between decoding and reading. Decoding is the process of blending letters and their sounds and focuses on accuracy. Reading is receiving information from text in order to make meaning out of it and focuses on understanding. In Catherine Compton-Lilly's (2005) article, "'Sounding Out': A Pervasive Cultural Model of Reading," she states that the strategy of sounding it out "privileges phonetic decoding over other decoding strategies, particularly those that involve the meanings of texts and the structures of language" (pg. 442). We need to support our students in developing strategies to not just decode the text, but to make meaning from it.

So what are some strategies that can help students to focus on the meaning of the text when learning to read? One strategy can be to look at the pictures to search for clues about what the text is saying, if there are pictures present. When text is accompanied by pictures or illustrations, there is a good chance that there is a relationship between them that can provide helpful hints as to what the text is saying. Another strategy to suggest is to have the student skip the word and read to end of the sentence, then read the sentence again. This provides the child with context in which they can draw clues from to figure out the unknown word. Breaking up the unknown word into smaller parts can also be a helpful strategy, especially if it is a relatively long word. There may be words or letter patterns that the child knows that are present within the unknown word that will help them to figure it out. The most important thing to remember when suggesting strategies to children is to keep the focus on the meaning of the text, not the accuracy of how it is read.

In the first grade classroom that I have been placed in for my field experience this semester, I have seen children sounding out words as a strategy. I completed a Running Record with a girl who came to the word "salamander," which she did not know. She began by sounding out the letters and attempting to blend them together. After giving up and skipping it the first time she came to it, the second time she came to it she said, "Sal...sala...salander?" I asked her if that made sense in the sentence and she shrugged her shoulders. I told her that the word was "salamander" and asked if she had heard of that type of animal before. She said, "No, what is it?" I then described it as an animal that was very similar to a lizard. She continued to read the rest of the book fluently. In this instance, because she was not familiar with salamanders, I think the best strategy that I could have suggested here is to break the word into smaller parts. It is a longer word with letter combinations that I think the girl would have recognized. Sal-a-man-der. Looking back, this would have been a better way in which to handle this word than just telling her what it was and explaining it. In my future encounters with unknown words, I hope to support children more meaningfully in developing strategies.

Source:

Compton-Lilly, Catherine. ""Sounding Out": A Pervasive Cultural Model of Reading."Language Arts 82.6 (2005): 441-51. Print.

Focusing on Children's Strengths

So much can be gained from observing and analyzing what a child can do. When we pursue a strengths-focused approach to teaching and supporting children's learning, we encourage students in what they can already do and use their abilities as a starting point for where they will go next. In Kate Foley Cusumano's (2008) article, "Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children’s Writing," she quotes Calkins (1983) regarding the value of this approach, stating, "children become our teachers, showing us how they learn” (pg. 10). By understanding what a child can do, we are also learning about how they learn, which can positively inform our instruction and support for that child. In terms of a child's literacy development, it is useful to know the skills and strategies they are using when they read and write. This knowledge will serve as a guide for how to support the child in reaching a new level of learning or development. For example, a child who uses their understanding of phonics and visual cues to predict words that they do not yet know when reading could be supported by being shown additional strategies to figure out words, such as using the context of the surrounding words to see what makes sense. If you did not know what strategies the child was using to predict words, it would be difficult to support them in furthering their development in a meaningful way. In her article, "'Sounding Out': A Pervasive Cultural Model of Reading," Catherine Compton-Lilly (2005) states that as educators, "we must constantly reflect on our teaching and the strategies our students apply as they become readers" (pg. 450-451). This allows us to continually improve our instruction by founding it on the abilities and needs of our students. Focusing on children's strengths guides us in being effective educators and supporters of learning and development.



Sources:

Compton-Lilly, Catherine. ""Sounding Out": A Pervasive Cultural Model of Reading."Language Arts 82.6 (2005): 441-51. Print.

Cusumano, Kate Foley. "Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children’s Writing." Language Arts 86.1 (2008): 9-17. Print.

What does literacy look like in my community and why should I care?

Literacy comes in many forms and serves many purposes. It could be a novel to provide entertainment, a poster that holds information about an event, or a letter mailed to a loved one. These forms and purposes will vary across individuals and even across communities. I can see this when thinking about my own community and how it is different from others. The literacy in my community looks like books, journals, calendars, television shows, music, movies, advertising, social media, photographs, notes, signs, posters, and conversations. The purposes they serve include entertainment, providing information, organization, communication, reflection, reminding, and relaxation. It is important to think about what literacy looks like in your community because it allows us to consider how it differs from other communities and individuals. As teachers, we can use this information and understanding in order to provide our students with experiences that are meaningful and constructive based on what literacy looks like in their communities. We can also help our students to make connections between home and school by understanding the types of literacy they are surrounded by in their communities.

Language Learners

Language acquisition is an important and unique process for everyone. As teachers, we need to understand this in order to provide the best opportunities and support for our students throughout this process. Getting to know and understanding what our students know is an important job for teachers. We can then investigate further and discover the interests and preferences of our students. This information will provide us with what we need to individualize the opportunities and support for all of our students. Teachers also need to understand what it is like for children who are in the early stages of language development. It can be frustrating and discouraging to be in a classroom that does not account for your level of language ability. We need to be sure that we are not making students feel this way by providing appropriate activities and supports so that they can actively participate and engage. When we, as teachers, take all of these things into consideration, it equips us to be effective teachers who can contribute to our students' language development.

Literacy Journies: How We Learn to Read and Write

As teachers, our personal experiences with literacy will affect our attitudes toward literacy and the way we teach it to our students. Maybe we have meaningful and positive memories of learning to write, or negative and painful memories of struggling with reading. Whatever our past holds, it has influenced the way we think about literacy. It is important to reflect on our experiences and remember the process of learning to read and write so that we can better understand how to provide opportunities for our students to have meaningful and positive experiences with literacy. In Pat Johnson's and Katie Keier's book, Catching Readers Before They Fall: Supporting Readers Who Struggle, there is a huge emphasis on the importance of children's construction of a reading process system. This involves a network of literacy strategies that are integrated with and supportive of one another. Some examples of these strategies include predicting, visualizing, and synthesizing. When a collection of these strategies is obtained by a child, they can then integrate them to construct a reading process system that will serve them as proficient readers. Some may think that reading is simply the ability to accurately recognize sequences of letters as words, but it is much more complex than that. "Reading is making meaning" (Johnson & Keier, 2010, 15). Those who have successfully constructed a reading process system are able to read text fluently and make meaning out of the text. By understanding what a reading process system is and how we have personally constructed our own, we can provide opportunities for meaningful interaction with literacy that will best support our students' constructions of their own reading process systems.