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English Language Arts Statement

English Language Arts is the basis for all communication throughout our society. It is

also a vital foundation for all learning that a child will do throughout their lives. Therefore, it is

important to create, implement, and assess English Language Arts skills appropriately and

effectively. This reading comprehension lesson I taught to Kindergarteners about Alaskan

animals is exemplary of my ability to do just that.

In the lesson I utilized a dialogic reading of an Alaskan story in order to encourage

comprehension. Students in Kindergarten are learning phonemic awareness, beginning to read

and are starting to understand the structure of sentences. Children at this stage are sometimes just

being introduced to print and are often unfamiliar with the elements surrounding the written

word. Dialogic reading is very important for this developmental level as students are more likely

to remember what they are learning if they are actively involved in the learning through

conversation. This is important to literacy education because, “conversations involve the

negotiation of meaning by one or both speakers,” (Clay p. 23). This negotiation helps children to

understand language more proficiently. Morgan and Meier (2008) emphasized this point further,

“Good oral vocabulary skills are a prerequisite for becoming a proficient reader because they are

necessary for a child to understand text.”

Dialogic reading is also important for students as it models effective reading practices

and immerses them in rich vocabulary. In a recent study, Rahn, Coogle and Storie (2016)

concluded that preschool students with developmental delays retained and accurately used more

vocabulary words if those words were incorporated into a dialogic reading. Further, “dialogic

reading is a scientifically shared storybook reading intervention that is known to boost at-risk
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children’s oral vocabulary skills,” (Morgan & Meier, 2008). I purposefully used and emphasized

key vocabulary throughout this lesson to encourage the children to remember them.

Kindergarteners should be given many opportunities to write while also being exposed to

books frequently, allowing them to learn the proper direction and orientation of print almost

simultaneously. Awareness of these literary types should happen congruently because “the

command of language structures apparent in the learner’s written expression, or written

language, is available for talking and reading as well,” (Clay, p. 128). Reading and writing

should be taught congruently especially in the primary grades. “It has been demonstrated that

word and sentence-level reading ability contribute directly to spelling, handwriting, and

compositional quality in Grades 1-6, and to compositional fluency in Grades 1-3, with the

strongest relationship for fluency in first grade,” (Kent, Wanzek, Petscher, Al Otaiba, & Kim,

2014). I incorporated reading and writing in an engaging lesson to encourage students to achieve

goals in both content areas.

“Those teachers who incorporate students’ funds of knowledge and their cultural capital

scaffold the students’ learning and support their psychological well-being,” (Iyengar & Smith,

2016). I chose to teach a reading and writing lesson based on Alaskan animals because these

students live in Alaska, and these animals are extremely important to local culture. Including

local culture in the curriculum helps students to connect with the lesson and when students feel a

personal connection such as that they are more likely to be engaged and to reach the goals of the

lesson. Iyengar and Smith (2016) also concluded that English Language Learners are more

engaged and more likely to achieve their learning goals if their native culture is included in

creative writing prompts. The number of ELL students is increasing yearly, and the ability to

teach them effectively is vital to their success.

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References

Clay (2014). By Different Paths to Common Outcomes: Literacy Learning and Teaching.

Stenhouse Publishing.

Iyengar, M.K., & Smith, H.L. (2016). Asian Indian American children’s creative writing: an

approach for cultural preservation. Educational Studies, 52:2. 95-118. Retrieved from

EBSCOHost.

Kent, S., Wanzek, J., Petscher, Y., Al Otaiba, S., & Kim, Y. (2014). Writing fluency and quality

in kindergarten and first grade: the role of attention, reading, transcription, and oral

language. Reading & Writing, 27:7, 1163-1188. Retrieved from EBSCOHost.

Morgan, P.L., & Meier, C.R. (2008). Dialogic reading’s potential to improve children’s emergent

literacy skills and behavior. Preventing School Failure, 52:4, 11-16. Retrieved from

EBSCOHost.

Rahn, N.L., Coogle, C.G., & Storie, S. (2016). Preschool children’s use of thematic vocabulary

during dialogic reading and activity-based intervention. Journal of Special Education,

50:2, 98-108. Retrieved from EBSCOHost.