ENTRY #2

Oral language is the very first step to becoming a reader.  It is most student's first experience with language.  While some students may never actually speak themselves, they will consistently be exposed to oral language through listening.  It is also something that needs to continuously be fostered throughout the students academic career.  A student will better understand any text, if it is something they feel comfortable talking about and using the language involved.  As a teacher it is important to encourage oral academic language in the classroom to better develop student's vocabulary and background knowledge, as these are essential elements for reading comprehension.

ENTRY #1

I had a discussion with a teacher from a different district than mine and while I was impressed with the individual teacher's thoughts, I was very surprised to hear about the differences between the 2 districts approaches to literacy.  The teacher's basic philosophy about literacy was that it was the keystone to all learning and involved the integration of both reading and writing.  She felt that it should be incorporated into all aspects of school in order for her students to grow to their highest potential as readers and writers.  Her priorities aligned pretty closely with mine, as she stated that students need to learn to read before they can adequately access all other curriculum.
She went on to discuss that her district had no formal literacy guide that was followed by the district.  She informed me that each school used different programs/ curricula chosen by the administration.  She said the literacy program she used was self-made by her team, using a variety of resources and teacher experience.  While this seems unorganized, it leaves much room for using assessment to inform your lessons.  On the other hand, my district has a specially designed literacy program with full reading's workshop and writer's workshop lessons, split into a variety of units.  Our units are themed based incorporating skills that overlap in both reading and writing.  This is much more organized and very strongly aligned to the state standards, but leaves less room for differentiation.  While I believe there are pros and cons to both systems, it was very interesting for me to hear about such differences.