Chapter 8

I think one of the most important things in this chapter is how to motivate children to read and write.  Children need motivation and examples that can help and guide them through their learning process.  Because children hear a lot of negativity throughout their school years, they need that extra push that will help them see that they can do whatever they want to do if they set their mind to it.  According to the book, "Researchers have found that motivation in schools promote: (1) choice, (2) challenge, (3) relevance, (4) authenticity, (5) social collaboration, and (6) success."

In order for children to have an open mind, they need to have kind words in the backs of their minds reminding them that they can do whatever they want.  Here is a picture with examples of what types of motivational phrases they can use instead of negative ones:

Saying these types of phrases to themselves can really help boost students' confidence and make them motivated.
One way that I have learned first-hand is that children LOVE to watch you write and read.  When I was teaching lesson plans in a Kindergarten classroom at Burris Elementary, the students loved to watch us model our writings from the lesson.  When you model literacy and writing for children, it gives them motivation to create their own writing and read what they want to read.  Another big thing that I plan on incorporating in my classroom is a "classroom library".  This will definitely promote literacy in the classroom.  Allowing children to check out books to take home with them will not only let the children read while in school, but expand that time to outside of the classroom.  Bringing a book home with them can involve their parents, caregivers, siblings, grandparents, and relatives in reading and literacy.

What Parents Can Do!

Involving families in literacy will only benefit the child. This can be something as little as reading signs on the way to work, or reading a story together every night. There are so many ways to have families be involved in literacy.

http://www.getreadytoread.org/early-learning-childhood-basics/early-literacy/promoting-family-literacy-raising-ready-readers

This website above provides a few ideas that a teacher can encourage families to participate in making their child more literate.

1. Books- Families need to establish a special place to put their children books such as a bookshelf or a safe place where they can be easily reached. When families place an importance of taking care of their books, then the children will copy their behavior. 
2. Storytelling- Having the family story tell about their family history can promote literacy through establishing fluency. A way to do is to "start by having an older member of the family tell a story about a major family event (wedding, birthday, graduation). Afterward, ask a younger member of the family to re-tell the story in his or her own words. Family members should be supportive when the child misses an important element and help the child pronounce key vocabulary words like names of relatives, locations, etc. This activity helps build vocabulary, understand sequencing and recall information." 
3. Writing notes- It is important to practice and encourage writing skills in young children. One way to do this is by writing notes to other family members on a regular basis. Also, parents are encouraged to leave notes in a lunch box, around the house, or even slipping a note underneath a pillow. Exhibiting writing can encourage young children to cop your behavior. 
4. Using the library- TAKE ADVANTAGE OF FREE LIBRARY RESOURCES! "Visiting the library together is a great way to foster family literacy activities. Not only do libraries often offer access to books on a wide range of literacy levels and subjects, libraries often have books in several languages as well. Adults and children can improve their literacy skills by reading books in the family's first language and then reading the same book in English"

Another way a teacher can encourage literacy with families is hosting a literacy family night! This can be really simple and beneficial for families and students!

Here is a video highlighting the benefits of literacy family nights! 

Tips for Family Literacy

As you all know we have been talking about family literacy. This website is a very helpful tool for those parents who want more activities to do with their students. This website lets you download different themed packets for free and print them. They have different grade levels on them. So if a parent wants to have more practice with literacy at home with their child and does not have access to a computer, you the teacher, could print it out for that family. Give it to the student at school. Reading Adventure Packs for Families is a very resourceful website. I would personally use this as an option for my parents. I want them to be actively involved as much as they can be with their students. Another website that I found is Promoting Family Literacy. This gives you different ideas that you can work on with your family at home. It give families ideas of how to incorporate literacy into home life. This video helps gives tips for family literacy. 

Involving Parents in early literacy

Parent involvement, especially in elementary school is crucial.  If parents are involved in their child's schooling, the child is more likely to be involved in school and to like school better.  When I was growing up, I was always being helped with my school work from my family.  With my grandma and grandpa both being previous elementary school teachers, and my mom, an active middle school teacher, they knew the importance of parent involvement in school.  I found a picture on Pinterest that lists ideas that parents and their children can talk about after reading non-fiction stories:

Talking through a story with your child can really open their minds a little bit more and take in more information from the book than they would if they didn't have anyone to review it with them.

