Professional Growth and Development & Impact on Student Learning:
Early on in life I do not remember having a love of reading or joy for reading. I do not recall ever being read to at home or having a collection of books stacked in my bedroom. However, I remember having a love and excitement for Scholastic book orders during elementary school. With every book order, I would search through and circle the books that I wanted and hoped my parents would buy them for me. Luckily, my mother always did. Every single month I brought a book order home or the book fair was in town, she would always purchase a few books for me. Based on this memory, I know I had a stack of books that belonged to me but I do not have any memory of what books they were, what genre, or ever reading them. Throughout elementary school, I do not recall doing poorly in reading but I know it was not my favorite subject, Math was. Once I hit middle school, specifically sixth grade, I lost the joy of reading. I did not see reading as an activity done for fun, it was just something that had to be done for assignments. Sixth grade Reading class was the first time I was identified as not being a "top student". I always excelled in Math, but when I was placed in a lower reading group than some of my peers it became apparent to me that I was not a great reader. This stigma followed me throughout the rest of school, especially when I once again tested in the "average" English classes during high school, not the honors English class. Since I was not an exemplar Reading student, I believed the thought that I am not a good reader, therefore I cannot be a good reading teacher. When my district offered the Reading 316 License cohort through Viterbo University, I thought that this was my chance to become a Reading teacher and finally have the chance to be "above average" in the subject of Reading. Through this experience, I have learned so much and finally feel confident in my reading abilities and my abilities to be a successful Reading teacher. I have learned about reading in content areas, having book clubs, and assessing and treating reading difficulties.
Over the last year and a half I have grown as an educator and person. My journey through this Reading 316 License has given me a depth of knowledge that I have started incorporating into my classroom. I have found a new confidence within myself when it comes to teaching reading. I also feel that I have a lot of literacy knowledge to share with other educators in my building and district to enable them to become more effective reading teachers as well. I was never confident in my ability of successfully teaching literacy and making an impact, but now I have the capabilities and skills to accurately assess my students through various forms of assessment, look for error patterns between the various assessments, and plan effective instruction for my students while checking their progress along the way to inform my future instruction.
This program started with EDUC 681: Emergent Reading, Writing, and Language Development. This class showed me the importance of analyzing a running record and utilizing all parts of the formal running records, such as Fountas and Pinnell's Running Records. Throughout this course, we learned how to analyze student running record errors for meaning, structure, or visual miscues. In the past when conducting Fountas and Pinnell Running Records, I would track the miscues, calculate the accuracy and reading rate, and measure the level of comprehension. During this course, I learned how important it is for me to complete the full running record and analyze what type of miscues are being made to decide what each student needs further instruction in to improve. Spending the time practicing this during this course allowed me to really understand how these commonly skipped portions of the running record enabled me to pinpoint a student's reading strengths and areas of improvement. With this information, I could become more exact in which strategies need to be taught to help my students continue to grow as readers. In the classroom, I now have a clear picture of all my readers and their needs. This is also valuable information that I am able to share with families throughout the year so they know exactly how they can help their child extend the learning at home.
The next class in the program was EDUC 580: Children and Adolescent Literature. The course forced me to become a reader again and it was honestly my favorite class of the entire program. Prior to this course, I never picked up a book for pleasure to read due to my experiences with reading as a young student. When my students or other adults would ask me about any books I have read lately, I would respond that I have not read any books lately since I was too busy and did not have time to read. This was not setting a good example for my students. During this class, we learned about "edge time" and realized there is no such thing as being "too busy" to read. Throughout this course, we took part in a book club and had to read three different books plus our course text. I was immediately overwhelmed with the thought of trying to find time to read all of these books. I took what I learned about "edge time" and started reading my book club books and I was unstoppable from there. I would sit down for long periods of time and just read. I could not remember the last time I sat down and just read, and here I was spending an entire day just reading. This is when I rediscovered how great books can be and fell back in love with reading. I was starting to engage in conversations with my colleagues about the books I had read, sharing my books with them, and asking for book recommendations on what to read next. Since I found the joy in reading again, I am able to share that enjoyment with my students. I encourage them to read books that interest them during their "edge times". My students take books home with them every night to hopefully encourage them to become lifelong readers.
Our third class was EDUC 605: Teaching Reading to Students with Dyslexia and Other Difficulties. When initially looking at the program course schedule, this was the class I was most looking forward to. While in my undergraduate program, I only had one general special education class that all education majors were required to take. Since it was only a one day a week, one semester course, we were not able to really dive into learning about any disabilities. We only got the opportunity to scratch the surface on several disabilities. This left me with so many unknowns and wanting to know a whole lot more. This course gave me the opportunity to dive deeper into specific disabilities and reading difficulties. This course really made me think about and reflect on inclusion for all in the classroom. I have always believed in inclusion for all students, but did not know how it was possible. Going through the public education system as a student and becoming a teacher, my mindset was always that students had to be grouped by ability in small groups to be able to meet the needs of every student. This class completely flipped my thought process and beliefs. I learned through this course that grouping students by ability was actually limiting their growth and learning. Children can learn from each other and are often able to teach each other things in better ways than I can. Due to this perspective, I changed how I assembled my small groups. Instead of grouping by ability, I grouped my students heterogeneously. I have never had such productive small groups and all of the students feel like they are part of our classroom community. None of the groups are labeled as the "low" or "high" groups since each group contains a wide-range of ability levels.
