Donald Barringers Principles of Teaching Reading class has been a very informative

course for me. The work was oriented around the objectives of the course. Each weeks activity
was catered to some facet of reading instruction that was directly applicable to the classroom.
One of the texts was also an inspiring read, which can be rare in academia. The observation
packet was also of value and included numerous activities that added to my understanding of
teaching reading.
Some of this courses activities that stood out to me involved examining my own history
of reading, evaluating lesson plans and software, engaging in group work modeled after a book
club, developing differentiated lesson plans, and creating my own portfolio using weebly. Many
of these activities were immediately translatable to my job as a teacher assistant. For instance, I
created a nice book club template for my students to use based on the one in this class. As I
differentiated lesson plans, I thought about how I might be able to do this for instruction in my
class. During the research part of this assignment, I looked over my students PEPS and thought
about how to better serve their needs.
So far as the courses texts are concerned, Change is Gonna Come was very influential to
me. I read this book constantly thinking about how to apply these theories in the classroom. I
shared it with my schools diversity team and with some of our specialists. It made me examine
my own preconceived notions of how to teach minorities and made me realize there was a lot
that I had left to learn if I wanted to have a properly inclusive classroom.
The observation packet was also well laid out for me to explore literacy reading
instruction and assessment. Observing and talking to teachers about mClass assessment was very
informative for me. This is something that I will have to be doing as a teacher, and my interview

with the principal solidified that even more. She said one of the most important things for
teaching reading was basing instruction on data. In conclusion, this course definitely helped
prepare me for teaching students reading and I am excited to put this theory into practice.