I would like to take this time to thank everyone for the help and support that they each gave me
and the tips on making our centers lending library more appealing. I will take all
of the advice and incorporated in both my short term and long term goals.
Everyone did a great job in presenting their advocacy and did valuable research and really opened my eyes
in variouse aspects of each.
Thank you Marsha & Collegues!!
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Observing and Interacting With Families of the Children in Your Setting Observing and Interacting With Families of the Children in Your Setting
As I observed a Pre-k classroom I also had the opportunity to interact with a parent which I had known for 2 years. I have known this parent for two years now because I had her son in my Pre-k classroom. I then started to share a bit of information about what I was advocating for, "ESL/Literacy" and mentioned to her some ideas that I had that would help these students progress in class and help them in their overall success in life. One idea that I shared with her was that I would start planning team meetings with my colleagues to come up with activities using various types of literature to help children in their classroom understand what they are being presented with. Another point that I stressed to her was the importance of making our lending library more appealing and having more bilingual books available with easy to read text. As I mentioned this to her she started to smile and told me that she has noticed that our library doesn't have much that really interests children or parents either because they are filled with more words than pictures and some words in English and Spanish are hard to read . I then mentioned to her that I would bring this up with my director and see if we could order books with more pictures in them and simple easy to read text. This will interest both parents and children to take books home. I will also come up with ideas of how I can make our library more known to each of our children and their families!!!
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Observing and Interacting With Program Director(s) and Other Administrative Staff in Your Setting
- During the last few weeks I have been interacting with our school social working and I have presented to her the importance of Advocating for Early Literacy in ESL. As i explained and shared my plan in advocating for literacy we came to a realization that in our center we don't do enough for ELL and their families.She mentioned that all we really do is "Literacy Night" and that pretty much it. So our social worker has suggested that we look into this more and see what we could do to help staff and families in our center be more involved in literacy involvement with their children. I then shared with her that since I have been researching the importance of literacy in ESL I came upon with some important tips for teachers who work with ESL children and the information stated that teachers should focus in reading the same book or familiar versions of the book for a whole week, this will help children understand the stories more and grasp new vocabulary words, this idea helps every child in the classroom as well as ESL students. The social worker suggested that teachers should use props and dramatize stories so that children can better understand and learn to use new vocabulary that they have acquired from the stories that are read weekly. I must say that I have started doing this with my class and have observed children who don't know much English pick up new words and are more engaged in stories. I believe that this can help any child understand stories and learn new vocabulary! Another important thing that I have observed in my class is that since we have been doing dramatization, it has helped my special needs students in many ways as well in expressing themselves more and learning to sequence stories.
- I will continue to do more research in literacy and use some important findings with my own students and observe them and see if it is working for them, in the mean time I will also find more information on how we could involve the school and families in our school to be more aware of the importance of "Literacy".
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Observing and Interacting with Professionals, Children, and Families in an Early Childhood Setting
During my observation I had the opportunity to observe Ms. Sullivan pre-k classroom.
As I entered her classroom I noticed that she had a lot of environmental print displayed throughout her classroom, it was interesting to see that almost all her students were writing their name or a least some letters in their name. As I continued observing I noticed that she was getting ready to read a story called "Little Red Ridding Hood", as she started reading I noticed that about 4 kids weren't interested in the story they were concentrating on other children or things around them. After the story was over Ms. Sullivan started to ask questions pertaining to the story and to my surprise not a lot of children wanted to answer her questions or didn't know how to answer. I then thought that maybe she had read the story too fast and that's why children weren't able to comprehend what she had just read. Ms. Sullivan then proceeded in transitions and activities related towards the weeks topic.
As the children were engaging in free play and two teachers were able to stay in her class, I had the opportunity to speak with Ms. Sullivan outside her classroom about my observation. I then went over what I had observed and she agreed that she has noticed children during story time that they didn't seem interested in the story but knew that the reason for it was that they didn't understand. She than clarified to me that she does tend to read simple Spanish books but feels that her Spanish isn't that great and stopped.
I suggested some things to Ms. Sullivan that could probably gain her students interest in literacy, I suggested more visuals and maybe concentrating in one book for a whole week, so that children can better understand the story. Doing this will help her class be interested in stories and would also help Dual language students in her class.
This observation has made me reflect in my teaching methods and things that I can share with others that can help children in literacy. I did get a lot of tips from Ms. Sullivan's class that I will definitely will incorporate in my teaching methods, one would be incorporating a print rich environment in my class and making sure that I am labeling everything throughout my classroom! This will then help my students be more interested in writing.
During my observation I had the opportunity to observe Ms. Sullivan pre-k classroom.
