Loving Literacy

Our conversation in class the other day about the congruence between teachers and parents was very interesting. I agree that the blame should not be placed on one party or the other. However, I could see how it would be difficult if the children are not getting much literacy practice at home. Someone has to be held accountable somewhere, and I don’t think it is soley the teacher’s job to teach the children literacy skills. Obviously the teacher is going to have to overcompensate for that, so it made me wonder to what extent they should go. Especially if there is more than one child in their classroom that comes from a home where they are not stimulated as much as they should be. How much time should can they realistically spend trying to catch those kids up with the rest of the class?? I, of course, am not a teacher so unfortunately do not have much experience in this area. I would imagine it would be frustrating for the teachers and the parents. I guess the best thing to do is for the parents and teachers to sit down (if possible) and try to come up with a plan that best works for the individual child. If everyone is on the same page, it will make it a whole lot easier.

Hello all,

Thanks for coming to my page! This is the first time I’ve ever written a blog, hence the title of the post! Hopefully I’m doing it right though!

I am a second year school psychology student who is anxious to be done with classes and do my year-long internship next year! Grad school has been a huge learning and growth experience for me though which is definitely a good thing. I am excited about this class and learning more about assessing literacy. As a school psychologist, it will definitely come in handy to know all I can about emergent literacy so appropriate interventions can be formed.  Most of my experiences with children are with those who are in the emergent literacy phase or slightly passed it. 3 and 4 year olds are my favorite aged kids! They are just so sweet (most of the time) and curious about the world. They say and do things that make you laugh and just appreciate life.  Last year for my practicum I was in an elementary school which was a lot of fun. It’s always easy to make the assessments fun for the younger ones! For my practicum this year, however, I am in a middle school.  They are a little more intimidating, but still fascinating in their own way. Obviously most of the kids at the middle school level have the necessary literacy skills, although I’ve had a few cases that have surprised me. It saddens me to think that many kids do not get that much exposure to literacy when they are younger. If they do not get the exposure within a certain window, it will make it more difficult for them to gain those literacy skills as they get older. I am looking forward to doing my case study and have set it up to do with a little boy that I watched last summer. He is 3, and will be 4 in February.  He cracks me up so it should be an interesting experience!