A note of Thanks and Support

As our class comes to an end I would like to take the time to say thank you to everyone. Thank you for your comments on our discussion post as well as the blog entries. Writing this paper was very difficult and stressful for me but thanks to everyone's encouraging comments I was able to get through it.

I also want to say thank you to Professor Puntil-Wilcek for your timely feedback. It was very helpful to me when writing my paper. I can truly say your feedback helped to take away some of my stress and put me on the right path. I have learned so much from you about writing a paper like this and I do appreciate it.

I know that we all chose different topics to advocate for, but I feel that in the end it is all in the best interest of the children. Good luck to everyone in what ever path you choose for here.

Observing and Interacting with Families

The person I interacted with was one of the parents and her name is Amy. She has a child with special needs that was non-verbal until recently, with other developmental delays. The child did not speak, she just pointed to what she wanted and made sounds, she lack self-help skills and has low muscle tone which cause her to shake. The child is now enrolled in Head Start 75% of the school and the other 25% is spent in an ESE classroom. Before she started Head Start she was full time in the ESE classroom. The mother said she is extremely happy with the progress that the child has made since being in the Head Start program. Because not only is she talking more, she can have a simple conversation with her. She said that her daughter comes home from school and talks about random things, or things she thought to be random until she spoke with the teachers and found out that the child was talking about a story that was read to her that day. She said that with the teachers from both classrooms working together with the speech pathologist, her daughter has come a long way since last school year.

I asked her about her thoughts on advocacy in early literacy, and she informed me that she was not involved in any advocacy work at this time but she was very interested. She also told me that she does her part in helping the teachers and other parents by finding websites with literacy activities and other resources and give the list to the teachers to distribute to the parents and she donates electronic learning games and videos to her child’s classrooms. She also said early literacy is not just about learning to read and write, but it is also about learning to communicate. She was very happy that her child is communicating with more words instead of one word utterances.

Insights I have gained from the conversation I had with this parent is that having open communication with parents is very important. The parents need to be comfortable enough to open up to ask for help. I have parents of children in my classroom right now who are here illegally. They are most worried that we will call the immigration office on them. So, I feel that when you communicate with the parents and assure them that you are here to help them to help their children and nothing else, then that is a starting point for building communication and trust.

Observing and Interacting With Program Director(s) and Other Administrative Staff in Your Setting

Name: Rosalie Reid

Date: 2/8/13

Name of Program/Setting: Head Start/Title1 Prek

Who I spoke with: J. Bringger, S. Redditt, and L. Pena

What I learned:

Mrs. Bringger is the Education Coordinator for the Head Start program. While talking to Mrs. Bringger she talked about how important it is to introduce language and literacy skills early in children’s lives. She said we cannot wait too long to expose children to the basic elements of reading; and parents must play a critical role. Both parents and teachers should seek out daily opportunities to read with children.

She also said it is important for parents to realize they need to be involved in their children’s understanding of written language. She stated that print is a powerful means of communicating knowledge and information. What I learned from her is that I should never stop trying to get the parents involved in their children’s education. Continue to help them by inviting them to the classroom to see what we do and continue to encourage them to read and talk to their children often.

The other person I spoke with is Ms. Redditt, the Curriculum and Instructional Coach for a new Title1 Pre-k program. Ms. Redditt thinks that early literacy is very important and we as teachers should support and engage students in developing their oral language and language acquisition skills. She thinks that building a strong foundation in oral language and providing children and families with support can help to improve their early literacy skills. Also, making sure that the curriculum is rigorous and provide students with the skills to be proficient when they enter kindergarten, because the common core standards are at the top of everyone’s list and making sure that the early literacy curriculum is providing students with all the tools to be successful.

The other person I visited is Mrs. L. Pena, a Head Start teacher. I observed Mrs. Pena at center time. The students were engaged in various activities. I asked her about activities she use to promote early literacy as well as activities for the parents to use at home. She said they do a lot of shared reading and she also encourages the parents to do the same. She also said she tells the parents to check the local library for reading night and encourages them to make use of our parent resource center to check out early literacy activities to use at home.

