Your Child is Developing..Their Writing Skills

To me, the word 'education' is synonymous with 'family.' In order to ensure a child's success in the classroom, we must ensure cooperation that extends beyond the classroom. How can we help a child feel confident and ready, particularly in their literacy skills?

Two words: Educate. Family.

These two words are both valuable on their own, but together, they are mighty and powerful. In the article, 'Every Mark on the Page: Educating Family and Community Members about Young Children's Writing,' Kate Cusumano discusses why and how we educate families on the "development of early writing, teaching them to view writing in a positive light, rather than from a deficit viewpoint"(9). This a great article as a reference to teach families of what to appropriately expect from their child and teachers in terms of literacy development.

Just as a child needs nurturing to develop physically and emotionally, it is important to keep in mind that the development of their literacy skills can be recognized at different levels as well.

Such signs of growth include knowing and practicing the following:

-Writing from left to right

-Letters have flexible shapes

-Symbols can be used interchangeably

-Spaces are to be left between words

-There are various possible spellings

-A special mark goes at the end

These are just some of the few literacy benchmarks that should not go unrecognized by any members involved in the academic success of the child. Simply put: this can be accomplished through communication! Talk! Discuss! Teach! Learn! :)

Our Good-will Goodwill Project

Throughout my life, I have been to Goodwill many times for many different reasons:

-Find a costume for a themed party

-Cheap materials/books for the classroom

-Home décor for my college home

-Or just to spice up my wardrobe!

THIS visit, however, added a new reason for my visit to this not-for-profit organization.

This visit was to go on a Literacy Dig for the classroom. Here, I observed and took notes of the physical environment, the people, their actions, and the language that surrounded me (both vocal and visual).

Here is a list of some of the vocabulary and phrases I noticed:

“Wow,

Cheap,

Look at these

I don’t know,

Do you really need that?,

These are hilarious!

Thank you,

Please,

Who cares?,

Gross,

Wash,

How much it cost?

You don’t need that

Goodwill

How much?

Not worth it.”

This list of vocabulary helps one understand the essence of this not-for-profit organization that “serves people with mental and physical disabilities, the unemployed, new immigrants, ex-offenders, mature workers and underserved youth” (Goodwill.com).

Essentially, Goodwill is about service.

Therefore, this community store is a fantastic place for our classroom to visit!

After we take a fieldtrip to Goodwill, we will simulate our own version within the classroom!

-We will teach and learn how to participate and contribute.

-We will teach and learn to be leaders and individuals.

-We will teach and learn how to live sustainably be reusing and recycling.

I look forward to this project-based journey with you and your child. As always, if you have any questions, comments, or desire to volunteer, I’d love to listen!

What is Literacy?

What is Literacy?

Prior to reading, or should I say, watching The Arrival, by Shaun Tan. I had already composed a preconceived notion of what literacy means...

Literacy means....."Quality reading is the ability to read with fluidity while still grasping a firm understanding of the text." (Definition 1)

What does literacy mean to YOU?

After watching Youtube's illustration of Shaun Tan's, The Arrival: , my definition of literacy was challenged.

...Does literacy have to involve text?

...Can you watch literacy?

...What makes a person literate?

While watching this young-adult picture book, the main character needs to be literate to have a meaningful connection with the new society he was placed in. In this new society, he was a second-language learner. To his new peers, he may have seemed illiterate, but there were sure-tell signs that he is actually literate...such as:

He wrote letters to his family, made meaning with his surroundings, and physically communicated with others.

Thus, after watching this Youtube clip, I have a new-found definition of literacy!

Literacy means....."Creating interactions and offering opportunities to communicate by sending/receiving a message. Literacy is meaning-making; simply put, it is a way for people to get things done." (Definition 2)

An Inspiring Poem

This poem inspires me to have my children be amongst the top 10%:

This is not my poem!)

