Prior to this course and program, the only time I had heard the term "balanced literacy" was during the interview process when looking for a teaching position. I felt unqualified to be a teacher when I was asked about balanced literacy during an interview and I did not know how to respond since I did not have an understanding of what balanced literacy entailed. I felt defeated and embarrassed that I could not answer that question with confidence. During my college courses we learned the components of balanced literacy but I do not think the term "balanced literacy" was actually attached to all of the components. I learned what balanced literacy consisted of by looking it up online so I would be better prepared during interviews when asked about it. This course really helped deepen the understanding of each component of balanced literacy and balanced literacy as a whole.
Prior to this course, I taught the spelling of sight words in the traditional sense. Every student received the same list of 5-10 words on Monday and were tested on these words on Friday. The only change I had made to the traditional schedule was that students were pretested on the words for the next week. If a student spelled all of the words correctly on the pretest, they did not have to test on that list of words on the following Friday. However, all students were doing if they did not spell the words correctly on the pretest were practicing their rote memorization skills during the week to prepare for the test on Friday. After the Friday post-test, the students were never tested or checked to see if they were spelling the words correctly in their writing or in a more natural setting. After a few years of handling spelling of grade-level sight words this way, it was clear that students were not retaining or transferring the correct spelling of the sight words. I knew this approach to sight word spelling instruction was not the effective way to go about it but I did not know what else to do. Also with technology and spell check, it is difficult to get students to understand the importance of knowing how to spell.
During this course, I learned that to successfully keep students actively engaged in all aspects of the balanced literacy framework, teachers need to go through the gradual release of responsibility from teacher to independent learner. When using the gradual release of responsibility model, the teacher needs to do lots of explicit modeling and teaching. As the teacher explicitly teaches the skills needed through modeling, the students are able to slowly receive more independence when completing tasks. Becoming a better educator and building confidence in my literacy instruction benefits my students greatly.
During this course, we were able to dive deeper into each component of balanced literacy and gain an understanding of each component. The artifact I included with this course, the Balanced Literacy Professional Growth Plan, required us to focus on a component of balanced literacy and how we can professionally grow to be better in that area. Of course, I focused on Word Study since figuring out an effective spelling instruction is an area I struggle with. My district adopted Words Their Way as the word study curriculum. I have never had formal training in Words Their Way or how to teach word study so I knew that is where I wanted my plan to be focused on. Through the Balanced Literacy Professional Growth Plan project, I was able to dig deeper into the research behind word study, instructional strategies for word study, and assessing word study. I had a lot of questions of mine answered through this research while also just growing in my knowledge of word study. Word study allows teachers to differentiate spelling instruction to cater to the spelling patterns each student needs further instruction and practice with.
After taking this course, I wonder if sight word spelling tests should still be a part of our required assessments. Word study allows for differentiation to occur through the use of assessing students through a spelling inventory and by viewing student work. Then, students can be grouped by the spelling category they need to work on most. I created a weeklong lesson plan that can be used for any level sort the student is on. By the end of each week, a student should be able demonstrate an ability to sort words into word families by identifying word patterns, practice reading the words accurately and fluently, and spell words correctly. Students have a better ability to recall spelling words after they have used word study rather than with rote memorization. A second area of professional growth for me is best practice for teaching and assessing writing. One objective of writing is the emphasis on writing for real and authentic purposes. When a student is given an assignment that is purposeful and is going to be published for an audience, it is not only is a motivating factor for students, but it establishes ownership and responsibility for the student knowing that they have a variety of audiences to reach and respond to.
One of the best practices we learned about was offering more student choice. Since this course, I have been looking for ways to incorporate student choice into each subject each day. Some lessons I give more choice than others, along with some subjects being more structured than others. During math, I try to make the entire lesson based around student choice. I allow the students to create the problems we solve as a class and they also create our "Problems of the Day" each day for their classmates to complete for the next day. During Social Studies, I have been giving students options between which activities they do or which order they do the activities in. I believe my most successful choice assignment so far has been our United States Important Events unit. During this unit, students were put into pairs to study an important event from United States history. Partners were chosen by students completing a Google Form choosing their top three choices from a list of events. The rest of the project requirements were decided by the class as a whole through a class discussion. Students decided how they would present their learning to their classmates, how long it needed to be, what information they would research about their event, how to assess their learning from their own research and from their classmates' research, and when the whole project needed to be completed by. During this project, I had never seen the students more engaged and determined to finish by a due date. There was not a single class period that I had to remind students of their jobs during the class period or to stay on track. Of course to get to this point, I had to go through a gradual release of responsibility with the students. I did this through gradually giving them less and less structure during prior research projects.
As a result of this course, I made some physical changes to my library corner. My classroom library has been completely reorganized to be categorized by genre, author, or topic. Before switching my classroom library to being organized this way, it was organized by Fountas and Pinnell guided reading levels. This severely limited the book choices for students because they felt obligated to only choose books from their reading level bins. Since I have switched my library, I have seen students choose books because they are interested in the book. My students also rarely ask me what level they are at as well. I consider that a "win" since students should not be concerned about choosing books just based on their level. All of the books in my library still have a color-coded sticker on them indicating what reading level that book is but students do not know which color is which level. Using the sticker is a quick way for me to see if students are interested in books and reading books that are actually at or around their level without them knowing it.