Family Literacy Program

https://www1.maine.gov/education/meflit/Successful%20Strategies%20(full%20version).pdf

This pdf talks about different strategies that can be implemented by a family to help their children extend on their literacy growth at home. It explains the importance of family literacy programs and even explains how you can start your very own program in your household. As a future teacher and parent I would recommend this paper as a reference on different family literacy ideas that your students families can implement or you yourself can. This paper also helps identify if the program is worthwhile or not and how the child is doing during the program.  

Family Literacy

http://www.familieslearning.org/

Since this chapter is about family literacy, I think this website is a perfect resource. This is the website for the National Center for Families Learning. This website states that the NCFL works to strengthen and broaden their approaches to family literacy. It talks about programs that NCFL has started, has tools and family resources, and so much more.

http://www.reading.org/downloads/parents/pb1044_involved.pdf

This is a pdf that explains what family literacy is. It also talks about programs and how to implement family literacy from infants to high school.

Connecting Home and School

In chapter ten, the author discussed ways that a child's home life and their school life can be connected. Parents are not always willing to help their children and see it as more of a chore. This chapter give great examples of how we can see it as a privilege. As educators, we want to bridge the gap between school and home. This website gives great examples of how parents and school can be related. We want parents to realize that it is not hard to be involved in your child's school life. Whether they realize it or not, they may already be helping their child succeed in school. This website is a perfect resource for not only parents but also educators to share with the parents of their students.

Literacy Resources for Families

I feel that there are a lot of resources for families these days that can assist them in encouraging their child's relationship with literacy.  This chapter emphasized that as teachers we need to be understanding of all families.  This is because there may be some families who have the time to sit down every night and work on literacy with their children while other families may not even see each other aside from 10 minutes before their children go to bed.  With technology advancing the majority of resources for families is online.  I found two websites that I think would help families with literacy at home.  Scholastic is a great resource in general, their parent page provides daily tips for parents to assist their children in literacy at home.  The National Children's Literacy Website provides strategies and other resources for parents to assist their children in literacy at home. 

http://www.scholastic.com/parents/
http://www.child2000.org/lit-tipsMenu.htm

Managing Literacy Centers

This is a blog that I found that is all about how one teacher runs and manages a literacy block and center all on her own with no adult help. This blog has some great advice and information on how to manage your classroom while using literacy centers as well as how to implement a literacy center. These are all just suggestions and accounts of how one teacher manages her own classroom. As such there are many different ways to accomplish this difficult task but I think that this teacher has some great ideas.
http://www.heidisongs.com/blog/2013/07/managing-literacy-centers-with-no-adult.html

Family + Literacy

Since this chapter is about family literacy, I would like to start off with a question: how did your parents help you with your literacy skills when you were younger? Did they read to you at bedtime? Did they practice spelling words with you? What does family literacy mean to you in your own words?

            The statement from pg. 419, “family members who care for children are children’s first teachers” could not be anymore true. This is why I think it is so important that parents know exactly what is going on in the classroom so they can help their children if need be.

            Did anyone have a lot of books at home when they were little? Did you have a house that promoted literacy? In the chapter it talks about a girl who began to read on her own because of what was exposed to her in her house- “because of her constant exposure to books and print from birth, she developed a large sight vocabulary and a number of reading skills.” As teachers, we can make this possible for our students by providing numerous amounts of print and books.

            If you were giving advice to a parent in regards to how they should promote literacy in their home, what would you say? How would you go about explaining how important it is?

            I would definitely remember some of the strategies listed in this chapter on how to promote literacy at home. I especially liked the “top 10 things to do with your child at home” list. Which strategy was your favorite? 

Literacy Partnerships: Home and School

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” 
 - Emilie Buchwald

I found this quote and thought how appropriate it was to this chapter. I don't remember being read to as a child, I just remember always reading. I knew that when we had children, that they would be read to all the time. Jeff and I have always read to the kids, even after they could read themselves they still enjoyed (and still do) being read to. Can not imagine not having a love for books and reading. That is why I really liked that this chapter had ideas to bridge the gap from literacy in the classroom to home.

In this chapter it says "But if we get to three parents, we have helped three families and then another and another and another. Each little success must be looked on as a large one, and we go forward from there." As teachers we will have days when we feel that the parents are not "doing their part" in helping their child to succeed. But you can never tell when you will encourage a parent to get more involved. 

