Running Head: Literacy Portfolio 1

Literacy Portfolio

Hailey Van Now

Brigham Young University

12/14/19
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Introduction and Teaching Philosophy

The basic definition of literacy is the ability to read and write. I believe however that true

literacy goes much deeper than that. Literacy includes fluency, comprehension, pronunciation,

phonemic and phonological awareness, spelling, etc. There are many elements that go into being

a literate person. I believe that the foundations for literacy are taught in the home. Foundations

including basic syntax or sentence structure, basic vocabulary, and the building blocks of

reading. Once a child enters school however, the teacher then shares responsibility to educate

their students and make sure that they can succeed in literacy. I believe that every child has the

right to learn to read and write effectively. Literacy is all around us. In order to be a contributing

member of society it is almost mandatory that someone can read and write. Without those skills

it would make it extremely difficult to obtain and maintain a well-paying job. It would be

difficult to obtain a driver’s license. It would be difficult to sustain meaningful conversations.

Because reading and writing are such essential parts of today’s society, I believe that it is the

right of every student to have the opportunity to receive sufficient literacy instruction regardless

of race, religion, gender, age, social status, ability, or disability. I am currently studying so that I

can become a special educator in a classroom for students with severe disabilities. Many

educators in the past have assumed that people with severe disabilities can not learn to read and

write even with intensive instruction. I think that that assumption is wrong, unethical, and unfair.

If given the right opportunities, even students with severe disabilities can flourish and can be

contributing members of society. As an aspiring special educator, it is my responsibility to learn

the skills necessary to be able to provide the best care and education possible for my future

students. It will be my responsibility to ensure that my students get equal opportunities and that

they are given the time they need to learn literacy skills. Throughout the rest of this paper I will
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discuss some of the skills I have learned and assessments I have used and will continue to use

that will help me in teaching students in special education to read and write.

Background Information

In order to learn these new skills and practice administering different assessments, I

volunteered for six hours in a classroom. The classroom I was placed in was a 4th grade general

education class with a few students with mild to moderate disabilities that had Individualized

Education Plans (IEPs). The teacher of the classroom had me work with whichever student was

in most need of help that day. There were two students in particular who I worked with most

often, Tristin and Allan. While working with Tristin the teacher mostly wanted me to help him

stay focused on classwork, so I didn’t often have a chance to do any literacy practices or

assessments. With Allan however, I did a lot of literacy lessons and assessments. I didn’t do all

of the lessons and assessments with him as I was working with other students sometimes, but I

did most of them with Allan so he is who I will be focusing on. Allan had a learning disability

and struggled to focus. He often tried to make the lessons silly. He was always very excited

when he saw me come into class because I reminded him of his sister. He also seemed to really

thrive on one-on-one instruction because he was easily distracted in large group settings.

Tutoring Summary of the Work Completed this Semester

With Allan, Tristin, and the other students, I did a variety of Literacy lessons and

assessments. I did a CROWD reading lesson, PAST tests, CORE Phonics surveys, and TRI

lessons. We also did spelling and vocabulary lessons using Elkonin boxes, a reader’s theatre,

choral reading, etc.

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The first week I was in the classroom, the teacher had me administer a CORE phonics

survey to her students. Once I would finish the test with a student, they would go back to their

desk and I would move to testing the next student. I probably did the CORE phonics survey with

around 8 students. This gave me the opportunity to become familiar with the CORE phonics

survey very quickly. I didn’t keep the scores for my own records because I was turning in the

surveys to the classroom teacher and the turnover from student to student was so fast that it

didn’t cross my mind to record their scores for myself. But most of the students completed the

entire survey with little difficulty. The areas that they struggled the most with seemed to be the

digraphs, multisyllabic words and especially the made-up multisyllabic words.

The next week, I did CROWD dialogic reading with a student. The student I was paired

with in this activity was a girl named Tia. She was very timid at first and nervous to participate,

but as I explained to her more about what we were doing and why we were doing it, she warmed

up and was very excited to read. The elements of CROWD are C-completion questions, R-Recall

questions O-open-ended questions, W-Wh- questions, and D-distancing questions. I was

supposed to read a book with the student and then ask them those different types of questions in

order to help them make connections to the text, build vocabulary, and increase fluency. The

student did very well and was able to answer all of the questions I asked. However, I went into

that CROWD lessons very unprepared. I didn’t prepare any questions beforehand and I hadn’t

even read the book once before reading it with the student. So when I did the lesson I had to try

to think of questions on the spot, which was made even more difficult by the fact that I wasn’t

very familiar with the story myself. The question I had the hardest time coming up with on the

spot was a completion question. I think having a conversation about the book was still very

beneficial for the student, but it wasn’t as great of a lesson as it could have been if I came
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prepared. In the future I would like to read the story before-hand and brainstorm some questions.

Doing this will help me make a more effective lesson and help me make sure that I am not

wasting the students’ precious time.

My third week in the classroom I began doing the PAST test with the students. The

purpose of the PAST test is to build upon and assess students’ phonological awareness skills

through spoken word, rhyme recognition and production, syllable blending, segmentation, and

deletion, phoneme isolation, blending, segmentation, deletion, and substitution. Most of the time

before I would start the PAST test I would warm the students up and get their brain churning by

first doing a few exercises with Elkonin boxes. I really liked using Elkonin boxes because it was

a less structured activity that I could make fun and I could talk to the students and help them be

more comfortable with me and less nervous for the test. I also liked them because they are

similar to some of the activities in the PAST test without being identical, so it gets them in the

correct thinking pattern. After chatting with the student and doing Elkonin boxes, I would then

move into the test. For most of the students the test was a really simple activity and they blew

right through it. All of the students I worked with made it through the entire test with only one or

two errors in each section. Doing the Elkonin boxes with Allan before the test was a really great

idea because each time he would begin working with me he would be really excited and he

wouldn’t focus on the task at and, giving me really silly nonsensical answers to any questions I

asked him. But after working with him for a little while he would see that I was being friendly

but not being silly, so he would focus and showed me that he was very capable of answsering my

questions. So after doing the Elkonin box activity he had already gone through his silly energy

and made it to focus mode and was able to be just as successful on the test as the other students.
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The next week I began doing TRI lessons with the students. Similar to the Elkonin boxes,

before starting the lessons I would let the students doodle on the white board and chit chat for a

minute so that they could get out some of their silly energy. I did the blue section of the TRI with

the students. I was able to do this with both Allan and Tristin as well as a few other students.

