Blog #1 - Old Dog, New Trick

My goals and intentions for this semester, regarding literacy instruction and assessment, are pretty easy to sum up: I have a lot to learn. Although I have two and a half years of classroom teaching experience, I have always followed the lead of my cooperating teacher in assessing students reading and writing skills, and planning lessons and curricula. Whereas some teaching skills, such as classroom management, interacting with students, or structuring daily routines, can be developed intuitively, acquired primarily through experience, or even come naturally, this is definitely not the case when it comes to literacy. Based on my limited experience and studies in the field of literacy, it is an extremely complicated puzzle to decipher. When you add to the equation the limited resources, large class sizes, and language issues faced in New York’s public schools, it becomes an immensely intimidating challenge to think about accurately assessing and instructing every child in one’s class. There is also the mountain of scholarly research, studies, theories, and schools of thought to consider, when trying to develop one’s own plan of attack.

In my estimation, the big questions facing us in this respect are:
1. How do I accurately assess each child’s reading and writing level or skills, given the constraints facing teachers today, such as limited support systems and materials?
2. How does a teacher fairly and effectively address the strengths and weaknesses of every child in his/her classroom, given the same constraints mentioned above?
3. How do I as a teacher plan my time to allow for thorough, effective, and accurate assessments and instruction, without neglecting the needs of a single child?
4. In deference to the New York State Education Departments adopted standards for literacy education, how do I plan my curriculum to properly train students in reading, writing, and speaking, for information, understanding, literary response, expression, critical analysis, evaluation, and social interaction?


I hope that though the course of this semester, I can learn enough about various assessments, lessons, and literacy instruction methods to begin answering the above questions.

My student teaching classroom also promises to be an extremely valuable source of information and instruction for me over the next few months. PS124 in Chinatown offers a unique environment for the study of literacy education. Although there are many children who are English Language Learners, as a rule the children are motivated, hard-working, and excited to be in school. Parents are also generally heavily invested in their children’s educations. I was tempted to study the child in my class who has just moved here from China, but was persuaded that this would be too challenging a task. He unfortunately does not yet know more than a few words, and is still unfamiliar with the alphabet or counting in English. I’m sure he would be a fascinating case study, but I am concerned that I would not be able to even get through any assessments with him. Instead, I have chosen to work with a boy I will call Matthew. He has a functional grasp of the English language, but struggles heavily with vocabulary, syntax, and sentence structure. Consequently, his reading and writing levels are significantly below grade level. His good attitude and strong work ethic should make him a great subject for my case study.

An old dog learning a new trick, this is my first attempt at blogging. Although without the structure of a traditional essay or reflection piece, I kind of feel like I have been rambling a bit, but I am excited about exploring this new medium for expression. I sincerely hope that I have not bored anyone to tears, but I am confident that this will prove an effective means of reflecting on my experience as a student and as a teacher.