On page 432 it said that it is important to for family members to just sit with each other with their own book and read. Then said that "Talking about what family members are reading is an important experience as well." I know of a number of families that do this (ours included) and if you start talking while everyone is reading you get hushed. If your students family is starting to have family reading time, having everyone give a brief summary/description of what they are/have read is a great idea.

Something that I want to include in my classroom is the backpack activity. It would be tied to our unit or theme at that time and students and families could "check out" the pack for a few days then they would be ready when the theme changed. Also would like to have parents in at the end of our unit/theme studies. Thinking we would set the classroom up and have booths and students would "guide" their parents around and explain each one. There would also be activities that they would do together.

What strategies or ideas from this chapter do you think you would want to incorporate in your classroom? Were you read to as a child? 

Family Literacy Partnerships

I particularly enjoyed reading through Chapter 10, because the information presented in the chapter is extremely relevant and beneficial to teachers. Teachers often times find it frustrating when there is a disconnect between the school and the home. It is obvious that children cannot understand all of what they are learning by just working content during school. There is just not enough time in the day for teachers to get that accomplished. With that being said, children NEED to work with others at home. 

A huge issue in schools today is the lack of support children are receiving from their home with schoolwork. With 75% of parents today both working, it can be extremely difficult for children to get the help they need after school. Not to mention how challenging it must be to be a single or non-English speaking parent. What I love about Chapter 10 though, was the fact that it recognizes all of the difficulties that parents face on a daily basis, and stresses the importance of teachers understanding those challenges as well. Even though it can be stressful to teachers, it is vital that we do our best to understand how busy these parents are. 

Page 424 in our book provides some awesome photos of different ways that parents can assist with their children's literacy development at home, besides just sitting down and reading a book with their child. Following a recipe while cooking is an idea that guardians can do with their children, as well as creating a journal with a child, and keeping a chore chart. As long as children are engaging in reading and writing in some form, then they are learning just as well as they would by reading a book. Page 425 also includes a checklist of materials and activities that parents can complete to ensure that their children are learning at home in a variety of ways. 

Overall, I found that Chapter 10 was both encouraging and informative for me. Even though the literacy experiences I had in my own home may greatly differ from my future students' experiences, this chapter reminded me to remain patient with families. I also learned about all the different ways that parents can encourage their children to learn, and will definitely be passing that information along to my students' parents in the future. 

Chapter 10 Family Literacy Partnerships

Our text mentions that family members are children’s first and longest teachers. This shows the utmost importance of family and literacy. As the chapter goes on, we read about the complexity of families in today’s society. It troubles me to read about the amount of family members who are actually illiterate. How are family supposed to provide a literacy rich environment to their child then they cannot even read themselves? Also, families who love at the poverty line have a hard time seeing the relevance and importance of having access to books in the house, going to the library, or having reading time before bed. I am just curious on how are we supposed to show caregivers the importance of literacy when they do not see the meaning of it?           

Our book also talks about materials to read in the home. It mentions the importance of having books available in every room in the house. Not just any books should be available, but a variety of books should be in each room for students to read or analyze for the younger children. I know I did not, I remember my mom would read but she never read to my brother, or me and unless we had a book from the library at school we did not have any access to books. I am just wondering how many people actually had books in every room in their house when they were growing up.

The text has a quote, “It is clear that verbal interactions between adult and child during story reading has a major influence on literacy development.” I want to know what you guys think the major influence is on the students who have those verbal interactions with adults. In my opinion, when having the verbal interactions, the students have an opportunity to think out loud and work through the beginning stages of critical thinking. What is your opinion?

Parental Involvement In And Out of The Classroom

"You may have tangible wealth untold:
 Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
 Rich than I you can never be-
 I have a Mother who reads to me."
                         -Strickland Gillian

I included the poem above because when I read it on the very first page introducing this chapter about family literacy partnerships it really hit me how lucky I was to grow up with parents that did have the time to read to my sisters and I. If also helps that both of my parents are both educators and strongly believed in exposing up to a variety of text at a young age. If you walked in to my twin sister and I's bedroom when we were young we had our very own bookshelf full of our favorite books. I can remember my sister and I sneaking books into bed at night even after our parents read to us so that we could read or tell the story though pictures to each other after my parents left. My parents caught on pretty fast to our little secret and would come and check our room to make sure we were asleep instead of reading. Now that I think back on it at least we were reading instead of playing with the toys in our room! I also remember always watching my mom especially reading and being almost envious of her because I wanted to be just like her.

