Relationship Between Oral Language and the Reading Process

Oral language plays an important factor in a child's ability to read.  Children begin to develop language from the day they are born.  They learn how to recognize and develop sounds, they learn how words are formed and how they are related to each other, and they learn how language conveys meaning.  These aspects of language development are what lay the foundation for learning to read.  When you really think about it, oral language is the first thing a child brings to the reading process.  It is their oral language that helps them construct meaning, which in turn helps the child in both decoding and comprehension.  If a student has a weak oral language, it can interfere with a child's ability to learn to read.  Therefore, it is essential that parents, caretakers, and teachers do everything they can to support language development from the very beginning.

Writing Instruction Reflection

As I reflect on the writing instruction I received when I was younger, I would definitely say it was geared more towards the Traditional Writing format.  I remember my elementary years were spent in a source book working on how to write sentences with a subject and predicate, the parts of speech, and how to properly punctuate sentences.  We also spent a significant amount of time on handwriting and spelling.  I remember my teachers would always give us a topic to write about and we would work on that piece of writing for a day or two, turn it in, and then a few days later our teacher would return it to us with corrections and we would spend time copying it over into a final copy.  I was never really exposed to creative writing or given the opportunity to craft a story of my own choice.  I feel that because of this, I am intimidated to write creatively.  I am much more comfortable writing when given a topic and a clear structure or format for how it should look and sound.

Now that I am a teacher myself, I find that I lean more towards Process Writing.  I believe that writing should be authentic and engaging for kids.  I believe that this is best done when students have choice and when writing is taught through mentor texts, modeling, and discussions with others about the craft of writing.  I believe this approach goes beyond just teaching and instead inspires students to be writers.

Teacher Interview-Philosophy of Teaching Literacy

I am lucky enough to get to work right alongside an amazing literacy specialist whose passion and philosophy has inspired me in my journey as a reading teacher.  Her philosophy has developed and grown over the years from the experience she has working with children and through current educators and researchers such as Katie Wood Ray, Ralph Fletcher, Lucy Calkins, Richard Allington, and Linda Dorn (just to name a few).  She strongly believes in the reciprocity between reading and writing and that literacy lays the foundation for a child's future.  She believes that children need to be actively involved in literacy activities.  If you walked into her classroom you would see children engaged in mentor texts, literacy centers, literature discussion groups, guided reading groups, independent reading, and authentic and engaging literacy activities with the teacher serving as a model.  She strongly believes that kids need to be immersed in literature and deep conversations in order to develop the life-long skills they need to be readers and writers.  One of her favorite quotes is that effective literacy instruction needs to be "insistent, consistent, and persistent."  I couldn't agree with her more!

As mentioned above, Linda Dorn's Comprehensive Literacy Model has had a great influence on literacy instruction at our school.  Here is a link to ULAR's Center for Literacy website if you are interested in more information.  Specifically, be sure to check out the teacher resource section!

Comprehensive Literacy Model