While I was in the classroom she was working with a small group of children and they were “fishing for letters.” The children had to take turns using a toy fishing pole with a magnetic tip to fish for magnetic letters out of a basket. After catching a letter the children had to name the letter and then write it down. So, the teacher was reinforcing letter recognition as well as practicing printing.

Observing and Interacting With Professionals/Colleagues

I visited Mrs. C’s head start classroom on several occasions. Because we work for the same program, I was interested to see if she had different strategies than I do for promoting early literacy development. I went into the classroom at center time and it was very busy. I worked in the writing center with 4 children. The children each had a book and were doing a letter search activity. Mrs. C said they were to find the letters they had already covered in precious lessons. The children would write the letters in their journals on a page titled “Letters I know.” Each child took a turn naming the letters they found before writing it down. Some had a hard time with writing the letters so I helped by using a yellow highlighter to write the letter so that the child could trace over it.

After observing for a while, I spoke with Mrs. C. I asked about strategies that she used to promote early literacy skills and she talked about differentiated instruction, individualization and small group activities. For small group activities that the children work on independently (color and shape bingo), she has four children in a group; one child that speaks only English, one that is strong in both English and Spanish and the other two has very limited English. The child who spoke English was in charge of calling out the colors or shapes (with guidance) the one that is strong in both languages translates so that the other two would know what to do. She said shared reading and discussions also allowed the children to develop oral language skills. The classroom assistant moved around the room working with different groups of children while Mrs. C worked with a small group on creating AB patterns with counters.

I also visited Mrs. E’s Pre-K ESE classroom. This was different for me because I have never interacted with her children in the classroom before. When I went into her room it was during circle time and she was reading a story to the children. She has seven students with varying disabilities. Before reading each page she would ask the children questions about what they saw in the pictures. Even the students that were nonverbal were excited to participate. She was reading a story about the farm and inviting the children to come up to the book and point out the animals she named. They did a great job and I was surprise to see them sitting and being so involved in the story. I think that Mrs. E did a great job keeping the students engaged in the story and the discussion that was going on. When I spoke with her after the completion of her circle time she said her biggest challenge was the children with behavior problems. She said the calmest time for them is story time because they all like to be read to.

I learned that we are all working towards the same goal, we might have different strategies for doing things, but in the end we are all working to prepare these young children to have a successful future.

Professional Interviews

I interviewed two professional that gave me a lot of information on Early Literacy. Within this area there are many areas that are of interest to me. Some of the related topics we spoke about are oral language and language acquisition, and the importance of supporting and engaging students in developing these skills. Some other topics related to Early literacy is using language in conversation, listening to the sound of spoken language, vocabulary, learning about print and connecting sounds to letters and figuring out what reading is all about.

Some of the current issues we talked about that are related to these topics are second language learners and the importance of finding the students’ stage of language development and being able to support their learning within that stage of development. Also, bridging the gap between potential and achieving readers and getting the parents involved by preparing them to be their child’s first educator and factoring in a daily time for reading.

During the interview we also spoke of other issues commonly encountered in the work place or discussed by colleagues. Some of these issues are waiting too long to expose children of poverty to the basic elements of reading, teaching 4 and 5 year olds with little exposure to reading at home, the need for continued teacher training in Early Literacy and how to support families in learning to help their children, especially families who speak another language.

Advocacy efforts that are under way in the area of Early Literacy is building a strong foundation in oral language development and providing children and families with support by regularly scheduling parent workshops that provides information on development of per-reading skills and language development. Topics or issues that are of concern to the two professionals that I interviewed is improving family literacy, working with parents to promote the emerging literacy of their children and also, simultaneously strive to improve the literacy skills of the parents.

Insights that I have gained from my interviews regarding current advocacy efforts and needs in Early Literacy is that parents need to be more involved in the education of their children, but they sometimes lack the knowledge or skills necessary to help their children. I feel that oral language development and language acquisition is a big part of Early Literacy and it is important to get that point across. I also feel that it is important to help the parents to get the resources that are needed to help their children. The area of interest to focus on for me will be Early Literacy and the three related topic of my focus will be oral language development, language acquisition and print awareness.

Hi everyone! This is my first time blogging, I'm a little nervous. Good luck to all my classmates.