What Elements of ELA will I take with me to the classroom?

A Vision of your ElA classroom, and how you and your students will experience Oral and Written Language. How has this changed since your first blog entry?

I cannot believe that the first term of the PDPP program is almost finished! I am amazed that this is my last blog entry for ELA class. It seemed like yesterday I was trying to figure out how to create a blog!

My vision for English Language Arts for a classroom is very similar to what it was in my first entry. I would still like a noisy, boisterous, colourful classroom where children are enthusiastic about English Language Arts. I think I realize more now that children are more varied in their ability within the classroom. A teacher needs to be aware and ready always with extensions and modifications to lesson plans so that all children are included. I can see how just getting children to write may be challenging and that improving the perception of ELA so that children are self motivated is a bigger part of ELA than perhaps grammar. Having child –led lessons and activities and including new technology makes ELA classrooms more interesting, but also harder and there is more room for error. I really liked the idea of using voice threads as a way for pre-writing children to save their stories. Then when they are able to write, they can go back and scribe the stories themselves.

I have a much more solid understanding of assessment and its role in an ELA class. I now know about rubrics and how they can support learning. I don’t think I realized before how specific and transparent lessons should be in terms of what is being assessed.

The strategies we learned in ELA including the garden party strategy, the exit strategy, the pre-writing strategy and the writing journal, have a go, and KWHL strategies are all things I will use in classrooms as methods to promote literacy and create meaning.

I really enjoyed the story Love that Dog. I will always remember that even though students may come with their own preconceptions about their abilities, careful persistence, patience and understanding can go a long way to helping children gain confidence and ultimately enjoyment of literacy topics.