Language Arts Teaching Artifacts
Early Childhood
During the four years I taught preschool, I made an effort to ensure that my students were receiving experiences that would allow me to use vocabulary in a contextually and developmentally appropriate way. The job of the preschool teacher is that of an environmental facilitator. Below are a few examples of how my classroom's environment was the "third teacher."
Click on work examples to see larger versions.
Click on work examples to see larger versions.
Preschool students must have frequent exposure to letters and numbers, typically in context. In a preschool classroom, letters and numbers must always be displayed, according to NAEYC. Even with toddlers, I chose to let them create their own display. While this display is not in context, it became part of my discussions with students as they began to notice writing around the room.
Young children need access not only to print, but to tools with which to make their own print. I kept writing materials available at all times, sometimes in a prominent place such as on an art table, or sometimes in a spot on the child-accessible shelves.
All of our shelves were required to be labeled. But since the objects that belonged on our shelves were not always there for children to see (for example, when someone else had them), it was hard for them to match the words with the objects. I created labels that had art depicting the things that should be on the shelf. For such small labels, actual photos did not work well. These labels were on hook-and-loop fasteners so they could be moved around the room as needed.
One year I had students with six different home languages, including English. Since several of them used different alphabet sets than English, I created room labels that included all six languages.
Elementary
Before my teacher training program I did some volunteer work in Kindergarten, first, and second grades at a local private school. Those volunteer opportunities clarified for me my desire to make teaching my career.
Toward the end of my year as a Kindergarten literacy group leader, we read Ed Emberley's Go Away, Big Green Monster! My group created a new version with words inserted by them. I created a small book for each of them so that they could color them appropriately and have something to share with their families. These are a few sample pages.
While I worked with my Kindergarten group I began to explore how to keep track of the students' growth. Using the forms from a book I found on reading instruction, I started trying to capture what the students were learning.
In my student teaching placement, as part of our work with CAFE, students studied various strategies to get the most out of their reading. In this picture, students are reading their science folio and practicing, "Retell the Story" by retelling, in their own words, what they just read.
During tiered lesson time, the entire fifth grade was working on prompt writing, since it is required for the ISTEP+ exam. My small group was struggling with paragraphing and transition sentences. As a group, we visualized paragraphs as small boxes and transition sentences as the string between boxes to make a train such as a small child might pull around the room. This sample work is one student's practice in creating the boxes (paragraphs) and transition sentences. Before this attempt, she had written one long, wandering paragraph about the prompt topic. (Click to enlarge.)
Fifth graders at my placement school keep a reader's notebook for reading reflections. At the beginning of the year the students wrote summaries because that is what they were taught to do in previous grades. We had several lessons on how to write a reflection instead of a summary. These two samples were used in one of those lessons to help students learn the difference. The first student is one who is just starting to understand what is expected of him or her, while the second student has a better grasp of the requirements.