literacy curriculums and NCLB: friend or foe?

The chapter on Issue in Early Literacy was very thought provoking concerning appropriate literacy curriculums, and yet again, the downsides of NCLB.  First of all, the chapter brings up the term “at-risk” which I continue to have troubles with.  Barone et. al. states that children labeled at-risk are students who “did not match those of the dominant white culture” and “the risk of failure for these children was seen as a deficiency within the children.”  In the elementary school where I taught a Title I Pre-k class we were not included with the older children in any activities of the school and we were also seen as the red-headed step children, so to say.  The teachers and principals blamed our children for their lack of meeting AYP goals, even though we didn’t even count for that, and the administration did not like our presence in the school at all as we did not help with their image.  These children were only 4 years old and already stamped with a label of being social deviants who do not learn as well as the other children and who will only lower EOG test scores.  Is there a better way to help these children in need without giving them a negative label?  I’m sure it would be great if there was universal public pre-k for all children, but that is a dream not likely to come about soon.

Staying along the lines of at-risk readers, I was interested to read of the different types of literacy programs available.  I particularly was interested in the Anna Plan as children were neither pulled out and labeled nor given a one size fits all curriculum.  Instead this curriculum is actually centered around what is best for each child and the teachers as well.  It is very sad that NCLB is regulating testing and scores so that teachers are forced to focus only on what will be assessed in EOGs.  At this point I have not heard or read anything positive about NCLB, and this chapter was no exception.  It is written in the legislation that “by the year 2014 all students will meet their state standards in all subjects and at all grade levels.”  How is that supposed to be possible for both students and teachers?  As schools need to be showing progress in test scores each year, more and more schools will be falling short of this goal.  When schools do not make progress the parents are allowed to put their children in different schools, thereby lowering the test scores of the original even more–a never-ending cycle.  It is very saddening to read that teachers are not having the time to even read to their students anymore!  Hopefully, when schools do not meet the NCLB standards in 5 years, Congress will be ready to make a change!

self-evaluation

I can’t believe this semester is almost over!  How fast it has gone by.  I just re-read all of my past blogs and it was a great refresher of what we’ve discussed and what I’ve learned over the past couple of months.  I have found many of the concepts and lessons in this class to be very helpful in my career working with preschool children.  I have tried to incorporate many of the ideas and activities related to phonemic and phonological awareness into my lessons and think my children have benefited from them.  Besides learning about how children learn to read, both at home and at school, I also was impacted by the articles about working with visually and hearing impaired children and home literacy in the classroom.

As a teacher of literacy learners, I have especially enjoyed learning about ways to teach early reading and writing skills that benefit all children including those with special needs.  Not only have I read this, but now I have put these strategies into action and seen how phonological awareness activities are not just fun, but very helpful to increase academic skills in young kids.

And as a blogger, I have actually really enjoyed voicing my opinion to others and especially to hear back from other teachers/professionals.  It’s great to hear when someone agrees with your thoughts, but also when you get some great suggestions from such intelligent classmates!  It was great to be able to read everyone’s blogs as well over the semester.  I loved hearing about what everyone else is doing in their classrooms and literacy.  I believe we all were able to participate successfully as learners, teachers, and bloggers by sharing thoughts and ideas in a friendly yet professional arena.

Bringing literacy to school

I thought that the article about literacy genres that children are exposed to at home and at school was very interesting and helpful as a teacher.  Many of the children in our classrooms have a different experience at home that we may have had, but they are being exposed to print and literacy in various forms.  Preschool classrooms already bring many genres of print found at home into the classroom in housekeeping and other centers, like having empty food containers and grocery lists.  I think it is a great idea to include as much literacy that children are exposed to at home into the classroom and relate it to the lesson.  I liked the example of bringing in a chicken soup can while discussing poems from a book called Chicken Soup with Rice and finding words in each that were the same.  It’s also great to have children bring in literacy related items that they see frequently at home, like cereal boxes, the TV guide, or grocery lists to work on reading.  Bringing objects in from home can help the children and families to feel more comfortable and connected with school by validating and matching what they are already doing at home.

My hands on my head, que esta aqui?

Preschool is most definitely a great place for children of all languages to begin schooling in an American classroom.  There are so many great strategies that preschool teachers and classroom already have in place to help the entire class with developing social skills, phonemic awareness, reading and writing skills that are also necessary for ELL children.  Both articles this week mentioned including activities from both English and Spanish in the classroom while also using gestures, pictures, and facial expressions to teach new vocabulary and keep the class invovled in reading.

When I was teaching a Pre-K class, about 50% of the class was Hispanic and the other 50% was African American.  It would not seem fair to only have books and songs in English when half of the class spoke Spanish as their first language, so we read books that had both English and Spanish text and sang songs everyday in both languages, too.  The kids loved the songs in Spanish, even though they didn’t understand exactly what they were singing all of the time…”this is my cabeza my mamasita…”

Leamos!