Not only can parents/caregivers be involved just during the school year, but they can be involved during the summer too.  If you can engage your child in reading during the summer as well as during the school year, it will prepare them even more for reading in the next grade.  Parents can get a child involved in a summer reading program or the child's previous or future teacher could send them a calendar with daily activities for children and parents to work on literacy together such as "read a book about an animal today, describe the animal after".

Here is an example:

Promoting Family Literacy Ideas

Literacy in the home is one of the most important aspects to promote. It means that each child is ready for school before even thinking of when they are suppose to start school. This website does not just focus on the student but the entire family, because no student will read when their brother, sister, mom, or dad will not. I love the idea of the family as a unit reading, because it models what the children should do, and it will inturn expand their vocabulary.

Family Literacy Ideas

As mentioned in Chapter 10, family literacy is extremely important. It helps students to develop strong literature skills, and get the support they need both in and outside of school. Sometimes though, the pressure of at home literacy can be too much for parents. They do not know where to begin, or do not have enough time everyday to sit down with their child to provide the adequate modeling needed. This can be very stressful for parents. Especially when all parents want their children to succeed. This article I found titled, Parent Involvement in Early Literacy, provides a great beginning outline for parents. It can be overwhelming  to have the  responsibility of helping your child develop literacy outside of school, especially when you have had no experience doing so. This is a great article that points out many easy ways in which parents can promote literacy within the home without becoming stressed. Even if you do not always have time during the day to help your child this is a great tool for whoever your child is with, or even for your child to try and complete on their own. Providing at home literacy does not have to be anything extremely elaborate. By just providing simple materials like environmental text is a great way to expose children to literacy. This is also a great article that teachers can use. Teachers could use this as a guideline to send home with parents or to even use within the early childhood classrooms. Early Literature is important, and does not have to be something that is a burden on families. This is a time for a family to come together, and to learn and grow from each one another.

How to Make Families an Integral Part of the School

While reading Chapter 10 I kept recalling many of the literary experiences I had as a kid.  In a way, I was using the text to “grade” how well my parents included literature throughout a typical day at our household.  I found that my mom did an excellent job exposing me to literature.  Everyday, she read books before nap time and before bedtime and throughout the day did an okay job pointing out environmental print.  According to the text, I grew up in a literature rich environment.  I began pondering what it would be like to grow up in an environment in which my mom was not there exposing me to literature.  According to the text, 75% of families have both parents working.  Many of these families think they do not have enough time to focus on incorporating literature with their children throughout the day.  Therefore, it is our job as teachers to put forth the effort to develop and advocate for the importance of exposing literature to children at a young age.

Page 436 displays a list to show how we as teachers can make families an integral part of the school.  This list can be used to develop programs that connect families, who may not be exposing their children with enough literature, with opportunities to do so.  There is a total of 12 different bullet points corresponding with 12 different ways you as a teacher can advocate for the importance of incorporating family life within and outside of school.  My top two ideas that I would use in my classroom include:

Bullet point 2: With each new unit of instruction or concept being taught in literacy, send a newsletter to let family members know what you are studying and what they can do to help.

Bullet point 6: Send home activities for parents and children to do together and require feedback about working together.  Include activities such as writing in journals together, reading together, visiting the library, reading print in the environment, writing notes to each other, and watching and talking about programs on television.  Participating in homework assignments is extremely important.

I choose these two bulleted points because I realize that families that have both parents working realistically are going to have a difficult time making it into school.  What I can do is keep them updated on what we are doing and send home pre-made activities that require the parents to follow simple step-by-step instructions.  These activities will not take that much time out of their busy days and will give their child the exposure to literature that they would have been missing out on.  From this list what would your top 2 bulleted items be for connecting families with the school?  And most importantly why do you feel this way?  If you have to, you can choose your top three!

Family Partnerships

Chapter 10 focuses on family literacy partnerships. One section that interested me was to to involve families in your literacy program: what teachers can do for all parents. I was interested in this section because it is important that teachers view parents as partners in the development of literacy and be responsible to inform families on a regular basis about what is happening in school and how they can help their child. The book says that teachers need to involve family members in activities at home and in school and make them feel like partners in the education of their child. I think this extremely important. It is crucial that teachers have the parents trust and make them aware of what is going on in their child's life at school. By making the parents feel comfortable enough to talk and share feelings can allow for an open relationship will give parents the opportunity to give input about what they would like their child to learn, to express how they feel about what happens in school, and to offer suggestions.The parents will also feel safe enough when they talk to the teacher to let them know if when they have different feelings.

