After learning about the different areas of literacy throughout this semester, there were many things that I learned that surprised me. For example, one thing I learned about that was present a few times in our earlier deeper dive articles was the importance of those early literacy experiences. I did not realize that hearing stories and having conversations with family members in the home is an important part of literacy development. I just assumed before reading these articles that if a child did not grow up with a lot of books in the home, then they didn't have the literacy skills they needed to be successful. I know realize that family experiences and traditions such as storytelling and conversations hold just as much value in literacy development and should be considered important. The articles proved that children could develop their literacy skills and not only learn to read but excel at it with these family experiences and exposure to print.
Another thing I learned that I found interesting was about word learning strategies, which I was not familiar with before. In my own experience, I learned to memorize words and definitions by using a dictionary. After reading Tompkins and the Graves, et. al, article, both authors gave many ideas of how to teach word learning strategies that can help students become independent word learners. One example that Graves gave about using word learning strategies is to have a discussion with your students on how the strategies are working for them, what they think of the strategy, and how they might use it in the future. I found this very important and something that I have not been doing in my classroom but would like to start. A lot of times, teachers teach students strategies but don' ask them how it is going or if it is working for them. This gives the students an opportunity to voice their ideas and opinions and to be involved in the process. I also learned a lot about figurative meaning and literal meaning and how I could use these strategies from Tompkins with students in my own classroom. Tompkins also gave the idea of a word map where you can learn many things about the structure of the word, the meaning, and the related words. This is something I have recently used in my ELA block with a group of students, and it has been very helpful, productive and motivating for the students. I have found that they really like exploring a word in this way, rather than just learning the meaning of the word.
I am grateful for all the new literacy strategies I have learned in various areas the many areas of literacy development. I want to continue to look into these strategies and use them more often in my classroom a well as keep in mind Muhammad's four pillars of Literacy and how to incorporate them into lessons giving students choices, accessing their background knowledge, and using authentic lessons and collaboration in order for students to be successful.
