Teacher Tips for Newbies: Language & Literacy

Getting ready to fill out those teaching applications? Do you feel prepared for those board room interviews? It will be important to brush up on your preparations for your teaching gig. The purpose for this post is to provide solid and comprehensive strategies for new and incoming teachers who are in need of gaining a better understanding of what is essential in the classroom to foster the development of language and literacy.

Principals and other administration really want to hone in on what you can offer students in terms of reading acquisition, language, and literacy. It will be important for teachers to know that their students’ development is connected to speaking, listening, reading, and writing. These are the basic foundational elements of language learning that will be discussed:

• Listening and understanding

• Speaking and communicating

• Phonological awareness

• Concepts of print and book awareness

• Early writing

Evaluating a child’s progress on a daily and weekly basis is vital in terms of designing lessons that will be geared toward improving their language literacy. This can be conducted through observations of interactive play, grand conversations, daily journal writing, and reading.

The Assess-Plan-Teach-Assess model is a spiraling type of assessment which begins with and includes observations of student learning, various work samples including writing, spelling, and math, and then more formal assessments such as running records for fluency, and quizzes. On-demand assessments are conducted in order to establish what has happened in the child’s learning (Christie, Enz, & Vukelich, 2011). They can be conducted quarterly throughout the year or every 6 week period which is congruent with the story curriculum.

Literacy Strategies

The teaching strategies that I use on a regular basis in order to promote language development always include some aspect of a child’s ability to speak, listen, read, and write (Brinda, 2011; Christie, Enz, & Vukelich, 2011; Girard, Girolametto, Weitzman, & Greenberg, 2013; Howe, Mundy, Kupczynski, & Cummins, 2012), because this is the basic foundation needed to establish successful

language development (Cummings, Kaminski, Good, & O'Neil, 2011; Garvis, 2012; Pritchard, 2009).

The best advice I could give to a beginning teacher is to not get overwhelmed by all the materials your school district will give you. All you really need are some good books (fun & interesting to you is better, because if you like, they will like it), journal books or notebooks, or even just plain paper, and lots of listening and speaking about these books.

Therefore, the literacy strategies that I will discuss to facilitate children’s language development will include the following:

• Reading: Read Alouds

• Writing: Daily Journal Writing

• Speaking & Communicating: Think, Pair, Share

• Spelling & Alphabet Knowledge: Thinking Maps

• Phonological Awareness: Spiraling of all the strategies including song of the week.

• Able to identify answers in text to confirm predictions and able to use metacognitive skills

to relate to personal experiences

Read Alouds – Making Predictions: The Development of Language Learning through Listening Communication, Metacognition, and Comprehension

In my professional experience, one of the most difficult reading facets for young readers to grasp are effective listening skills which transfers into understanding (Brinda, 2011; Harris & Sipay, 1990; Gambrell, 2011). A current practice for acquiring language is the use of active listening and how students process the listening skills in order to develop comprehension (Aponte-de-Hanna,2012), therefore, it is important to engage in active listening on a daily basis (Moran, Kornhaber, & Gardner, 2006; Moore, 2012; Pritchard, 2009; What Works Clearing House, 2012), which is fostered by daily read alouds.

Read alouds allows a teacher to cover many objectives that is needed to fulfill the California State Standards. During read alouds, one of the most important features to highlight is making appropriate predictions by using picture clues and title, which helps foster interpersonal, communicative, and comprehension skills as well as using metacognitive skills to reflect on prior knowledge (Brinda, 2011; Gambrell, 2011; Harris & Sipay, 1990; Jing, 2013). Additionally, active listening skills are fostered through think, pair, share activities to enhance their interpersonal skills (Lazear, 2003, Pritchard, 2009), throughout a lesson in which students repeat what has been discussed. Finally, students use higher order thinking skills and metacognitive skills to discuss how the text is congruent with their own personal experiences (Blythe & Gardner, 1990; Jing, 2013; Moran, Kornhaber, & Gardner, 2006).

Read Alouds: Making Appropriate Predictions

Step1: Select a book. Teachers should begin with selecting picture books that offer good contextual clues that will enable children to formulate appropriate predictions (Christie, Enz, Vukelich, 2011). Ideally, teachers should select books that children have not been exposed to otherwise predictions will not be authentic.

Step 2: Predictions: DRTA (Direct Reading Thinking Ability). Using a DRTA worksheet, students will work with an A-B partner to discuss the title of the book and cover to make and write appropriate predictions.

**Note: Younger students use the DLTA (Direct Listening Thinking Ability) approach and their responses are oral or in picture form.

Step 3: Read aloud. (Always pre-read a book before reading it to the class). Read the story aloud, stopping at key points to ask questions or confirm predictions.

Step 4: Modify predictions. Based on what has already been read aloud, students can modify their predictions or add more details.

Step 5: Confirming predictions. After reading a small portion of the story ask students to confirm their predictions. Using their A-B partners, students will discuss and decide whether their predictions can be confirmed. Predictions should begin with a ‘true’ or ‘false’ statement. Students must support their prediction using details from the text. For example: Prediction: My prediction is that the little Gingerbread boy will live with his mother and father happily ever after. Confirm prediction: False, the little Gingerbread boy ran away from his father and his mother. At this point students can continue to make written or oral predictions regarding the story.

Step 6: Connect to personal experience. Student use metacognition to think about their thinking and also to connect what they have learned to their everyday life.

Remember to keep your answers succinct. Use this piece as a spring board to direct your answers for reading and language learning. Make sure to connect all the areas that were discussed at the beginning. Some districts will ask you how you will create and then assess the lesson. The example discussed here should give you a good starting point. Many of the ideas explained here, I used as a Reading Specialist in my district for 21 years.

If you would like further information or an example of the Checklist for Assessing Children’s Ability to Make Appropriate Predictions please email me at DrPattiMartin@gmail.com

Next week I will discuss how to incorporate daily journal writing successfully. Until then, Happy Teaching…….and TEACH ON!

Next week I will discuss how to incorporate daily journal writing successfully.Until then, Happy Teaching…….and TEACH ON!