Module 4: Reading Reflection

After reading chapters 10 and 11 I found that in many cases I was incorporating most of the components of a Comprehensive Literacy Approach within my classroom. For example, I am a big advocate for mini-lesson which include the read-aloud and I myself model thinking while reading and also including the students by getting students opinions and thinking as well. I use shared reading a lot during poetry units but I definitely see how shared reading should be incorporated several times a week. I tried to get guided reading groups in everyday or at least have my students work with their literature groups. I started literature groups the second half of the year but next year I believe I will start them earlier because my class had a lot of success with literature groups. I luckily had a huge chunk of my day that I was able to have my reading and writing time at once. Because of this I tried to teach reading and writing as one so that they weren’t separate subjects. I feel that in a comprehensive literacy approach reading and writing go hand in hand and should be considered one rather than two separate subjects. Within my writing time my students spent a lot of time with independent writing or sustained writing. I tried really hard not to give them too much control over what I wanted them to write because I feel that the best writing comes when the students have control over what they want to write about. Also, going back to the reading, I wanted them to try a strategy that the author we were reading was using. For example, if the author used a lot of figurative language I would guide my students on how to incorporate figurative language within their writing. I was also big on reading and writing individual conferences. This was where I differentiated my instruction the most because I could really focus in on my students individual needs. In conjunction with reading mini-lesson I would also do writing mini-lesson where I would demonstrate the write-alouds as the comprehensive literacy program puts it. Here I would model the writing strategy that we were focusing on. This was always fun because as a class my students and I would write a story or poem together. Of course I would guide their responses but ultimately we were writing a piece together.  Each day I would try to incorporate an “authors chair” as I called it so that students had the opportunity to share their writing whether complete or not. I found this to be really helpful because the students LOVED sharing what they had written. It was also good for collaboration because students were able to comment on each other’s papers with a glow (something good about their paper) and a grow (something they could improve within their paper). I think one of my biggest weaknesses or area to improve would be in the reading to learn and writing to learn. This I feel I did mostly in my informational unit but with common core we will be incorporating this a lot more. Therefore I enjoyed reading more about how to use this within the classroom. Overall I feel that for the most part I have been utilizing the comprehensive literacy program but it was great to see how I can enhance my program.