What I Believe About Literacy Learning and Teaching

And How I Came To Believe It

By

Linda Younts

Dr. Gary Moorman

RE 5040

Teacher as Researcher

Winston-Salem, NC

Spring, 2004

What I Believe About Literacy Learning and Teaching

And How I Came To Believe It

Here I am currently teaching the second grade. I have been teaching for twelve years in the third, first and second grade. So how did I become literate and what do I believe about literacy and learning? As I reflect upon how I came to my own methodology about literacy, I find my childhood to be the foundation for where I am and how I came to my own beliefs.

As early as I can remember, I loved school and learning. I always wanted to please my teachers and parents and always followed the rules. I was always a good student and made good grades.

My earliest memories of literacy and learning began with remembering my mom reading to me quite often. I loved Dr. Seuss books and ended up with an entire collection of them. I read the Dr. Seuss books over and over, learned rhyming words and even memorized some of the pages. I also loved reading Pippi Longstocking books. I recall reading the Humpty Dumpty magazines and enjoyed completing the activities in them. Nursery rhymes were also a favorite of mine, and I knew a lot of them by heart. Reading seemed to come easily for me and it became a love of mine.

Next to my mom, the library became one of my best friends. Every Saturday, my mom used to take me to the library where I listened to the storyteller. I believe this along with my mom reading to me, helped spark my love of reading and storytelling.

I recall going to a neighbor’s yard sale and purchasing The Dick and Jane Elementary School Reader. I loved to play school with this book. Playing school was one of my favorite things to do as a child. At home, I had a chalkboard that was on a stand. I would put math problems on the chalkboard and test my sister and friends. We would also complete workbook problems and I would grade them as if I were the teacher. I also remember loving going to school as much as I loved playing school. I enjoyed learning and being exposed to new things.

I can never remember a time when I couldn’t read, but I do remember some of the times when I was learning to read. I remember sitting in my first grade teacher’s classroom and her flashing cards to see if I knew the sight words. One of the most vivid memories I have about reading was when my teacher told me that if I didn’t stop to pause after the period, she would take me out of the top reading group. Needless to say, I never forgot to pause after the period again. Most importantly, I learned a valuable lesson from this experience, what I say as a teacher can have a lasting effect on my students.

Little did I know that when I began second grade it would be the key to guiding me into my future career. My second grade teacher became my inspiration to becoming a teacher. I loved Mrs. Williams and her pleasant nature. I remember that I wanted to please her and once called her mother. I have heard it said that when a child calls you mother, you can consider it a compliment. She was so sweet, patient and she made learning fun. After being in her class, I always said I wanted to be a teacher. I guess what they say about our influences as a teacher is true. We do make a lasting impression on our students!

I have many fond memories of the places around the country that I visited with my family. I believe children need to go on trips and visit many different places. Such experiences help to develop a child’s language in a variety of ways. They are exposed to new vocabulary words. They become exposed to language in different genres. Also, such language develops their reading and writing skills. True life experiences build literacy in our world.

In about the eighth grade, I began teaching Sunday School for the 3-5 year olds and I loved to plan the lessons. I also taught Vacation Bible School at my church. I loved being around children, so I would earn extra money by baby sitting.

My desire to be a teacher changed after my family and friends continuously told me I shouldn’t be a teacher since it was too much work and not enough pay. There would be too much hassle with parents and other components. They said it wasn’t worth it. So when I first began college, I majored in economics and fashion design for two years. It wasn’t until one night when my roommate at ASU and I were talking that my destiny, I believe, became a reality. My roommate was studying to be an elementary education teacher. That night she told me she thought I would love to be a teacher and would be great at it since I loved children and was really good with them. I told her that I had always wanted to be a teacher since the second grade but others had talked me out of it. She proceeded to tell me that I should go where my heart was instead of listening to what others thought. As I observed some of the things she was studying, I found it to be of interest and knew it would be an enjoyable field for me. It was then that I changed my major to Elementary Education and made my dreams become a reality.

After graduation, I taught third grade. I was so excited and enthusiastic. I stayed until they ran me out of the building and I still brought things home to do. I still thoroughly enjoy what I do and believe you have to really “love” teaching to stick with it. As a teacher, I hope to have the same effect on my students that my second grade teacher had on me. Even if I can inspire only one of my students, I feel like I would have accomplished my goal.

When I went through college at ASU over a decade ago, the big emphasis was on Whole Language. Therefore, when I began teaching this was the approach I used for the first few years of my teaching career. I too believed, and still do, that children attain more through reading things that relate to real life, experiences. As we know though, teachers are constantly attending workshops and being exposed to new programs. Through such training and observations from my experiences, I have broadened my view of approaches for reading and believe there are many different components that need to be put into place to build literacy within our classroom. A strong balanced literacy program includes phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and text comprehension instruction. In order to instruct my students in these areas I use a variety of approaches: guided reading, shared reading, independent reading, read aloud, spelling and writing instruction.

I believe that along with life experiences, phonics plays a key to developing fluent independent readers. I have always felt that I knew how to use letter sounds to decode words, but I didn’t feel college prepared me on how to teach phonics in the classroom. Since college, I have altered my views about how to teach guided reading. I have gone from teaching whole class reading in a non-systematic way to a more systematic approach using small groups to teach phonics, phonemic awareness and reading skills. I believe that systematic and explicit phonics instruction helps children from various backgrounds make greater gains in reading. I believe this to be true because there is a diverse population of readers in a classroom. In small groups individual student needs can be addressed allowing all readers the opportunity to continue to grow without becoming frustrated and turned off to reading. I think back to my first years of teaching when I taught first grade for the first time. That year I taught long vowel patterns before I even introduced short vowel patterns because I thought they were easier patterns for my students to learn. That year, I found that my at-risk students seemed to bomb on their spelling tests and needed a lot of support spelling words during writing. It was at that time that I began to question the order of phonetic patterns. The next summer, I attended a phonics workshop where I learned about systemic phonics. I now wish I could go back in time and start over with that first group of students I taught in first grade. I believe that students need a program of phonics instruction that introduces letter-sound relationships and then organizes these relationships into a logical instructional sequence.

After changing my educational approach, I started noticing that the scores of all my students, including my at-risk readers, improved. Reading improvements were not the only gains I noticed though. Self-confidence and pride increased tremendously with my at-risk students. My students now seem to share my joy of teaching reading rather than dreading it. I do feel that a small part of my students’ motivation is due to my enthusiasm for teaching reading.

As I reflect upon my literacy experiences, it makes me appreciate what my parents did for me by reading to me and exposing me to literature. By reading out loud my mom was modeling fluent reading and increasing my knowledge of the world, my vocabulary and my familiarity with written language. A child’s literacy seems to reach a higher level when learning takes place both at home and at school. Reading skills are developed in the classroom and in some homes. When a child takes the time to read at home, it helps develop their reading fluency. More than anything, I feel that my mom sparked my interest in reading. In turn today, I use read aloud to build fluent readers and expose my students to new vocabulary and knowledge of the world around them.

This brought me to my literacy beliefs today and what I know about it. I am still constantly searching for answers as I struggle with my at-risk readers. I know that I was fortunate as a child to have parents that immersed me in literacy experiences. Unfortunately, many of the students in my classroom have not been as fortunate as I was. Therefore, I know it is my job to expose them to literacy through a well balanced literacy program. My hope is that by using a variety of methods, I will promote individual development and a foundation to meaningful literacy learning within my classroom.