The oldest sea monkey

So, in reading my previous blogs, comments and some other classmates’ blogs, I was thinking about how I used to view the world of blogging.  In previous experience, I had friends who would blog about good days, bad ones, trips they were taking or venting in general.  I was wondering how I would do it in a more professional way but keep the spirit of blogging.  I have learned that blogging is not difficult and can provide a venue for great discussion and expression.  

Part of the reason I enjoy graduate school classes is the experiences everyone brings into the class.  After teaching a few years myself, I realize I have lots of stories.  I also realize these stories can tie into what we learn in class.  Blogging about past experiences helps me make connections between what children were learning based on readings and class discussions.  I also enjoyed being able to read about colleagues experiences.  I reread some and thought, “Yes!  I have thought/felt/been there before.”  Blogging helped a group of professionals come together and share thoughts and respond to the thoughts of others.  The fact that not everyone in the class is a teacher only enriched the experience as others brought in new perspectives.

I feel like I have learned quite a bit about early literacy through the class and show evidence in the blogs. I have started paying much more attention to the skills my toddlers already have and am working on taking them further.  I also have more awareness of what young children can do with reading and writing even at the early ages and won’t doubt it again.  Yes, who knew you COULD do a running record with a 4 year-old? 

Another song runs through my head, but this emphasizes the idea of congruence in my mind!

The Gaskins and Labbo article brought up a lot of issues that we focus on frequently, nature vs. nurture, incongruencies in the home and school environments, and tah-dah – children learn differently!  The authors pointed out many different aspects that might put a child at risk but seem to place most of the responsibility on the teacher to make up the difference rather than working with the family.  Many criticisms were presented on the Handbook of Early Literacy Research as well as areas of further needed research.  The article was critical, yet accurate.  Especially when presenting issues regarding the education, preparation and salaries of teachers as a crucial part of helping children build language and literacy skills.  I agree that a well-trained teacher can make the most out of sparse materials and be effective, but wouldn’t it be nice if he or she didn’t have to?

The chapter in Barone and Mallette meshes with the article in addressing the at-risk issue as well as guidelines and the NCLB Act.  While reading about the different approaches, I thought about my brother.  He managed to slip through the cracks of the educational system until he was in 8th grade.  It was then they realized he was reading at a 2nd grade level.  I often wondered how he managed to get that far without anyone noticing.  He did not fall into any of the predictive categories for at-risk yet he clearly had a need for intervention.  He was a quiet student and often caused no ripples yet he must have been screaming inside for some help.  As teachers, finding out what children need our help most might be difficult as times but truly necessary.  

That is either a country song or the common thread to the video and readings for this week.  Children spend so much of their time at school and we get such a picture of the way they are with us that it might be easy to forget things might be different at home.  I really enjoyed the ideas presented to make the two main environments for the child more congruent.  The importance of the experiences the child brings to school should be included within the educational context to truly reach the child and expand upon their literacy. The video points out both the school and home can learn from each other in terms of literacy. Both settings are very valuable in their contributions. The Venn diagram in the Duke article shows many different genres present only in home or school settings.  Looking at the ones in the home setting makes me think why not bring more of that into school?  I remember teaching 2’s a few years ago and my co-worker brought in one of the catalogs from home so she could show us what she was going to order.  One of the little girls managed to reach it and when we looked over at her, she was propped up on the couch in Housekeeping looking through it.  We thought it cute and funny, but she was making a connection between what she does at home and something at school.  After that, the catalogs made regular appearances. 

I found the case study done by Gillanders to be heartwarming and inspiring.  I think Sarah showed real dedication to her students by attempting to learn some Spanish and bringing the language more into her classroom.  She could also empathize with their situation by going to class to learn and feeling some of the frustration in learning a second language.  The other students in her class also enjoyed learning the Spanish songs which increased the status of the Latino children in her class.  A big part of establishing a relationship with people is showing respect for who they are and trying to walk a mile in their shoes and she did both rather well.  In case you can’t tell, I’m a fan!

The Gursten and Geva article Shed some light on learning phonological awareness and reading among children learning English.  One part that struck me the most was the assessment of learning disabilities within this population.  In a class last semester, we talked about being very careful to not “label” ELLs with learning disabilities unless certain.  Part of me worried a little bit that children who are learning English as a second language and actually do have a learning disability might fall through the cracks of the system due to educator fear of mislabeling.  The article seemed fairly confident that valid and reliable assessments can be performed now at an early age allowing children to access help if they need it.

*** Oops, so I hit save instead of publish so this is a week late!***

So stop me if I have already talked about this, but I feel teachers of very young children are better equipped to deal with some of the issues that teachers of ELL face.  Especially with infants and toddlers who are learning the language, we use a lot of the same strategiessuch as lots of visual cues and expressions when teaching new things.  We also pay special attention to transitions to give warning and maybe even provide a prop to aid in the understanding of what is next.  Part of what is different and probably most important, woould be knowing the background of the family and students in the class.  Cultural practices, beliefs, and even holidays may differ greatly among children and knowing where the family is coming from helps teachers to be sensitive to differences and effects within the classroom.  I think the hardest thing sometimes is knowing what these differences are and recognizing they might not be congruent with the teacher’s beliefs but are nonetheless valid and should be respected.  I also think it is important to realize that much of our communication may contain idioms that may not be understood universally and should be explained in a different way.

