Week 4

 This week included readings of chapters 7 and 11 and in class we watched a video introducing us to John Sinnett and his kindergarten class. This video connected a lot with chapter 7 and this idea of emergent literacy. There were a few things from this video that I connected with chapter 7.
     The first connection I made was when Mr. Sinnett said "If they are ready to start reading they should be reading." This reminded me of the section in chapter 7 talking about readiness and how instruction in reading would not occur until they believed they were ready to read. These students are in kindergarten and they are already reading. In our class notes we discussed that students actually come in to school knowing things about language, and writing and reading. They know that the words on the page have meaning, and that letters have sounds that coincide with them, and they understand that reading is done left to right across a page. But as teachers we must emphasize these skills.

     Another thing that stuck out in the video was the morning message they
completed. The picture up top is an example of one similar to the one in the video.
He created an interactive morning message that extends the learning, so students aren't just reading anymore, they are using context clues, and different reading strategies to figure out the missing words and letters. Another way to include interaction in the morning message is to include an activity at the end like the second example of a morning message. In one of my field placements my cooperating teacher did this along with the interaction included in the message. The kids enjoyed this very much, they were all involved and loved making the corrections to spelling, grammar, or word order. They all felt very accomplished afterwards. The morning message is also a great opportunity for a teacher to model reading. Mr. Sinnett was doing this in his classroom. He used a pointer as his anchor and showed them direction and reading strategies.

     Something else discussed in the chapter, class, and the video was the idea of temporary spelling. In the early years it is important for teachers to encourage attempted writing. In the video the students were writing in their journals. Using their drawings as their plans they wrote a sentence about the picture they drew. Meanwhile the teacher encouraged them to write down all letters that they knew might be in a word or the letters they hear. He was not looking for correctness he was just looking for the fact that they recognize that each letter has a sound, and that what they are writing means something to them. He states that if after they have written and they can say what the words they wrote mean, he is a happy teacher. It is important for students to understand that there is meaning behind the words they see in a book, and this was a great strategy to use to help them see that. I will definitely be using a lot of the strategies he used in the video, especially the morning message and journals.