“Advanced Developmental Reading” was a phrase that made me nervous when I first read it. Most of my understanding of reading revolves around foundational reading skills that we learn in my preschool classroom. I have some background knowledge of early reading development from my undergraduate program and from studying for MTEL exams. Skills that we focus on with my preschool students, age three to five, include letter identification, letter sounds, and letter-sound correspondence. We also work on rhyming, isolating beginning and end sounds, and counting syllables. Once children have learned these basic skills, my understanding of what comes next starts to break down. I occasionally have students who are ready to start to put these elements together to begin reading, but it is not something that I have had much practice teaching. I love seeing the growth that my students make throughout the school year and I love when former students visit from Kindergarten to read aloud to my class so I can see the progress they have made!
As an early childhood educator, I try to maintain a classroom environment that balances the academic and social needs of my young students, providing plenty of time for play and exploration. I understand the importance of building a strong foundation for early literacy skills but try to maintain practices that are developmentally appropriate for my students. I often question how hard to push students to learn letters and sounds at this young age. I also question the amount of time we should be focusing on academics and literacy skills during our limited time as a half-day program.
Each year I am presented with a new set of students who represent a broad range of the developmental spectrum. Some students come to me with no knowledge of letters, while some have come to me beginning to read. As an integrated classroom, many of my students have developmental delays or identified disabilities and receive speech and language, physical or occupational therapy. While I work hard to differentiate instruction, I often see the gap widen between these students as the year goes on. I am often concerned about the how a students’ delayed language development has an impact on their ability to acquire and demonstrate knowledge related to early literacy. I also have concerns around how to engage students in books and maintain their attention in the digital age.
Through this course, I expect to deepen my understanding of the basic elements of language and reading development while finding new ideas to apply to my classroom.I hope to be able to help students at all levels to make progress towards learning how to read. I also expect to be able to identify basic reading difficulties that students may experience and have an idea of how to find ways to help them. I hope that the content of this program is not too advanced for my young students and that I am able to learn strategies to apply to my classroom today.