The textbook also listed several suggestions about ways to make families an integral part of the school. The suggestions listed on page 436 all have something to do with including families helping and watching the student as he/she does his/her homework.   One suggestion I found extremely important is to send home notes when a child is doing well. Don't wait to send notes just for problems. I think it is important to get parents on the educators side so that there is a good relationship and communication between parent and teacher.  The book suggested that family members should be invited to school to participate with their children in literacy activities. I recently talked to a teacher at a daycare and her child attends a school near by. The teacher and I talked about how parents come into the daycare and talk to teachers and they are comfortable with one another, but the teacher then said that she has not talked or heard from her daughters teacher and that they do not have a relationship. Instead, the daycare teacher that I talked to said that she can check her child's behavior on an app and see if she has good point or bad points.

This section in chapter 10 focused mostly on including families in the child's school life. Instead of just having the parents involved in the child's academic life at home, I think it is important that parents are involved in the school as well. Having family involvement activities several times a year is a great way to provide opportunities for children to bond with their own families and other families. The book gave some examples: theme night, cooking night, book sharing evenings, sharing family photos, or having a family fun night. Schools in my area have a family fun night once a year on a Friday night. During this time families come to the school and participate in games and different events.

Authentic Family Literacy

While reading this chapter it kind of made me sad that family literacy only got one chapter of this book. I think family literacy is such an important aspect of literacy that a lot of parents look over! Last semester, I was in an immersive course where we paired with Minnetrista to create family literacy days that provided critical thinking. I think sometimes with family literacy, you can incorporate it into activities without even realizing it! An example would be having the student and their parent read a book together and discuss connections they both could make to the story! Things as simple as that can be considered family literacy. I think something that educators and parents get confused is that family literacy should be an experience that the student does not get in school. It needs to be an activity that the child wouldn't do in a traditional classroom. This is where teachers don't know what to do! How can you plan family literacy activities for your children if it isn't done in the classroom at school? Does anyone have any good ideas for a family literacy activity that promotes critical thinking and also gives the parent and the student an authentic experience?

Looking back to my house, I realized how great my mom was at creating family literacy events! She was a kindergarten teacher before she stayed home to raise her kids, so I now realize all of the little things she did to promote literacy in our home. We had checklists for everything! Grocery lists, cleaning day, errands to run, night-time routines. You can literally name something off and she would have us help her create a list for it! We also rode our bikes to the library a lot during the summer. She even drove us all the way to Ohio for a living history museum just for fun! All of these activities were so much fun! I think that's where parents struggle with their children is that they think of literacy and automatically think "Oh well that's just going to be them reading before bed." You can make literacy fun! I loved all of the examples and charts that this book gives. I think this book could be useful for parents, not just teachers because of the resources it provides! Did anyone else have an experience like mine growing up? If so, did you feel like your mom or dad intentionally did those things or was it just a coincidence? Looking back, I think my mom intentionally planned these activities without telling us to show us literacy in our every day lives.

Literacy In The Home

This section in Chapter 10 caught my attention as it described literacy development in the home I couldn't help but to think of my house growing up. As I think of all the different rooms in our house, there was something to read kept in each room. In the living room there are several book shelves that always had books for me to read as a kid at eye level. Then in the kitchen there were always my own kids cookbooks that I could read and play along with my mom as she made dinner. From room to room through out my house there was always kids books kept out that I could reach at all times. This book selection was constantly changing. This development was not limited to print, but also writing. Since I can remember as a child the basement walls have been painted with chalkboard paint on the walls. This way we could write freely, and is where my mom spent countless hours working with me as I learned how to write. 

For a literacy environment that is successful within the home the text recommends that books should be associated with pleasure and literacy activities should be rewards. The home should be well organized with daily activities. The setting within the home should have social interactions between both adults and children; socially, emotionally, and intellectually. Children who come from these homes express early interest in reading and writing when these materials are accessible within their homes. When these children get to school age they are rated higher than average in social and emotional maturity, work habits, and general school achievements by their teachers.