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Resource>nuratikahnabilah.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/if-you-can-pronounce-correctly-every-word-in-this-poem-you-will-be-speaking-english-better-than-90-of-the-native-english-speakers-in-the-world-after-trying-the-verses-a-frenchman-said-hed-prefer/

Inspiring and Motivational Books

As both book excerpts, Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children by Vivian Maria Vasquez and Castle in the Classroom by Ranu Bhattacharyya, children can become competent citizens with some teacher interventions. Negotiating Critical Literacies With Young Children focuses on how to offer teachers “a way to think about what students are learning to read and write, what they do with that reading and writing, and what that reading and writing does to them in their world” (101). This excerpt uses the interactions and confrontations kindergarteners from a Canadian school have with the even of French Café. In the excerpt from The Castle in the Classroom, the author essentially teaches the reader how to expand the writing workshop.

The students from Canada, at a school where French is no longer the second-most popular language, took action toward being included in school functions such as the French Café and “raised concern about the existing power structure where young children are not treated as equal participants in the school community”(96). Because of how the teacher chose to intervene to a student asking why they were not included in this 1^st-8^th grade event, she inherently “offered a space in which to change how they were positioned in the social hierarchy of their school.” This taught a fine lesson:

When a child asks a teacher a question, the teacher has choice in their response. Most often, the question will allow for 3 possible responses:

1. Treat the question with a potentially uncritical but valid answer.

2. Repose the question that positions the inquirer a little differently but can easily lead towards responding to the question with an activity.

3. Offer a critical challenge; treat the question as an opportunity for taking social action and disrupting inequity.

Curtis and his classmates ultimately created a petition and went through the process of creating social change as they strived to become equal participants within their school. “Through taking social action, the children learned not only a different way to resist and exercise their democratic abilities, but also the possibilities available through collectively working through a problem” (99).

From Canada to India, Georgia Heard, notices that Ranu’s classroom has the same learning needs as American children. At the American Embassy School located in Delhi, India, Ranu’s students are engaged in “setting the scene” for their classroom. In Castle in the Classroom, Ranu guides the reader with a beautiful description on how to really expand the child’s literacy experience. Ranu Bhattacharyya gives specific guidelines on how to engage the children in reading workshops, writing workshops, and word-study activity centers. The book beautifully illustrates the various purposes of each focused lesson. For example, in the lesson ‘Writing Descriptions of Settings,’ the purpose is “to recognize that giving voice to imagination paves the way for adding details to descriptions and makes a setting come alive for a reader.

The Power of Twitter

People are coming together on Twitter from all interest groups, including teachers! Teaching is very much about engaging as an active member of a community, and teachers collaborating on Twitter to share their resources and offer one another support.

Although Twitter can be seen as merely mindless amusement, teachers can use use it as an opportunity for personal, professional development. For instance, Twitter holds scheduled "chats" for teachers to participate in on a weekly basis.

EdChat essentially allows for anyone to participate in education discussions to any extend they desire. Here, they can discuss, debate, explore, reflect, and act on various topics and issues that revolve around education.

Having people come together from such diverse environments and experiences gives this Twitter community a richer experience. As all educators know, a worldly experience is the best experience. We must come together, starting with the individual, in order to make a positive global impact--140 characters at a time.

Technology and Literacy

Amazed and Worried.

Just these two words may sum up how many parents and educators often feel towards their children--particularly in relation to technology. Our children are digital natives.

According to the 'A is for Avatar' article, children are "growing up in brave new virtual worlds, but also as vulnerable innocents..." (Wohlwend).

Technology is constantly impressing our society, and the ease in which our children are able to use this technology is equally impressive. often, they know how to use the internet; they know about youtube, and they know how to tap away on an iPad. But what if they confuse the ipad for a magazine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk

Such confusion can lead to tension, especially in terms of literacy. When is it best to allow and encourage technological opportunities inside and out of the classroom?

Families, you can provide children with demonstrations of important literacy practices.

Such as:

-text messages

-emails

-iPads

But these are usually not supported in the classroom; they can cause class division.

My best advice? Technology can and should be used in all environments represented in the child's life. The key is in moderation and use of appropriate materials. As always, the main goal should be development.