Wrapping Up

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?

It is dark out; cold and windy.  I am currently enjoying a cup of tea and wondering what happened to the semester.  It seems like only the other day I was looking at fall leaves and excited about starting classes.  Yet, here I now sit and on the eve of my last day of exams it seems meaningful to reflect on how my vision of teaching English Language Arts (ELA) has evolved.  Since my first entry I have grown a lot in my understanding of the ELA classroom.  Two main areas of development have been in the importance of developing oracy, and how to teach writing meaningfully.

On the topic of oracy I learned that oral language development is considered a key foundation for successful literacy and that oral language assists in improving and extending thinking.  I have also learned that as instructors we need to teach both good listening and communication techniques.  We need to develop specific lessons that teach children how to listen for content and how to share ideas logically and in a variety of formats and settings.  Some of the tools that we have to explore oracy are rebus rhymes, coral reading, podcasts and voice threads. Podcasts and voice threads require only limited technological knowledge and are exciting projects for students to work on.

On the topic of writing I learned the more about the process of writing.  For example, children generate ideas, write a discovery draft, polish that draft and write a second copy, and then publish and share the piece.  Not every piece needs to be completed, but it is important to stress the importance of revision and that first drafts often are not very good.  From author Robin Stevenson, I learned that there is no right way to write because every individual is unique and that we need to values our own experiences.  Finally, as discussed in my previous post I learned the value of the writing workshop as an excellent method to develop students writing.

Each of these ideas is useful and practical and I hope to incorporate all of them into my future classrooms.  I guess my ELA classroom has developed from students listening to a story being read to including a host of new activities that support the meaning of stories.  I look forward to further growth and development in this area over the coming years.