The next course was EDUC 650: Content Reading. During this course, I realized that even though my co-teacher handles all of the reading curriculum, that does not mean that I am not a reading teacher. Reading needs to be integrated through all subjects in order for students to realize that reading is a part of our daily lives, not just a subject area or class. I also learned the importance of giving students choices when it comes to learning. During this course, I analyzed lessons and units that I did from year to year and how I could incorporate more student choice within. 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. Students take a lot more ownership over their work and learning when they have a say in it. Now on a daily basis, I incorporate student choice. Since making this change, I have seen student engagement improve immensely throughout the day. My students are getting excited and motivated about their learning and taking ownership over it.
The next course was EDUC 640: Balanced Literacy. This course forced me to reflect on my overall vision for literacy instruction and my classroom. I mostly concentrated my focus on the word study component of balanced literacy since that is the one component of balanced literacy that I do teach since my co-teacher handles all of the reading and writing curricula. I learned the best part of word study is it 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 pattern they need to work on most. I created a weeklong lesson plan that can be used for any level sort the student is on. Each week, each word study group learns about their spelling pattern with me, practices sorting the words with the given spelling patterns, completes various word work activities, practices and tests on grade-level sight words, and play fun interactive games with their word sorts. 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 with the given spelling pattern. Students have a better ability to recall spelling words after they have used word study than with rote memorization. I have also given students more choice when it comes to their sight word instruction and testing. After this course, I have taken a new approach to assessing students on their grade-level sight words. The students have the control of their sight word assessment. At the beginning of the year, I assessed all students on all 200 words on their sight word list. After correcting their lists, the students were given the complete sight word list and their corrected sight word assessment to track how many of the 200 words they already know how to spell correctly. Students track which words they know how to spell by highlighting the words spelled correctly. The students have until the end of the year to get all 200 words highlighted. The students create their own individual weekly sight word list of words to study (5-10 words) based on the words that are not highlighted on their list that they will be assessed on a week later. The students track their progress each week and move at their own pace.
The final courses of the program consisted of EDUC 529 & 683 Assessment and Treatment and the Practicum of Reading. Through these courses, I learned about new reading assessments that I can use in my classroom. I learned that it is very important to assess students' reading abilities through multiple assessments to get a true picture of the students' knowledge and abilities. Analyzing data from multiple assessments allows me to pinpoint and isolate a particular reading skill or behavior that a student needs additional practice and instruction with. Through the practicum, I was immediately transferring my new found knowledge from class to my own intervention plans with two individual students, which made the beginning of the practicum a little tricky. The beginning of the practicum and case study was not easy since I was teaching myself and becoming familiar with new assessments to administer to my tutoring students. I also was not confident in my ability to decode a student's data and figure out what they needed instruction in and how to provide instruction for those needs. I completed a case study on a fifth grade student that allowed me to put the strategies and theories from all of the courses in this program into action. During my practicum, I was able to practice adjusting my lesson plans on a daily basis based on the students' individual needs. At the end of the practicum, I found that both of my students grew as readers based on the assessments given. Discovering this gave me confidence in my abilities to help students become better readers, and showed me that I can be a successful reading teacher and interventionist. I was able to confidently create a parent report that accurately reflected the student’s needs for reading.
In summary, I have learned so much from each one of the classes I took to earn my Reading 316 License. I will continue to use the skills, strategies, knowledge, and materials in my own classroom to help my students become a lifelong readers. Through the instructors and courses, I have come away with many new strategies and skills to use with all of the readers in my classroom. Now, I am able to be a literacy advocate and resource in my building, district, and community. I am able to share the knowledge I gained about best practices for literacy instruction with my colleagues to help them grow as educators. Of course, I also have to take on the responsibility of modeling best practices for reading with my own instruction. I have to continue to implement a variety of strategies and lessons in order to accurately and effectively give support to other teachers. My learning will not stop even though this program has come to an end. I will continue learning and looking for reading resources and new interventions that come out. I will always look for ways to incorporate reading materials and reading strategies in my content area subjects. The coursework and classes for this license have made me a better teacher and person. This Reading 316 License cohort program provided opportunities that I would not have had otherwise. I was able to meet other professionals and educators from other districts to problem solve and share ideas with.