Learning a second language is not easy–I can say that now from experience!  I’m taking a Spanish for Educators class this semester and I tried to use some of my new lingual knowlege at an IEP meeting this morning, but it sure is hard to come up with what you want to say on the fly.  I found myself stumbling over simple sentences and phrases because I only speak Spanish once a week in class.  I can’t begin to think about using academic language in Spanish.  I understand only a small piece of how hard it must be for ELL students to come to a new county and be expected not only to learn another language for conversation and to eventually learn academic language, but also to keep up with their English speaking peers.  I thought the chapter in the book was pretty interesting when talking about the different types of reading that are helpful for ELL children to learn academic English.  I agree that not enough Kindergarten and 1st grade classes are reading non-fiction texts as it is, but how difficult must it be to talk about asteroids without any exposure to that type of vocabulary?

visual impairments and reading

I found the article about emergent literacy in preschools for visually impaired children very interesting.  I had never really thought about how these children learn to read, but it has got to be incredibly hard to not only keep these kids interested in books when they can’t see the great pictures, but then to expect them to understand the correlation between sounds, letters and words!  The three teachers in this article sounded amazing and very experienced with teaching VI kids with braille and print.  I thought it was great that they gave the children numerous opportunities to be involved in writing, drawing, and reading and that the teachers were able to make books more interesting with voices and sound effects.

I recently spoke with a speech therapist about teaching grammar and semantics to children with hearing impairments.  Since American Sign Language is not word for word, but instead is spoken more like phrases, these children have a very difficult time learning to write with correct grammar and often leave out words like “a” and “the” because they don’t use them.  I had never thought about this but it makes so much sense!  You then have to think about when should word for word English be taught with ASL–does one come before the other or can you do them simultaneously?  It seems like it would be teaching two different languages and would be so confusing for these kids.  I have a lot of respect for the amazing teachers that work with hearing and visually impaired students!

Keeping records

After reading the article about keeping running records as ongoing assessments for early readers, I am glad that I work with preschool children.  I agree that the information that is obtained from these assessments are very helpful for the teachers and students, but I was just a bit overwhelmed just reading about how to do them.  Running records seemed like quite a bit to do, unless you’ve had a lot of practice.  It looked easy enough when you were just listening to a child read and putting a check for each word they read correctly, but then they introduced how to write errors–E, SC, M, S, V, I think it would all be very hard to keep up with.  Miscue analysis seemed to be a little more doable since you have a copy of the passage being read to write on.

I think that these assessments are probably very helpful for teachers, but I would imagine it takes a lot of practice to be able to do a running record with a young child without making them wait on you.  I also would be concerned about finding the time to do the assessments with each child.  Teachers are expected to keep so many records and data of their students that finding time to teach can be difficult.  Unless the teacher is very experienced with this type of record keeping I think it would be hard to implement, though well worth it.

Preschool Theater

I was particularly interested in the article about readers theater because not only have I not heard this term before, but it also sounds like a lot of fun!  So many young children enjoy acting out books that they have read in class and there are plenty of future actors who would love an audience.  I think it is a great way to get young children interested in books as well as develop early literacy skills. 

I also really enjoyed reading about developing literacy and social/emotional skills through readings.  Social skills are so important for young children, but feelings and strategies can be very abstract and hard to teach.  I often read books about emotions and how to appropriately respond to different feelings with my children and agree that relating children’s own experiences to a book are a great way to teach social vocabulary and skills.  I also think that it is a great idea to read and discuss social books in small groups where children feel more comfortable and have more opportunity to speak and give their opinions.

Bussy at the beach

I was visiting a child that I work with at her preschool last week and walked up to her sitting with her teacher creating a story.  My child, Jadie, is sometimes hard to focus and very sensory-seeking, which can be difficult at times for me to work with her.  But not that day–she had chosen to sit with a teacher and create a story about any person or experience that she wanted and she proceeded to fill a page about her mother, Bussy, at the beach.  I was surprised to see this normally active and unattentive child sitting and dictating a detailed and poetic story about the waves, her mother playing, and the colors she saw.  It was beautiful!  The children created stories that they were going to act out at a later point and I am very sad that I did not see the show, but I learned not to expect what a child can or cannot do until she/he is given the opportunity.  Revisiting the LEA states that doing LEA activities with children with special needs can be “extremely helpful” and I can see how.  Jadie was very proud to tell her story and create work of her own.

BICS or CALP???

So I’ve just finished a class last semester about teaching ELL students where a lot of the focus was on when and how children learning a second language and develop BICS and CALP.  I thought I had a pretty good understanding of their importance, but now after reading A culpable CALP… I’m a little unsure how I feel about all of it.  I firmly believe that all children who are learning a second or third (fourth, fifth) language develop different skills at various speeds, such as social and more spoken language first and then the academic language comes next.  I think that it is very important for teachers to understand that BICS comes first (in about 2 years) and CALP takes much longer (around 5-7 years) to develop.  Therefore, these teachers need to be aware that ELL children may be able to socialize very well, but are not yet at grade level with their academic language.  This article made it sound as if teachers are making excuses for ELL children and not expecting as much from them, when in fact they are making great progress with their academic language.  There was an excerpt from the article where Ms. Piper tells Joaquin to make his “m” longer, and he does by extending the length of the letter.  She then over-reacts by becoming shrill and telling him he made a mistake, when he really did follow her direction.  I think the “mistakes” that Joaquin makes in each of these examples are responses that any child in a kindergarten classroom can make, regardless of their English language experience.  I was very sad to read that Joaquin was held back a year instead of moving up with his peers and continuing to learn English through content teaching.  The only thing that I really did agree with in the article is that teachers should not limit their instruction based on the perception of their students abilities, or lack of, but instead classrooms need to focus on teaching CALP through meaningful lessons and activities.

 My opinions of chapter 5 of the text are not quite as strong, but I did find the use of technology in preschool classrooms very interesting.  I agreed that allowing young children to learn to read and write by typing in a Word program is a great idea because they really do understand that words are separated by spaces and to be able to check spelling and grammar.  I know that children are learning to use computers and the Internet at a young age and I was glad to hear that there are search engines for kids to help parents sensor what they see out there!