My Literacy Framework

My literacy framework for instruction that I adopt in my own classrooms as I begin my

practice in the field is the Literacy Collaborative Framework. This framework provides many
different opportunities for students to engage in reading and writing across the curriculum. I
believe that this framework for literacy allows direct instruction from the teacher that guides
students in acquiring strategies for establishing and maintaining fluency as well as development
of vocabulary and text comprehension. In this framework, the instruction moves from
demonstration and direct teaching, to guided practice, and then to independent problem solving
and engagement. Each of these pieces is extremely important in creating a literacy framework
that gives students countless opportunities to read and write as well as foster their own sense of
becoming readers and writers.

Each of these pieces can be included in a readers workshop and a writers workshop
where students are engaged in reading and writing through demonstration first, then guided
practice, and eventually independent work. In a readers workshop, guided reading and
independent reading are key components for student literacy development. I believe it is
imperative for students to grapple with texts on both their specific guided reading levels as well
as developing into independent readers, which includes the responsibility of choosing their own
texts across multiple genres. In a writers workshop, there are many opportunities for students to
engage in guided and independent writing through activities such as writing conferences, small
group interactive writing, and peer editing. This framework also encompasses the use of
language and word study, which I believe are extremely important components for literacy
learning. There are many creative outlets for developing these studies such as having students
participate in an active read aloud, reader's theater, interactive editing, and choral reading. The
Literacy Collaborative Framework is something that I choose to thread throughout my different
literacy workshops in my classroom for developing students' guided and independent reading
and writing.
 Educational Philosophy
I believe that as a teacher, it is my job to help students realize their greatest potential, and
be there for them along the way as they strive to reach their goals. A good teacher gives students
the opportunities to succeed and make mistakes on their own, while being there for guidance and
support. I strongly believe that teaching is just as much learning. Learning from your students,
learning from your experiences, and growing from these things. Capture a child's trust, and you
shall capture a child's mind. Teaching is about exploration; it is the realization that you have the
power to influence a child's life forever. Every child has strengths and weaknesses that are key to
their academic as well as social success, and as a teacher, I believe it is my job to access my
students' specifics needs so they can obtain an individualized learning experience. My future
classroom will involve many different types of literacy blocks. Along with the "to-with-by"
instruction, I believe reading and writer's workshops are amazing activities to bring into my
classroom. I believe that students are more likely to want to learn when they feel engaged in
what is being taught. I also believe that technology is an extremely effective tool for teaching and
learning literacy. Bringing technology into my classroom is something I think will excite my
students, such as making their own book trailers, which can be found on my Bookshelf page. The
most important aspect of teaching for me, is the passion to connect with my students and light a
fire inside them that yearns for knowledge and learning.
 Value of Early Literacy
Early Literacy is extremely valuable for every child's success. It is often that children lose
those key early years of their lives when it is most important for them to be engaging in literacy
and beginning to understand the environment around them. Balanced literacy is a structure that
can be very useful for teachers and parents when building the learning blocks for their children at
a very young age. The "to-with-by" model focuses on many different aspects of literacy and
contains five different components: read aloud, guided reading, shared reading, independent
reading, and word study. Familiarizing children with letters and sounds at an early stage of
development, gives them the opportunity to cultivate and apply literacy into their everyday lives.
A child's early life is extremely valuable because it is where they are most impressionable. I
believe children who are engaged in literacy will have an extremely strong relationship with the
world around them, because they will feel as though they can learn and understand different
literary concepts and cognitive thinking. I strongly believe that early literacy is important for
fostering a child's love for reading and writing. Introducing literacy to children will open their
minds to reading and writing and make literacy something that is exciting and enjoyable as well
as being important for academic and social success. Children will learn that literacy is not simply
a skill they need to learn for school, but that they will use literacy in their everyday lives outside
of the classroom in every stage of their learning and development.
 Assessment & the Common Core
I believe that as a teacher, it is my responsibility to prepare students for the real world by
helping them learn and implement the life skills they will need to be successful. This is why I do
not believe in teaching to the test, because this puts students and learning in a small box, that
does not allow them to take what they are learning, and apply this information to the real world.
Although I do not believe in teaching to the test, I believe that assessments are extremely
important for both student and teacher progress and development, when used in a proactive way.
In my classroom, I plan to use both Formative and Summative assessment allow teachers to
monitor student learning as well as whether or not a teacher's strategies and execution is
working. Both types of assessment give feedback to both students and teachers, which I believe
is extremely important in order for progress and success to occur. In many ways, assessment and
the Common Core standards go hand in hand. Although the Common Core standards present
teachers with many challenges, they act as benchmarks for student learning. Teachers are able to
have a clear focus of the areas students should be successful in and what is expected of each
grade level. It is important when working with the Common Core standards, to always remember
that each child has their own individual goals and benchmarks, which cannot be sacrificed in the
learning process. I plan to use assessment as an ongoing process that students are able to build on
throughout the year. As teachers, we cannot simply give students a letter grade and then move
onto a new teaching topic. It is important that we use students' errors on their assessments as
places for improvement and give students the opportunity to go back and improve their grades by
pinpointing what they got wrong. Then, students can be given the opportunity to build their
progress and have a benchmark for where they can forward. Students are constantly learning and
progressing, and I believe that assessments can only be valuable if we use them as a tool for
which students can learn from and show progression.
 Philosophy of Literacy Instruction
Every child should have the opportunity to receive an education and have a safe and
engaging environment to do so. Literacy is not simply reading and writing, but fostering students
to see themselves as readers and writers, who are able to apply what they learn in the classroom
to the world around them, allowing them to partake in civic engagement. Teachers must provide
a balanced literacy program in the classroom that includes both readers and writers workshops as
well as the opportunity for students to bring multi-modal texts into the classroom to supplement
traditional literacy instruction. Literacy spans throughout all subject areas that we teach our
students in school and that is important that we incorporate literacy into math, science, and social
studies, and teach our students unique strategies for approaching different subject areas and
genres of texts. It is imperative for teachers to assess students' reading and writing abilities at the
beginning of each year to understand the level for which each student is entering the classroom
on. It is important to differentiate learning, especially when it comes to literacy instruction. Some
students work better independently while others may still need guided practice, and it is
important as a teacher, to be able to identify which students fall into which category so that we
can tailor our teaching to each student's specific strengths and needs.