As I entered her classroom I noticed that she had a lot of environmental print displayed throughout her classroom, it was interesting to see that almost all her students were writing their name or a least some letters in their name. As I continued observing I noticed that she was getting ready to read a story called "Little Red Ridding Hood", as she started reading I noticed that about 4 kids weren't interested in the story they were concentrating on other children or things around them. After the story was over Ms. Sullivan started to ask questions pertaining to the story and to my surprise not a lot of children wanted to answer her questions or didn't know how to answer. I then thought that maybe she had read the story too fast and that's why children weren't able to comprehend what she had just read. Ms. Sullivan then proceeded in transitions and activities related towards the weeks topic.
As the children were engaging in free play and two teachers were able to stay in her class, I had the opportunity to speak with Ms. Sullivan outside her classroom about my observation. I then went over what I had observed and she agreed that she has noticed children during story time that they didn't seem interested in the story but knew that the reason for it was that they didn't understand. She than clarified to me that she does tend to read simple Spanish books but feels that her Spanish isn't that great and stopped.
I suggested some things to Ms. Sullivan that could probably gain her students interest in literacy, I suggested more visuals and maybe concentrating in one book for a whole week, so that children can better understand the story. Doing this will help her class be interested in stories and would also help Dual language students in her class.
This observation has made me reflect in my teaching methods and things that I can share with others that can help children in literacy. I did get a lot of tips from Ms. Sullivan's class that I will definitely will incorporate in my teaching methods, one would be incorporating a print rich environment in my class and making sure that I am labeling everything throughout my classroom! This will then help my students be more interested in writing.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Interviewing Professionals in Early Childhood!!!
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing a Site director and Social Worker from a pre-school in which I currently work in. I started off my interview by interviewing them at the same time and asked them if they also believed that Literacy is a current problems associated with early literacy in our school? They both agreed that the current issues that are related towards literacy is the lack of understanding the importance or reading to children at a young age. Both site director and social worker mentioned that they feel that although they have lending libraries in our school only about a few families do check out books. Talking to other colleagues in our school they have also seen the lack of interest that parents have in literacy, although our school has done many literacy workshops they still feel uninterested in it. The site director mentioned to me that although she sees a great success in Literacy night, where each teacher in their classroom picks a particular book to read and give copies of the same book to parents and children they seem motivated in reading to their children and doing the activities that go along with the book, but afterwards the interest of checking books out or reading to their child in their class has always been unsuccessful. The social worker gave her opinion and mentioned that maybe the problem was that parents worked to much and had no time to read to their child, and a good way to interest them in literacy was for teachers to invite them to write with their child, read and do other activities that promotes literacy. I agreed with the social worker but also brought a big point to both site director and social worker, I mentioned to them if they knew of any families in our program that they felt were illiterate? They both glared at each other and said that they never paid any attention to this matter.
I mentioned to them that I personally have experienced a parent in my classroom that doesn't know how to read because of a past experience in home visit were she had to fill out a form and couldn't and instead asked me to read it to her and fill out. I felt bad that I almost felt guilty of not knowing but I asked myself, how could I have known that she didn't know how to read.
I urged both Site Director & Social Worker along with my colleagues that we should help these parents that don't know how to read by having workshops that can help them so that they can help their children be successful in school. Children who are brought in up in an environment where there is no interest in literacy may not be interested in it by the time they approach grammar school.
Although literacy doesn't start with viewing books but by listening, children often will struggle with school if they are having difficulties putting words together, then he or she may have difficulties in Math, Science and social concepts.
Our goals for our school and to motivate children and their parents in literacy would be to have intervention programs, where families can attend to realize why literacy is important and the affects of reading early on. I came up with some ideas that can motivate parents such as engaging in reading programs throughout the year and hosting annual book fairs!
Based on this interview I really gained a lot of information about our families in our program and I hope that by guiding them and emphasizing the importance of literacy will get them to see the importance of literacy verses not having literacy at all.
I mentioned to them that I personally have experienced a parent in my classroom that doesn't know how to read because of a past experience in home visit were she had to fill out a form and couldn't and instead asked me to read it to her and fill out. I felt bad that I almost felt guilty of not knowing but I asked myself, how could I have known that she didn't know how to read.
I urged both Site Director & Social Worker along with my colleagues that we should help these parents that don't know how to read by having workshops that can help them so that they can help their children be successful in school. Children who are brought in up in an environment where there is no interest in literacy may not be interested in it by the time they approach grammar school.
Although literacy doesn't start with viewing books but by listening, children often will struggle with school if they are having difficulties putting words together, then he or she may have difficulties in Math, Science and social concepts.
Our goals for our school and to motivate children and their parents in literacy would be to have intervention programs, where families can attend to realize why literacy is important and the affects of reading early on. I came up with some ideas that can motivate parents such as engaging in reading programs throughout the year and hosting annual book fairs!
Based on this interview I really gained a lot of information about our families in our program and I hope that by guiding them and emphasizing the importance of literacy will get them to see the importance of literacy verses not having literacy at all.
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