The following websites are great advice for how to help your home promote literacy development:

Literacy Development Begins at Home, With a Literate Home Environment

Suggestions for Promoting Literacy Development: Toddlers and Preschoolers

What You Can Do at Home

Literacy Rich Classroom

Although this video is for pre-k, I thought it was a wonderful example of a literacy rich classroom. It gives us a tour of the room and shows all the great things this teacher is doing for their students to enrich their literacy experience. The room seems to be quite organized and during the video, they show the dramatic play area, which is specifically used to mimic a doctors office. This classroom/video contains many of the elements that we've learned are important in a literacy rich classroom and I think that this video is a great tool to provide inspiration for building your own classrooms literacy centers. As Marie mentioned in her blog post, "Simply providing students will literacy rich daily activities is not enough. Providing a literacy rich environment that supports literacy activates and materials is even more beneficial in the since that the physical environment models literacy 24/7. Students will, with out feeling pressured, find themselves practicing literacy without realizing it." She emphasizes how important it is for students to have this literacy rich environment in order to succeed. Modeling your classroom, or taking reference for your classroom from this video is a step in the right direction.

LIteracy-Rich Physical Environments

Literacy-rich environment emphasized the importance of speaking, reading, and writing in the learning of all students. This involves the selection of materials that will facilitate language and literacy opportunities, reflection and thought regarding classroom design, and intentional instruction and facilitation by teachers and staff. In the link below, there is a great checklist that a teacher can follow to make sure they create the most beneficial literacy-rich environment they can.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCwQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iup.edu%2FWorkArea%2FDownloadAsset.aspx%3Fid%3D142995&ei=SD0tVbDNE8qWNqy5gZgB&usg=AFQjCNGnWtBUF3WSLY4P87GCuHeBG63eGQ&sig2=3lR6U3EPWMoGxtOq6ELlow

By purposefully arranging the space and materials, teachers can create a physical environment that exert an active, positive, and strong influence on instruction.

Q&A about managing and organizing literacy within the classroom

http://web.uvic.ca/~gtreloar/20%20Latest%20Research%20Articles/Organizing%20Literacy%20Classrooms%20for%20Effective%20Instruction.pdf

The link I have posted is one that I found very helpful. The link will take you to a website that
that provides an article entitled "Organizing Literacy Classroom for Effective Instruction" This article proves to be very beneficial because it contains background information as well as provides several questions within the article such as "Question 1: What do I do to organize my physical classroom environment to support literacy instruction?" It first poses good questions for teachers to ask themselves but then proceeds to answer the question with great detail as well as providing visuals along the way. The remainder of the article is set up in a question and answer format providing information and research to support the answers to the question. Some of the information I came across while reading even went along with the video we watched in class today. For example the article states that "wall displays are most effective when students and teachers coproduce these. Consequently, classroom wall spaces need not be filled on the first day of school" this went along with what the video talked about how what the teacher hung up wasn't just cute but it was meaningful and tended to stay up for the remainder of the year for references. This article proved very interesting and helpful to read and contained a lot of valuable and useful techniques.

Chapter 9 searcher; Tips and examples for literacy rich classrooms

These two videos deal with providing and creating literacy rich classroom environments for students! The first video gives pictures and ideas about how to create this literacy rich environment and I think the pictures of different classrooms help to spark ideas on how to arrange your classroom for most efficient use of space to promote literacy. The second video talks more about what should be included in your literacy rich classroom, how it can be arranged and the importance of having options for different students. In one first reader post, it talked about how classrooms can be small and it is hard to fit all the essential literacy centers into the classroom, but I think these two videos give some good insight to arranging literacy centers in classrooms. They also talk about the importance of having a variety of activities for students such as individual reading corners, classroom libraries, writing centers, books on tape, and more to choose from while still getting literacy instruction. I think these videos could be quite helpful when starting to design and create your differentiated literacy areas in your own classroom!

Differentiated Instructional Materials

While reading chapter 9 I was very interested in the section about differentiated instructional materials. We have talked about this in class a lot because this topic has come up several times throughout this semester. This chapter gave a more in depth look at the organization and management of differentiated materials used in the classroom. 

The section starts by introducing different types of published materials such as basal readers, anthologies, supplementary materials, and workbooks. These books have been used for years to teach young children but do they work? These materials come pre-leveled making them easier to organize and manage in a classroom. Today some teachers are starting to shy away from these types of books and starting to use more authentic types of literacy while other teachers are still using published materials in their classrooms. Which type of differentiated literacy materials would you use in your classroom if you were allowed to choice?