One of the most widely known theories in psychology is Erikson's theory of psychosocial
development, which includes the development of a person's Ego identity, the conscious sense of
self that we develop through social interaction. According to this theory, the ego identity is
constantly changing and developing because of new experiences and information that we learn
through our everyday social interactions with others. I want to help foster my students' ego
identities by creating an environment that allows them to grow and build their literacy tools by
working with one another, such as including peer-editing workshops during the writing process
for my students in the classroom. Students should interact with one another as an integral piece
of literacy and technology is something that can help to bridge the gap between the outside world
and the world that we create in our classroom. By giving students the opportunity to research
articles online, participate in video chats with other students, and read online texts, they are able
to grapple with new ideas and concepts that may not be available to them within the classroom.
Providing a classroom library that spans across all genres encourages students to challenge
themselves by reading across genres and opening their minds to new literacies in the classroom.
 My Personal Philosophy
As I have experienced working in many classrooms and with many students over the
years, the most important thing I have taken from my time thus far, is that every childs ability to
learn begins with the confidence they have in themselves. For many students, there lack of
confidence is what hinders their academic performance. It may be easier for a teacher to say that
the student simply does not have the ability to perform a task or to apply a skill; however, I
believe that most of the time, a struggling student does not have the confidence in him or herself
to carry out a task. I believe that learning is like anything else in life, whether it playing a sport
or writing a novel, humans need that confidence in themselves in order to succeed. As a teacher, I
feel it is my responsibility to help students feel confident in themselves and in their work, by
providing them with a safe and nurturing classroom environment that allows them to take
mistakes as a learning opportunity, rather than feeling defeated and shutting down. My love for
children is what drives me to want to be the best teacher that I can, for them, and I want to be the
teacher that students come back to years later, and say that I have helped them in one way or
another, whether it be a reading or writing skill, or a personal skill, such as being kind to others.