After reading these chapter one thing sounds throughout my head "Teachers are spending to much time teaching literacy". I guess I feel this way because I see how literacy is involved in every subject however, in my classroom placements in my time here I have seen very little of the "other" subjects. For example on page 10 in the Tompkins text it shows a teacher working on literacy only with reading and writing from 8:50 to 1:30 and there is only one two hour break from 10:50- 12:50. I cannot imagine doing this in a classroom though I think the techniques this teacher uses are great what she is filling this time with could be shorter. I look at the first grade classroom I am in now and I see how much focus is put into writing time and reading times. I find myself thinking how easy it would be if writing time was spent instead of free writing, or writing to some writing prompt, used through out the day, throughout lessons. After allowing the students to observe a science demonstration or being read part of a science topic I think this would be a great time to integrate literacy. I would now have my students go back to their seats and think about what they saw or heard and write about it. They could write how they thought it happened, or using descriptive words descriptive words describe what they observed. All of this applies directly to what literacy is. I guess my main question is not why spend any time teaching literacy because I do believe that some time should be spent, but why are we spend some much time and short cutting the” other " subjects which could and in my book should be tied into literacy?
-Tasha
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2 comments:
I understand Tasha’s point of view- Sometimes it does feel like all we see is literacy and nothing else. Obviously literacy is very important, but when teacher aren’t integrating it, I feel like it might be at the expense of other subjects. I really think that integration is the best way to incorporate literacy into the other subjects. Like Tasha said, literacy can be integrated into science, math, social studies, etc. I am in a kindergarten class, so I see the need for the large block of literacy, but I wonder what it is like in the upper elementary… is the literacy block still the same?? How are they learning content in other areas if it is?
That comment was from me!
Nicki Lendo
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