Real-Life Reading Inquiry

For my Real-Life Reading Inquiry, I decided to investigate how a student’s culture, home environment, and community affect their reading development skills and proficiency.  I visited Ms. J’s 1^st grade classroom at a local elementary school to observe a reading lesson and gather more information on this subject. I personally believe that exposure to literature at a young age is great for young learners and will help them significantly when they begin their formal education. 

The two readings from our course that inform my topic are “The Jones family’s culture of literacy” article by Johnson and “Building the Literacy Foundation,” which is the 3^rd chapter of our textbook, Classrooms that Work. Both of these readings discuss how it is essential for children to be introduced to reading at an early age. Parents can influence the children at home and when they start school, teachers can continue to help students develop a literacy foundation. 

I noticed many things while visiting Ms. J’s classroom. When I first arrived, Ms. J was telling her students about “Mouse Tales.” Every day a student would get to take a stuffed mouse home and journal about what mouse does. I thought that this was a very creative way to encourage students to practice their writing skills. Ms. J also has a very large word wall in her classroom. Throughout the lesson I observed several students referencing the word wall when they couldn’t think of a word or needed help spelling it. Ms. J also used interactive activities to keep students engaged such as “clapping” words to figure out how many syllables there were and “grabbing” a word to sound it out. After a general lesson, Ms. J spent time with students in small reading groups. While working with one group, the other students in the classroom were given the task to look for verbs in a book that the class had recently read as a whole. I noticed that Ms. J spent time going back over the lesson for that day with the lower level reading group to give them extra practice. After about 20 minutes, this lower reading group left the classroom to get extra help from specialists in the school. Ms. J worked with two other groups in the class, they read aloud, did partner reading and discussed the text. Other things that I observed in Ms. J’s classroom were multiple sections of books, lots of colorful posters, punctuation tips, several pocket charts, and flip charts.

When the students went to their special areas, I got a chance to interview Ms. J. She told me how she thinks that a literacy background helps a great deal. Recently, the demographics at her school have changed and ELL students have been integrated into her classroom. Instead of having an entirely separate curriculum, these students spend the majority of their time in Ms. J’s classroom and go to an ELL lesson for about 30 minutes a day. Ms. J believes that these students do make progress at school but when they go home they do not receive much help. Home environment makes a big difference and Ms. J can clearly see that with her students. In order to help these students get extra assistance at home, Ms. J sends a weekly newsletter to parents to let them know what their children are expected to learn each week.

This experience relates to my future teaching because I will have to work with students from various backgrounds and home environments. Ms. J definitely gave me a lot of insight on the challenge of working with students on so many different levels. She also helped me see that although it may be difficult, it is rewarding to know that you can make a difference and see the progress that students can make while in your classroom.