Being an early childhood teacher, I do not have a specific content area because we are

responsible for a little bit of everything, but if I had to pick one it would be English or science

because those are sort of my 2 favorite subjects. My thinking on teaching literacy has changed in

these 2 contents because I always thought majority of literature was taught in English and only

English however, I learned that students need to be literate in each content. Being literate in

English and science have similarities but they also have major differences. For example, English

teaches the basics of reading and writing and science uses those basic skills and develops them

further by reading more complex articles or by having students read charts and graphs and

analyze pictures. Being literate in English means to be able to read and write and understand as

well, and realizing the only form of literacy is text. Digital literacy has significantly increased

because of all the technology around. In class, we listed many of the types of literacy and I didn’t

even know they all existed. The main forms I was aware of was texts and digital literacy.

At the beginning of the semester, literacy to me was the basics of being able to read,

write, and understand texts in any form they appeared like text books, computers, articles and

etcetera. As the semester is ending, that is still a part of my definition of literacy, but now I have

added in the part about it being in all contents and it is all content teacher’s responsibility to

teach children how to be literate in their specific content. Throughout the semester, Dr. Rippard

made sure to include the definition of literacy and she also allowed us to explain what it means to

us and add to our knowledge of it. It has also changed by me noticing that if my future students

are not literate in each area I teach, I have not successfully done my job. The most important

thing I learned was that it is not just the English teacher’s job to teach literacy!

My confidence in teaching literacy has changed because I am now aware of the many

different types and I also know some strategies that could help my students learn about them.
Especially with not having a specific content area, I felt it was necessary for me to know about

literacy in all contents because I must know how to teach and realize it is important in each

content. As always, there is more to learn but I feel like I really have a good head start on being

aware of the different types and some strategies that will help me teach.

Some things I still want to investigate are seeing some of the strategies we learned, being

used in the classroom but more specifically with an early childhood classroom. I say this because

almost every week in my blog posts, I would question how to modify a strategy to make it

appropriate for the younger kids and if it would still be as successful. Once I see that they can be

modified and still be used to enhance learning, I will feel a lot more comfortable about using

them. Another thing I sort of struggle with is differentiation because I feel like since I am not a

sped major, I am not as aware of what sort of things may need to be modified. For example, in

lesson plans I always differentiate for ELL’s, gifted learners, and physically impaired students,

but how would I differentiate a lesson for a student who is emotionally disturbed? Once I get in

the classroom, or have an opportunity to observe a teacher differentiating a lesson in many ways,

I will feel more confident and be able to understand how to truly differentiate for each student

that needs it. Like making our own definition for literacy, in class we made our own definition of

a diverse classroom. Almost every had the same definition but it different words like a classroom

could be diverse because of culture, race, religion, language, home life, up-bringing, family

situation, and many others. We then created one final definition that included each of these

things and some others that Dr. Rippard included. After I have these 2 things figured out, I’m

sure I will have more questions but I will feel as if I am ready to be a successful teacher.