The information that I found most helpful that I will take out of the Flint chapter and our subsequent class discussions were the varying levels of emerging writers. It was really neat to see a child's work and development broken down into these levels. Though it seemed obvious that children's writing grows gradually, I had never thought of it in a systematic way like Flint kind of separated it into. The steps starting with random marks and progressing to consonants, and then vowels, and so on make a lot of sense when you think about them and it is really interesting to see them in form of examples. I think that in this chapter, Flint really recognized and emphasized the importance of children's writing and of allowing and encouraging them to write creatively and freely. This is a huge point for me as I completely agree. Kids can really express themselves through writing and its always fun to see what is going on in their minds! You never know! haha

Flint Chapter 6

I found the descriptions about the different levels of emergent writers to be very helpful. I did not realize that the young students went through so many phases, or that those phases had names. I think this will be helpful as a future teacher, because now I have a reference point when I am looking/critiquing my own students writing. If they are at those early stages, I will know that I don't need to correct as much as encourage them. They will get better and more advanced with practice. Just like we talked about in class today, many teachers are too quick to correct instead of guiding the students toward the higher goal. I know this is something that I will struggle with because I will want to correct my students and help them understand why it was incorrect, but I have to remember this is the learning process and they will get better with more practice.

Learning Centers

I just finished reading Flint Ch. 6 and there were a few ideas in it that I thought were really cool, and that I would actually use! I really liked the idea of the writing centers and the literacy-enriched play centers. I think that is such a fun way to incorporate reading and writing in the classroom. I really think that the writing centers use Ray's approach of reading like a writer. When children get to use whatever writing skills they have for play, they will become more confident and comfortable writing. I thought the literacy enriched play centers were a really fun idea too because kids love any props they can use to enhance their play time. Having all of these things like grocery store ads, coupons, cookbooks, etc. in a kitchen or grocery store play center sounds like a great way to get kids to try out their literacy skills as well as using their imagination. I was so excited to see this idea, because I think it is very rare that I read a textbook and see ideas and teaching methods that I could easily put into practice.

Flint Ch.6

Usually when I read Flint, I find it rather silly to separate some of the techniques and methods that they do, thinking they all could be good depending on the situation, and should probably be combined to be the most effective. The two perspectives talked about in the very beginning of the chapter are readiness perspective versus emergent literacy perspective. In the case of these two I cannot see how readiness perspective is even worth mentioning at all. It talks about learning to read, write and speak as a sequence of skills and separate from each other. The emergent literacy perspective talks instead about children developing these abilities concurrently and at different rates and methods. Children are not cookie cutter in learning anything. Every child is different and going to learn a different way and at a different pace. A set of goals or benchmarks of where a child should be at a certain time in their life is not necessarily a bad thing but when the methods used to teach are all about those benchmarks, thats when I see a problem. To think that anyone might view learning to read like this surprises me.

AR

After reading the article about AR, I realized how detrimental this program is to student reading. Not only does it discourage many students from reading, but it also teaches them that what they find interesting may not be important. This was very saddening to me, especially because I am getting an endorsement in reading. I realized that this was a very common practice in schools, and I think the program needs to stop altogether or be modified. Reading is a difficult subject to test on because every person interprets the text differently and finds different aspects important/memorable. So, when dealing with young, impressionable students, it is important that we as teachers are encouraging them in their reading interests and not subject them to tests that belittle what they find interesting.

Accelerated Reader

Prior to reading this article about Accelerated Reader, I had no knowledge of what the program was. I attended a private school my whole life and AR was never part of our curriculum so I have never had experience being in the program like many others seem to have been. From what I understand though, it is a program that includes a variety of books and the computerized multiple choice story plot questions that go along with with those certain books. The biggest problem many people seem to have is the limited book choice and the reading restrictions that this places on children who want to read about what they enjoy and have to be told that they can't because basically there is no AR computer quiz to go along with those books. Another problem that I observed from this reading about AR was that it encouraged reading a lot of books quickly and just having to know the basic and literal plot but did not seem to include any emphasis on the quality of the books and or any critical analysis beyond just the plot. Some of the most enjoyable reading I have done in my life is reading that I can really get into the story and expand upon it and think about why something happens or why someone is the way they are rather than just reading it for what its worth. For this reason, I think that AR may have been a really great idea in the beginning but as it has played out, many problems have come to the surface and if school want to continue to use programs like AR they need to address these problems and see what modifications they can make.