         The very first thing that this chapter talks about is how important it is for families to promote literacy in their homes and to introduce their children to environment text whenever possible just like Mrs. Bolton did with the newspapers. Even though I was lucky enough to have parents who were about to promote literacy at home, it is not usually the case with most families. “Today, in about 75% of families, both parents work”. That leaves these parents little time to think about things like literacy. As future teachers we have to be aware of this and understand that not all families have the time that they would like to work with their children on literacy development, especially since they are often more worried about providing their families with the necessities like food, clothing, and shelter. It is difficult to try and make some parents understand the importance in supporting their child in literacy development at home. But it does have to be done. So as future teacher how would you guys get parent to help support literacy development at home?

         This chapter also points out the importance of teachers including parents and guardians on what is happening in the school and how they can help their child. As a teacher I think that parent involvement in and out of the classroom is very important the best way to promote that is through open communication with the parents at all times. Having a classroom that is always open to volunteers for parties, field trips, to teach about different cultures, and many other things is one way to get parent involved. In my EDEL 231 class we talked a lot about this and even made a welcome letter that explained a little bit about ourselves and our goals for the year, weekly newsletters that would inform parents on what was going on that week and if volunteers were needed, and monthly newsletters that indicated the standards students were going to be working on for each subject area. Page 436 lists 12 different ways to get family involvement at home and in the classroom. Do you have any other suggesting’s to getting parents involved in the classroom?

Check Lists

I am a huge fan of check-lists so I wanted to find something that could combine that and literacy rich classrooms.  This is what I found.

http://www.earlyliteracylearning.org/ta_pdf/reflections_chk_lists.pdf

The list goes over many different things for teachers and parents to do.  It would be a great list to send home to parents that way they also know what they need to be doing at home.  It also helps us out because it puts it all in one place and we could incorporate it into student portfolios.

Literacy-Rich Environments

While searching through the internet for ideas of how to incorporate literacy into the classroom environment, I across this awesome website that stresses the importance of having a literacy-rich environment for your students. I believe creating environment where your students can continually develop in their literacy is very important, and this site gives greats tips for doing just that. The website also goes into detail for helping students of multicultural backgrounds also further grow in their literacy development. Hope you all find this as helpful as I did!

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/literacy-rich-environments

Classroom Libraries

In descriptions of creating literacy rich classrooms there is always some type of classroom library. Creating a classroom library seems like a daunting task to me. How do you start? Where do you find books? What type of books should you look for? I looked around for a good resource to help answer these types of questions, and I think the one below has some really good pointers for new teachers starting out.

http://www.learningunlimitedllc.com/2012/10/how-does-your-classroom-library-grow-research-based-guidelines/

I also looked for some book suggestions since the quality of literature in your classroom is just as important as the amount of books in the classroom. This website took a poll and found what books 3rd through 5th grade teachers recommend go into your classroom library.

http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/post/2015/04/03/building-your-classroom-library-the-best-books-for-grades-3-5

Ch. 9

http://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/free-resources/centers

I found this on an educational site for teachers. It has some great ideas on it and some unique activities to incorporate literacy into the classroom. There are links to click on that give ideas for centers that include pictures and how they can benefit the students. This site could be very useful to us all and it would be a great website to use when planning for a unit.

http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/literacy_centers/

This is another great website that I found for teachers that lists creative literacy centers that are beneficial to the classroom. It has different sections to choose from and covers a wide range of choices from small to whole group instruction. I think that this website can be very useful for a classroom setting and I would recommend it as a useful tool for classroom planning.

