Literacy Inclusion

The literacy "block" in my classroom is pretty structured and attempts to cover all areas of literacy. My CT likes to do stations where students are split up in to small groups and are assigned certain literacy tasks to be working on. These stations include things such as "read to self", "read to a friend", "writing", "listen to a story and write", etc. One thing that I observe her doing a lot is having them read out of their big books that deal with animals and habitats and they read together as a class. An idea that I have already pulled from her is to have just the boys read one page and then to have just the girls read another page. I think this makes it "fun" for the students because they never know when the reading might switch up, so it helps to keep them paying attention. The thing that I really like about my classroom and the way my CT teaches is that she incorporates literacy in to other subjects, which is a goal that I have for myself for when I become a teacher. Seeing this in action is really helpful because it gives me some ideas and an example to work off of for when I have my own classroom. Examples of this are when she is doing math word problems and she will have certain groups read the problem to the class. I am constantly keeping a look out for tips like this to take with me for my own teaching. My biggest thing with incorporating literacy in the curriculum is to make sure that it shows up in multiple subjects and not just during the literacy block for class. I think that it is important for students to realize just how big of a part literacy plays in all aspects. I also want to start incorporating more technology in to literacy and break free from the traditional ways of teaching and play around with some new techniques. Even if it is just starting with some computer games after I teach a lesson, just to reiterate some things we went over and use it as a gauge to see if they understand or how their reading or writing is progressing. I think throughout this next year I will pick up some more techniques and ideas to add to my teaching toolbox and am interested to see what other new approaches could come up.