I found the article on emerging literacy within the population of children with visual impairment very interesting.  In another class last week, we talked about children with visual impairment in a somewhat different context but it supported the reading this week.  Part of what I found especially interesting was the language delay in children with VI.  I was a little confused at first about the “why” concerning language delay considering it was described as a primarily biological.  The explanation of fewer opportunities to explore, less available non-verbal cues, and relative inability to perceive facial expressions or eye contact helped dispel some of the confusion.  I have only worked with one child with VI in my personal teaching history.  Most of his utterances were echolalic in nature with very little relevance to the situation.  Over the 2 years he was in my class, his verbalizations remained echolalic but were became more related to situations.  I realize now how poorly trained we were in dealing with his VI and perhaps ways we could have done much better.  Clearly, we were aware of the importance of providing many verbal descriptions of his actions or interactions with objects and peers, but we should have done more.  In my other class, we talked about the importance of experiences with real objects as much as possible to allow children to develop a true understanding of their world.  I liked the description of the plastic spider although I am not sure I would have thought, or had the desire, to find a real spider to allow the child to truly grasp the concept of a spider.  Just as I would not want to climb 60 flights of stairs to show a child what a skyscraper was!

Too bad children these days would not understand either reference!  I have to say, I had very little understanding of a running record before reading the information this week.  The only readers I have seen in preschool are at the emergent level with some children “reading” a book from memory and not necessarily attending to the specific print.  Some kids over the years have gotten to the point they recognize many of the words and can tell the story accurately based on previous experience, the illustrations, and some sight words.  This goes along nicely with the fact that the text selection should be meaningful to the child for an authentic assessment.  I think about reading things that don’t interest me and I probably would not pay that much attention to reading all words correctly either!  I know some of the kindergarten teachers out there probably use this and am curious as to how it works for them.  I appreciated the examples given but still feel a little unsure about the exact process translating into teaching, although the “pony” and “horse” example helped!

I started to write this last night but was like a kid waiting for it to snow and was too excited.  Granted the reasons may have been a little different.  No school today!  The readings this week were mostly about repeated readings and how children gain deeper understanding of vocabulary, the story, and emotional content with each subsequent reading.  I was thinking of my toddlers and how we constantly read some of the same stories over and over again (can i say I know The Big Red Barn by heart?).  My kids show increased evidence of being able to predict the events (shh, animals sleeping) and further identification of emotions.  The old lady who swallowed a fly definitely cries at the end and putting their fingers to their cheeks, my kids say sad.  Now when a classmate is crying, often other children will put their fingers up and say, “so and so sad.”  They are really starting to recognize some emotional states in others and expressing them.  We were talking about friendship a few weeks ago and reading Hands are not for Hitting and are hoping with repeated readings that the message would sink in.  Some parents have expressed concern that the book is teaching children to hit rather than have the opposite effect, but they are toddlers and it takes some time to develop the language and social skills to express themselves in non-physical ways.  I am confident we will get there.  Even though we read a lot of the same stories as toddlers, I feel preschoolers did not get the benefit of repeated readings when I taught them.  It seems there was more of a focus on the new and different based on themes as the weeks changed.  I feel the articles really emphasize the importance of planning repeated readings of more complicated stories to push children past their current comprehension to new heights.

On another note, last week we talked about the emergent writing of toddlers and twos.  I shared with my group the  story of one of my toddlers who could identify the names of all of his classmates on a large shared piece of art.  He recognized the names as separate from the drawings and I was impressed.  Last week, while coloring with crayons, the same child made a circle. I commented on it and said it was round like a face.  he looked at me and made a couple of dots in the circle.  Maybe it was just me, but I thought he was drawing features on his face and was amazed.  They constantly amaze me with the new things they are learning and their understanding.  Hopefully, they are enjoying the snow day as well!

So I really enjoyed the Rowe article this week with regards to my children.  So mush of what we read is geared towards older children, and this one helped me realize what we do for the birth through 3 year-old population.  While reading, I was reminded of a story with one of my kids’ parents last year in the nursery.  She came in one morning and said, “Do you guys have them turn the pages when you read books to them?” i said, “Yes, we encourage them to and they often will.”  She was amazed that her son, not yet a year old, was engaging in this behavior and had started it at home too.  I think of it as one of the first social contracts we subconsciously teach them, after “books are not a snack!”  Maybe that is not subconscious. We are often still working on that one into the toddler year though.  

I was also thinking about the progression described in the article of writing.  Some of my kids have moved past the unintentional physical (what do I do with this thing . . . oh, look it makes color!) to more repetitive intentional marks.  Several of my kids have started making circles while they look at the paper then look up at us and smile.  I am interested in seeing how they progress with scribbles and writing as they progress through this year turning 2 along the way.  I am not sure we are quite ready for the havoc of having scissors, hole punchers, staplers and markers available at a writing center, but maybe we are ready for a bit more adventure!

The article on CALP provided a different perspective compared to what I learned last semester about developing BICS and CALP.  The article points out the idea that CALP is decontextualized and all language learning is essentially social.  I agree with this but do not think it completely disproves the idea that language used for social interactions differs from language used to learn math or science.  Last semester, we discussed methods to help develop academic language for ELLs.  Social interaction provides the base for this learning such as using group work or visuals to help develop this more academically based language.  I think it is easier for preschool teachers to embrace these ideas since much of our teaching involves using multiple pathways to teach concepts regardless of the home language of our students.  Thus we create contexts for language learning and have no real place for decontextualized language.

The other reading centered on using technology within the classroom.  I have to say when I had older children, much of our computer programs were educational but canned and did not allow much room for personal writing creations.  I really like the idea of using Word to let children type their names, at the very least.  I think the space bar provides a very concrete example of the end of one word and the start of another.  I remember having a computer class when I was young that allowed us to create pictures by typing in line after line of bizarre text that made no sense in and of themselves but when executed showed a flower or something.  Children these days are exposed to computers in a much more sophisticated way at a much earlier age and will continue to rely on them as they get older.  I think it is important to start teaching computer literacy at an early age since it will be so prevalent in their lives.