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 1st 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 3rd 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.
This is a great topic and something that really interest me! A students background and home life can have a large impact on their success in education.
ReplyDelete