Teacher Life

This semester I have had the the opportunity to tutor a student in literacy. Through this process, I decided to research the impact screen or paper reading has on a student’s rate.

 

Literacy skills give us the ability to express ourselves, learn about far-away places and spark curiosity. For students, being able to write is one of the most important life-skills they can learn in school. However, it takes time for students to develop these literacy skills.

Literacy development is the different developmental stages students go through when they are learning to read, spell and comprehend. It is important to understand that students go through these stages at different rates and sometimes spend significant time in two stages simultaneously.

This is an audiotape of the introduction:

 

Stage 1: birth to 6 years old 

• scribbling and drawing
• mock writing

Stage 2: 6 to 7 years old

• invented spelling
• reasoning, predicting and creating imaginary roles

Stage 3: 7 to 9 years old

• can print words with the correct size and shape
• punctuation and capitalization
• can construct two consecutive correct sentences

Stage 4: 9 to 12 years old

• plan, form & intent
• legible & fluent handwriting
• purpose and delivery of message

Stage 5: 12 to 14 years old

• can move between spoken and written discourse
• test writing

Stage 6: 15 to 18 years old

• full use of curriculum cycle
• write diverse forms for multiple audiences 

This links  to a timeline of my own literacy development. 

Reading Goes Hand in Hand with Writing

In a addition to writing, reading is also a crucial component of literacy. Reading plays a major role in influencing the way students learn to write. Below is an audiotape of the book The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. This book provides students with examples of proper punctuation usage, such as periods, question marks, exclamation points, apostrophes, and quotations marks.

 

Integrating Choice in the Classroom

One of the most beneficial techniques a teacher can use when teaching literacy is choice. This link will direct you to a choice-board, allowing students to decide what format they would like to use for their summative assessment. 

 

Welcome to my blog! My name is Kayla, I am a Senior at Longwood University, and an aspiring elementary school teacher!