TE 402 Class Overview

Over the last 14 weeks I feel that my understanding has changed in how I look at literacy. Not only has my definition of literacy changed to encompass both reading and writing along with many other aspects, but my ideas of teaching literacy have expanded enormously. I learned how important it is to combine reading and writing together, and not just specifically during allotted reading and writing times, but also during other content areas such as science, math, and social studies. It is so important to incorporate reading and writing in every aspect of our students day to continuously have them thinking about ways to further their development in these areas. I have also learned some great strategies for promoting literacy in the classroom through explicit instruction and balanced literacy learning. Not only is it beneficial to teach students various techniques for comprehension, word/letter identification, concepts of print, fluency, and other concepts, but it is also great to incorporate literacy discussion groups and book clubs so students are able to collaborate with their peers. This type of discussion and literacy learning allows the students to further their oral language development by speaking to their peers and express their ideas in an informal setting where all students can feel comfortable in participating. Not only have I learned many things in our discussions, but being able to incorporate these findings and strategies into our field placements have been very helpful. Just being able to see how the students react to these type of strategies and how far they have come since the beginning of the year is so rewarding. Looking at my kindergarteners writing from the beginning of the year until now is absolutely amazing because of all the progress they have made. I will definitely take much of my learning from TE 402 Literacy, with me into my future classrooms and implement much of the learning and discussions into my lesson plans and teaching.