Organizing Literacy Programs

Chapter 9 is a great chapter if a teacher needs help developing ideas that will help every student in the classroom learn certain material. The first step to making a classroom  successful is establishing an environment that is very positive and productive for students. If a student does not feel comfortable in a classroom and he or she doesn't feel like she can share their ideas not a lot of success will happen in the class room.
The chapter also talks about content-area centers which will be in my future classroom. When it comes to language arts  course a literacy or writing center will be beneficial for students to understand what is being taught by the teacher. I do believe that these two centers should be private for students that want to read or write on their own. If a student is anything like me I hate reading in front of people and I hate writing in front of people. Some students like to be in groups. If a student learns better in a group then a group should be available for the student to be apart of. I really like the idea of content-area centers in a classroom. It allows the student to understand the theme that is being presented or taught through different subjects. What is your opinion on content-area centers?

Physical Environment in Your Classroom and Differentiation of Instruction

This was definitely an interesting chapter to read. I found the information about how the success of your literacy program depends to a large extent on how it is organized, designed, and managed. I am sure that some people don't realize the effect of the physical environment of the classroom has on the success of the students' learning. Many times in the upper elementary classrooms such as second grade through fourth grade people don't focus on the physical environment as much. They don't worry about different centers within the classroom to help and differentiate the learning styles. In learning centers the students aren't just stuck behind a desk working, but instead they could be working in groups, or one-on-one.

I had a few areas of the chapter that I really found resourceful. One was the section about preparing literacy-rich physical environments. We kind of discussed this topic recently in class with motivating the students and throughout the semester so far. This section focused on ways to arrange the space and materials in the classroom so that the teacher can create a physical environment that exert an active positive, and pervasive influence on instruction. I think that this is important to know as a teacher, because there are many times where teachers don't focus on the environment that they are presenting information and only focus on the information or content being taught. They need to realize that the environment effects the students. Having classroom centers, literacy centers and writing areas can have a big effect on the students and their learning. Sadly not many classrooms that I have seen have centers, at least not in the older grades like third or fourth. They might have a little reading area but nothing as extensive as the example classroom set ups that were shown in the book. I know that I will definitely try to have centers in my classroom. I think that they benefit the students and allow them to learn in a different way since they aren't just stuck behind a desk. They also encourage motivation as we discussed in the past few classes.

The second area of the chapter that I found resourceful was the section talking about organization of the classroom for differentiation of instruction. This section was all about grouping the students and different ways of going about doing that. I liked how it described the different instruction strategies such as small-group instruction and its benefits. Differentiation of instruction using small-group instruction and center activities allows the students to work together on some tasks but it also helps students who might be struggling get some extra help or learn the information in a different way. All in all, this chapter was a great read and had very valuable information throughout. It is interesting reading through the later chapters in the book because there are many things that we have discussed in class already, but in this chapter it shows it in a different light or how to use it in a different way. It expands on the information to put it in a similar way.  

Creating your Literacy-Rich Environment

n chapter 9, the author begins by talking about the importance of a literacy-rich environment. In a literacy-rich environment, literacy development and content-area teaching go hand-in-hand and there is a plethora of materials. It’s important for the indoor space as well as the outdoor space to have appropriate materials that help with literacy development. Indoor space is something is something that I often think about. I want my classroom to have lots of books, papers and pencils. I want it to have posters on the wall, and word walls, and I’ll have a morning message each day. But I haven’t really thought about outdoor space.  In the book, on page 377, the author list items that should would be beneficial at an outdoor play area and state  “new materials that reflect unit instruction also add to the interest of outdoor play” and that “The materials generate language during play and in class discussions and provide information for writing experience charts and class books.” So that is definitely something to think about.

The importance of classroom centers is also stressed. Pages 380 and 381 have sample floor plans containing content-area centers. Centers should not be randomly organized. For instance, the book gives the example of the art center that’s located near a sink so the students can easily get to water.  Now, I don’t know about you all, but the classrooms I have been in are not large enough to contain centers. I love the idea of it, but when I graduate and start teaching, I’m sure my classroom will be pretty small, and I might have to be very imaginative with what I do with my classroom.

The author also talks about whole group, small group, and one-on-one instruction, and explains when and how to use each instruction. Whole group instruction should be used to teach information that needs to be introduced to the entire class, while small group instruction can be used when pairing student in groups for projects or when a specific number of students need to work on something. Many students enjoy one-on-one time with the teacher, or the individualized instruction. While it is important that students are able to get along and work together, they also need to learn to work individually and solve problems themselves.

I felt that this chapter was very helpful. I learned a lot about how to create a literacy-rich environment, and about differentiating instruction.