EDUC 310
EDUC 310: Foundations of Literacy Instruction was an enjoyable class. This course focused on literacy learning and instruction. I was not just learning about the processes, strategies, and ways of literacy; I was also applying them in the field. This course was taken as a bundle with EDUC 380 and EDUC 361. This semester was the start of gaining experience in the elementary classroom. I spent 60+ hours in a third grade classroom in Chesterfield County Public Schools. I learned ways of pedagogy, instructional activities, and ways of assessment in this course. One of the best parts of this course was the opportunity to create and teach original literacy lesson plans. The first lesson I taught in the classroom was a Shared Reading Lesson. A Shared Reading is an interactive reading experience that occurs when students join in or share the reading of a book or other text while guided and supported by a teacher. The teacher explicitly models the skills of proficient readers, including reading with fluency and expression. Similar to writing, many of us adults cannot recall learning how to read. Reading is an automatic process for us now. To be an effective teacher of reading, one must expose and model the thought process and steps of reading. That is why Shared Reading is so important. The teacher is actually modeling his/her thinking out loud to teach reading and is modeling how to be a good reader. Through this assignment, I created a lesson plan, created anchor charts, modeled how to be a good reader, and even created a writing extension activity. This lesson lasted 45 minutes and was based on an informational text about simple machines as well as the comprehension strategy of summarizing. The whole lesson went better than planned. I prepared necessary materials for the lesson beforehand, practiced fluently reading the text, loosely rehearsed the script of the lesson plan, and even anticipated what student responses I may have gotten. Of course, no matter how much one prepares, there will always be something that comes up that you have to adapt to. For example, in my original lesson plan, I had only anticipated the students needing two teacher-led models of summarizing while reading. As the lesson proceeded, I noticed some of the students needed more support outside of these two example sentences. It was easy for me to recognize these struggles and offer more support when needed. This was not the only time I offered more support than originally intended. Many students had questions regarding the content of the summary. I realized I had not set my expectations for the students as clearly as I had thought. I let students know the specific points or main ideas that should be included in their summary such as: what a simple machine is, why people use simple machines, and the types of simple machines. I even went further to give them an example of a summary of the passage, but asked students not to copy my example. Another strategy I used during the lesson that I thought was successful was the amount of student participation I encouraged. I had multiple opportunities for students to share their thoughts. I tried calling on a different student every time if I had that chance, to make sure a variety of voices were heard. When students shared their thoughts and answers, I was quick to give affirmations to correct answers and repeated them for other students to hear. The right answer does not always need to come from the teacher, sometimes it is better for students to hear the answer in a different way from their peers. The last success in my lesson was the assessment or writing extension activity. I think that the assessment and objectives of the lesson were closely aligned and the students were equipped to complete the assessment based on what I had taught them. There were multiple opportunities for students to review the vocabulary words and comprehension strategy before I asked them to engage with it independently. I learned a great deal from being able to learn and apply pedagogy throughout the semester. Below is the Shared Reading Lesson attached.
(Spring 2022)
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