Preparing Our Classrooms for Literacy

The first article I read was Allington's "The schools we have, the school we need. The Reading Teacher." I picked up several key points that we have been talking about this past semester in Reading Education, but also in my 422 class. These main points came through when Allington compared what teachers to to what they should be doing. For example, he compared sorting vs. assorting. Schools place such an emphasize on placing and tracking lower developed students without understanding or recognizing their full potential. It is almost as if teachers are losing time by assessing and tracking who should be placed in special help or a lower reading level. In actuality, students should be instructed on their ability. It is so important for teachers to not undermine a child's ability. In fact, I am a strong believer in integrating reading through every subject. As Allington pointed out in his article, there is slim pickings over the books in which children can choose from in the classroom. Teachers also are uncomfortable with the idea of letting kids flat out sit and read. They feel like they are not doing their job I suppose or that children aren't taking anything away from that experience. I think this is going away from everything we have learned so far. If a teacher sets the child up in supportive ways such as a word wall, pictures, reading folder, and etc, a child can use those tools to facilitate and stimulate themselves with the text they are discovering on their own. Allington mentioned ways in which we could change our classroom to support literacy. I really liked the idea of delegating two days out the week to be literacy days. However, much of the other things he mentioned involved money and funding. I see this as a long but needed battle.

The other article I read was chapter 12 out of "Classrooms that work." I looked very closely to "A Day in a Kindergarten Classroom" because so far that is what I am interested in teaching. I thought the most interesting thing that stuck out to me was giving students choice. When they walk in they have a choice, whether it is choice of center they want to do or the choice of letter they want to be when they leave for recess. There is a lot of group and individual critical thinking, but the teacher is leaving the critical thinking to the students. It is very much an inquiry based classroom. This chapter took in what we have been learning from the past semester such as rhyming, fluency, context cues, real alouds, repetitive reading and placed it into a day activity. It showed me how easy it can be to incorporate literacy into every different subject.