This section also provides a few general questions that should be applied to the selection and use of commercial materials. One of the questions that I had never thought about was: Do the books have adequate multicultural representation? I believe that even though I never thought of this question it is an extremely important one. Classroom today look very different from classrooms 20 years ago and the materials in our classrooms should reflect these changes. The materials in our classroom should be as diverse as our classrooms are or even more diverse than our own classroom. What is a question that you would ask before choosing a published material to use in your classroom?

My favorite part of this section of the chapter was a paragraph at the bottom of page 403. The paragraph talks about children’s needed to learn a great deal of literacy aside from what is included in basal readers and practice phonics with more than a published workbook. But it also says “that without published programs teachers may feel there isn’t enough direction for them when teaching reading.” The book makes a good point here because as a teaching major it does scare me a little knowing that if the school I work at does not have a basal reading program that I am responsible with creating my own differentiated materials. The next sentence in the paragraph states, “Such programs often feel too prescriptive.” This also makes sense to me because as a teacher I want to provide my students with the most individualized instruction as I possibly can and if the program I use is too prescriptive then I am not going to be able to accommodate everyone of my students’ needs. I think it is important for teachers to find the perfect combination of the two in order to make your classroom a rich literacy environment.

Guided Reading Grouping

One of the main ideas that caught my attention in this chapter was the idea of guided reading groups. While I was reading this it made me think about the fine line that exists between grouping the higher ability and the lower ability. How can we as educators make this divide less evident?

This chapter discussed the idea of flexible grouping. This is so vital when it comes to picking groups. Once a student feels like they are stagnant in the same group, how can they feel as if they can improve or thrive to be their best? It is important that we are making sure that we are regularly assessing their growth in order to provide them with a challenging learning atmosphere.

While picking groups the text also discussed the idea of not picking students for certain groups based on one assessment. This is important because while one student may be behind in one area, they could be advanced in another. Thinking of my future classroom, I would like to set up my weekly guided reading groups based on the strengths and weaknesses of my students in different selected areas. This will also help with the flexibility of my grouping. I plan to take anecdotal records, projects, journals, and daily assessment into account. This will help to give a more well rounded and accurate read on where the student is and what they need help with.

While I am working on my literacy unit project it has really challenged me in this area. I have found that scaffolding is key when it comes to designing a guided reading lesson. It is important that our students are learning the same strategies. It also made me realize how much pressure that places on teachers. We must make sure that our students keep learning regardless of where they are. By having high expectations for all of our students, it will show our students that they are valued no matter what group they are in.

Limited Space

As I was reading this chapter, I kept wondering to myself how is it possible to fit all of the different essential elements of making a literacy rich environment in the tiny classrooms we are often given as teachers. There are many different centers that teachers must incorporate into their classroom. The literacy center needs to include an intensive library so children can access the variety of books. The classroom library should be organized for children to easy maintain themselves.

Have you considered how you might set up and run your classroom library? What are some ideas of making this area organized and easy for the students to run themselves?

 Students should have a variety of reading areas to choose from in the center. The areas should be comfortable and cozy to invite children in to read. Many classroom library and literacy centers that I have seen are themed. My personal favorite is the camping themed area. The teacher provided a tent for personal space and decorated the bulletin boards with camping themed items. What are some other great ideas for a themed literacy center?

The literacy center also should include a writing area with tables and chairs as well as an assortment of writing materials, such as pencils, crayons, poster-board, lined paper and colored paper. Having a variety of materials in the literacy center can increase the student’s creativity when writing.

This chapter provides great visuals for how to set up a literacy rich classroom. Again, I am wondering how to incorporate everything you need in a small classroom. The floor plan does not include desks or table area enough for the typical 26-student classroom. This floor plan includes everything that I would absolutely love to include in my future classroom, but I am concerned about the amount of space this takes up when we the typical classroom is quite small. A loft is a great way to increase the amount of space in the classroom, but these are often hard to receive. 

This summer, I had the privilege to help my cousin set up her 1 and 2 grade split classroom. She had parents in her classroom that offered to build her a loft in the classroom. She now uses this area as part of her literacy center.

How might one incorporate all the necessary parts of a literacy rich classroom in the limited space provided?