Exploring different literacy perspectives and demonstrating how they have been incorporated into my classroom.

1. Literate Environment
Analysis Presentation
Kathryn Wool
Walden University

2. Getting to Know Your Students
On average, a student is in my classroom
for thirty five hours a week. It is imperative
that teachers are able to learn as much
about each student not only their personal
interests but how each student learns. If
each teacher takes the time to do this then
they will be better serving the educational
needs of their students.

3. Getting to Know Your Students
Getting to know the students of my classroom is one of
my first priorities. You can gain information about your
students through various assessments. A new way that I
learned how to find out more about my students was
through “me stew” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010a).
The students bring in three items that are important to
them and tell you about how these three items “make
them”. In Preschool, the recipe part is a little advanced
but the act of the student choosing three items and
bringing them in will demonstrate interests which the
teacher can relate to.

4. Getting to Know Your Students
By further ingraining the importance of getting to know
my students through my current course, I can select
texts or choose activities that will capture my students
attention. Knowing how a student learns whether it be
hands-on or visually enables me to enhance the learning
environment within my classroom to further educate my
students. One assessment that I often use is the Garfield
Reading Attitude Survey. This assessment allows me to
understand my student’s feelings towards reading and
enables me to help my students write a Literacy
Autobiography of good events.

5. Selecting Texts
The use of a tool such as a Literacy Matrix
(Laureate Education, Inc., 2010b) allows a
teacher to examine a text based on the number
of pictures or words on each page, whether the
text is fictional or informational, and on some
matrices how difficult the text is.
• Research (Cite at least one learning resource
from this course that supports this practice.)

6. Selecting Texts
While studying how to select texts, I found that the
introduction of informative text in the early literacy years
is crucial in order to build background knowledge on
topics that students will learn more in-depth about as
they get older. The benefit of reading more informative
texts will help students avoid or recover from what
experts refer to as “the fourth grade slump” (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2010c). After learning this information, I
have begun trying to incorporate at least one informative
text for each unit to help build the background knowledge
of my students. Another way that I have found is to
review still pictures or short documentaries that focus on
our theme.

7. Selecting Texts
Only one in four students who enter “the fourth
grade slump” typically close the gap. Thus
leaving 75% of students who are having difficulty
to fail. Since I am usually one of the first
teachers that my students have, I believe it is my
responsible to introduce informative text and to
give a positive connotation to reading. My hope
is that when my students look back on their
Literacy Autobiographies, they remember me as
someone who encouraged them, ignited a desire
to read and they knew cared and believed in
them.

8. Perspectives
There are three perspectives that I
examined throughout this course:
interactive, critical and response

9. Literacy Lesson: Interactive
Perspective
The interactive perspective is teaching
students how to read and to be strategic
processors and thinkers. Through my
current course, I have learned new
strategies on ways to instruct reading and
how to teach students to read.

10. Instructive Perspective
A new tool that I have learned was the utilization
of word ladders (Tompkins, 2011). In my
classroom, I used playdoh and letter cookie
cutters for the students to manipulate in order to
create words. I have seen the benefit of using
hands-on activities with my students and they
really enjoyed word ladders. This is an activity
that can eventually be extended to letter tiles for
students to stack letters on top of each other to
create new words.

11. Critical and Response Perspectives
Critical Perspective teaches students how to
examine texts critically. The students look at
who wrote the text, what was the author’s
perspective, and how the author’s background
has affected their text.
Response Perspective allows children the
opportunity to experience and respond to the
text. There are multiple ways that a student can
respond to text; whether it be artistically or
through writing.

12. Literacy Lesson: Critical and
Response Perspectives
Based on what I have learned during this course, I
have found that I need to incorporate different ways
for my students to respond to a text. At this point, I do
not ask for written responses since my students are
still learning how to write; however, I believe that
expressing their responses through drama or drawing
a picture would be a better indicator of whether or not
they understood the text. I will continue to look for
other ways my students can express themselves in
age-appropriate ways that are more than just oral
responses.

13. Literacy Lesson: Critical and
Response Perspectives
Critical Perspective: By creating readers who
are critical of what they read, they begin to
look for validity. This is a great characteristic
for students to have especially when they get
older and begin using internet sources.
Building background knowledge and teaching
our students to be critical about text will allow
our students to determine whether or not a
text is a valid source (Laureate Education,
Inc., 2010d).

14. Response Perspective: The goal for our
students is that a text should effect them
in some way. A great metaphor that I
learned about was the imagining that a
student and text were two balls of clays
and that when they collided with each
other, they left dents. These dents were
an indication that a reaction had occurred
(Laureate Education, Inc., 2010e).

15. References
• Laureate Education, Inc. (2010a). Getting to Know Your Students. [Motion Picture]. In
C. Arnold (Producer), The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Los Angeles, Laureate
Education, Inc.
• Laureate Education, Inc. (2010b). Analyzing and Selecting Texts. [Motion Picture]. In
C. Arnold (Producer), The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Los Angeles, Laureate
Education, Inc.
• Laureate Education, Inc. (2010c). Informational Text in Early Years. [Motion Picture].
In C. Arnold (Producer), The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Los Angeles, Laureate
Education, Inc.
• Laureate Education, Inc. (2010d). Critical Perspective. [Motion Picture]. In C. Arnold
(Producer), The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Los Angeles, Laureate Education,
Inc.
• Laureate Education, Inc. (2010e). Response Perspective. [Motion Picture]. In C.
Arnold (Producer), The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Los Angeles, Laureate
Education, Inc.
• Tompkins, G.E. (2011) Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach. Allyn &
Bacon: Boston, MA.