Context: During my initial field experience observing in an elementary school, I wrote a paper comparing a first grade and a sixth grade classroom through the lens of observing the literacy environment. I integrated my observations with current literacy research and concepts discussed in an introductory literacy methods class during my first quarter in the Teacher Education Program. As a student teacher in a second grade classroom a year later, I implemented many of the instructional strategies and literacy activities that I observed and described in the paper. Artifacts I include are a planning grid that illustrates how I designed guided reading lessons for four different small groups and photographs of second grade students working on literacy activities during Writer's and Reader's Workshop. These photographs from the classroom in which I completed my student teaching illustrate some of the ways in which I implemented specific components of "best practices" in literacy and differentiated literacy instruction to meet the needs of students with diverse reading abilities.
TEP Goals and Targets:
1A Subject Matter Knowledge
The Literacy Observation artifact illustrates my ability to integrate course content and literacy research with classroom experience and identify aspects of the literacy environment that contribute to students' literacy learning. A classroom environment that supports the literacy development of all students is print-rich, includes texts of various levels and various genres, supports students through shared, guided, and independent reading and writing, and enables explicit teaching of word identification and comprehension strategies through a balanced literacy approach.
2B Adapting for Differences
I structured the literacy environment in my student teaching classroom in a way that facilitated differentiated literacy instruction, providing students with multiple experiences reading and developing comprehension of at-level texts. I also adapted for differences among students by providing learners with opportunities to make choices about activities to participate in within the literacy environment. While I met with guided reading groups daily, other students participated in a Reader's Workshop engaging in authentic reading and writing experiences such as choosing fiction and non-fiction texts to read, responding to self-selected texts in journals and by creating posters, charts and webs, listening to stories on tape, reading words in the print-rich classroom, and writing and publishing stories to share with the class.
Reflection: As I observed an experienced first grade teacher guide a group of students through a controlled-vocabulary text called Raindrops, I was struck by the way in which she skillfully wove phonics instruction and word identification strategies, comprehension strategies (visualizing and predicting), and students' prior knowledge and experiences into a small group guided reading lesson that ended with students successfully reading the book independently. Small group guided reading experiences can be powerful experiences for emergent readers and create moments for children in which they seem themselves as successful readers. It is one thing to observe this kind of teaching in the classroom, yet it is quite another to implement this instruction yourself, attending to classroom management issues as well.
It was not until I assumed responsibility for twenty-two students in a second grade classroom that I fully recognized how important it is for reading instruction to take place in small groups. The students in my classroom ranged from those who were emergent readers needing explicit, direct instruction and experiences with letters and sounds to readers who were able to decode most words at or above a second-grade level, but needed extra support in developing comprehension strategies to help make sense of the words on the page.
Therefore, during my student teaching experience in this classroom, I met with small groups for guided reading daily in order to provide each student with differentiated reading instruction of at-level texts. In one group, we read a nonfiction book about bears and used different graphic organizers to record facts and questions about our reading. In another group, we practiced making and breaking words with the same spelling patterns to develop word identification skills. In yet another group, we worked on fluency and expression while reading Pierre by Maurice Sendak. While I met with small groups, the literacy environment in this second grade classroom provided multiple opportunities for ALL students to engage in reading and writing tasks as students made different choices of books to read, topics to write about in journals, or literacy activities such as reading the room with a pointer or unscrambling a familiar poem in the pocket chart. The literacy environment and the choices available to students played a significant role in facilitating opportunities for differentiating literacy instruction.
A classroom that balances student-centered choices with teacher-directed instruction may create a dilemma for the teacher in determining how much structure students need. What do you do when a student curls up in one of the beanbags every day with the Big Book World Atlas and is content to flip through the colorful pages for twenty minutes or more without reading a single word? What do you do when a student writes the same kitten story in her journal every day or chooses to read sports magazines without ever giving a second look to the other nonfiction books, folk tales, poetry, or chapter books in the classroom? One classroom teacher writes, "I could easily hand each of them a book or two that I think would be just right, but why? Teaching children how to make thoughtful book selections is hard work, but it's not out of their reach, or ours" (Miller, 2002). The important thing to consider when students are reading is the purpose. A teacher can and should provide guided experiences with texts that students can learn to decode and comprehend, but a completely teacher-directed classroom can turn literacy into a chore rather than a choice. When students engage in reading and writing activities, they see themselves as readers and writers. Rather than set up a classroom environment where students say "I can't read" or "I won't write," a classroom with choices enables students to say, "I am a reader and a writer."
References
Miller, Debbie. (2002). Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
