Wilmington University
Lara Krygier
MEE 7632: Language and Literacy
Personal Belief System
August 23, 2013 Good teachers are good at explaining things. Do you like to explain how something works, or how something happened? Being comfortable with explaining content to students is an essential skill for teachers, regardless of the subject or grade level. Most teachers choose an area of specialization such as elementary education, special education, secondary education, or higher education because they have a temperament for students in those age ranges. For elementary school teachers, that means having knowledge of a broad range of content in sufficient depth to convey the information in meaningful ways to the students. When we have students who cannot read, what do we do about it? We get measured not by what we teach, but what kids learn. Teaching profession is always looked up as a noble and respectful occupation because the teacher impart knowledge for the nation. Without them there would not be any doctors, engineers, astronauts, politicians and the list goes on. A teacher is defined as someone who gives instruction and communicates skills. Our children are our future, and they need to be prepared for the future or they will not be successful in the working world. Teaching makes a difference in them, because it gives them tools to help them be successful in the future. Literacy embraces reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Integrating all of these into a literacy program is key. Teachers must provide endless and ongoing opportunities for their students to read, write, listen, and speak. There are many components that make up literacy. In order to effectively teach students these components the teacher must model the concept for the students. As teacher’s we cannot expect or assume that the students already know what we expect from them. Modeling gives students a basis of what to go by. Modeling is the first and most important step in order for the students to gain mastery of a concept. A teacher must also undergo guided practice with the students. A teacher should also provide as much guided practice that is needed. Teachers need to provide students with endless amounts of practice experiences in reading to build their fluency rate. This should be done with different genres of texts and different levels. Reading a wide variety of literature help children develop rich vocabularies. Phonemic Awareness is very important part of literacy. Phonemic awareness includes sounds of a word, the breakdown of words into sounds. It includes rhyming and alliteration, isolation, counting words in sentences, syllables and phonemes, blending words, segmenting, and manipulating. Phonics instructions is also an important part of literacy. Phonics involves understanding the relationship between letters and sounds. Phonics is for the purpose of learning to read and spell. Comprehension is an important fact when speaking of literacy. Students should be taught the many strategies that will help them with comprehension and word recognition. In my experience in a first grade classroom I used many of these strategies. Within my lessons I included the activation of prior knowledge to construct meaning, the use of context clues in a sentence, picture clues, predicting, and drawing inferences about ideas or characters in the text. I always made sure that I modeled the strategy for the students. The components of my literacy program will work together. I will incorporate shared reading and writing, guided reading and writing, independent reading and writing, read aloud’s, and write aloud’s, and cooperative readings and writing within my classroom. Motivation will be key for my literacy program. I know that if the students are highly motivated then they will learn more readily. I will build motivation in my classroom by having a positive, warm learning environment. I will have a variety of literature of