Allan was pretty fidgety the whole time and would tell me he thought the lesson was too easy so

he was bored. After doing the lessons with him for a few weeks he got really used to the pattern

of it, and would even correct me sometimes if he noticed that I forgot to do something, like

covering the letters before asking him what the next sound in a word is. While doing the TRI

with Tristin, he was very serious about it and just wanted to get through it as quickly as possible

so that he could go back to talk with his friends. Wanting to finish quickly gave him

determination and he didn’t give me any funny business. The activities were a bit more

challenging for him, and he would get excited about new connections he was making to words.

With each new word that I introduced to him I would do strive for five. He always had a hard

time articulating a definition for the word and would more often act out the word without saying

anything or he would find something in the room that matched the word we were discussing. He

always seemed to know what the word meant; he just didn’t know how to describe it. After doing

strive for five however, he was able to use his words to define things and I could tell he was

excited about it. He was able to successfully complete activity in the TRI lessons and I really

enjoyed working with him because I could see the wheels turning in his head as we worked. I

also did a TRI lesson once with my younger brother who is in 5th grade. It was really easy for

him as well, but he was a good sport and let me practice on him. He would give me a lot of silly

answers too when he thought something was too easy.

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During each class, after I would finish my lesson or survey or test with the students, the

teacher would pair me with a student, normally Allan or Tristin, and have me help them focus on

what they were working on as a class. We would do oral reading as a class, rhyming and spelling

activities, my favorite activities we did as a class was a reader’s theatre. I was fun to see the

students get excited about what they were reading and laugh as they caught the humor in some of

the statements their characters made. It was really cool to see the multitude of learning activities

that can be done to reinforce literacy concepts.

Recommendations

Every week I was in the classroom I felt like I learned something new from the students I

worked with. Every child is unique, and I enjoyed working with several students rather than just

one, because I learned more about catering the lessons I taught to each student and his or her

unique needs. I was very impressed by the teacher who was very aware of the needs of each and

every one of her students. She knew what each student needed and had unique ideas every day

on how to help them succeed. I also learned that its okay to be a little silly. It helps build

connections with students, and even builds respect. When it comes to teaching literacy, I learned

that it is important to help students make connections. These connections will help them apply

words and texts to their own lives and hold on to the new things that they learned. To my past

self, and my future self who will continue to teach, I would recommend getting to know your

students and understanding that if they are acting out one day it probably has nothing to do with

you, just be patient and show the students that you care. Take your time. One-on-one instruction

will help you to be more aware of students’ individual needs. One of the strengths of my students

is that they were excited to learn. Don’t waste kids time. What they learn while they are in your

classroom is on you. One of the weaknesses of my students was their ability to focus. To help
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address this I would say to let kids be kids, let them get their wiggles out before teaching so that

they can focus better during the lessons. Lessons don’t have to be complicated to be effective.

Conclusion & Reflection

In my tutoring sessions, I learned that there is a lot more to being a good teacher than

showing up and knowing the material you are supposed to teach. Being a good teacher means

that you understand your students and their needs. It means that you let students express

themselves and that you let them learn in their own ways. The teacher I was under would often

ask questions and then let several students answer it and explain how they came up with that

answer. She never told students that one way of thinking was better than the other, she

congratulated each student on their uniqueness and tried to understand the different ways that

each of them thought about the world and thought about literacy. Working with the students

broadened my desire for teaching. Before I only wanted to be a teacher in a severe high school

setting because I felt that that was where I could contribute the most. I was nervous about

working in a mild/moderate elementary-school classroom, but it turned out to be really

enjoyable. Students of all ages and backgrounds have something that they can teach me. And

they have great potential. I shouldn’t limit myself to one kind of teaching. It was also cool to see

that teaching methods such as the TRI and CROWD reading can be quite effective with a range

of students. It is important as a teacher to stick with research-based instruction, but also to not be

afraid of trying new things.

Syntheses and Final Remarks

I feel like I grew a lot as a teacher throughout the semester. At first when I was in the

classroom, I didn’t want to do anything unless the classroom teacher asked me specifically to do
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it because I was nervous that I would do something wrong. I also didn’t come to the class very

prepared at first because I figured if I had the materials, I could just wing it. However,

preparation is very important because the students can tell if you are flustered or if you don’t

know what you are talking about. At first it also seemed hard to come up with a variety of

questions to help students make connections to words or to texts, but throughout the semester I

began thinking of a variety of questions and I began noticing which types of questions were more

effective. I tried to implement new strategies that I learned from class and strategies that I saw

the classroom teacher doing with her students. Kids are excited to do new things and they are

also a good resource for a teacher to learn what is most effective for them. Overall, tutoring in

this classroom was an awesome experience. I feel like I learned a lot, but I really probably

learned very little in the grand scheme of things. As I continue to learn how to be a special

education teacher it will be important for me to be open minded, to be humble, and to continue to

learn so that my future students can learn as much as possible as well.