Week 3 - Harris (response)

       My placement experience is virtually identical to Julia's, as we are placed in the same classroom, and attend at coinciding same times. It is clear that literacy instruction takes place in the classroom, however, the incorporation of literature is extremely limited. Last semester, I was in the classroom for the last portion of the school day, during which time the students engaged in Writer's Workshop. During Writer's Workshop, the students are encouraged to think of an interesting 'moment', draw a picture of that moment, and write a few sentences describing the moment. This semester, I attend my placement during the morning literacy block. During this time, students practice their alphabet knowledge and letter-sound knowledge as a group. Also, the students are given a 30-minute period to attend any / all of the six literacy stations set up around the room. These stations allow the students to independently practice the basic literacy skills. During this time, reading groups (based on skill level) meet with the teacher to practice recognizing and identifying high frequency words, making inferences using those high frequency words and pictures, and finally reading through the story. Although the students are receiving literacy instruction in several ways, literature itself is only minimally incorporated into the classroom.
       This differs immensely from how I would use literature in my classroom. While I plan to incorporate similar aspects of literacy into my future classroom, including Writer's Workshop, I think it is extremely important to also provide my students with exposure to literature itself, in its different forms. Exposure to literature enables children to become familiar with the various concepts of print, especially directionality. Literature is also a great way to help create an anti-bias environment that exposes children to people/characters of a wide variety of cultures, ethnicities, languages, abilities, and more. In the "Out of the Box" article by Leland, Harste, and Smith, first grade teacher, Karen Huber, made the decision to incorporate literature into the classroom. This incorporation provided Huber's students' with exposure to different social issues that they would otherwise not be introduced to. Huber instructed her students to really consider the content of the readings by responding to them, and, by doing so, she was able to use literature to the advantage of her students by, not only furthering their literacy development, but also by furthering their knowledge of social issues.
       Similarly, my head teacher could also incorporate literature into her classroom as a way to help introduce her students to realistic social issues occurring throughout the world. Exposing students to such social issue better enables children to begin understanding different perspectives, which could, in turn, improve children's literacy skills and the overall classroom behavior. It is clear from the Leland article that, aside from basic literacy instruction, it is very important to incorporate different forms of literature into the instruction as well, to promote open-mindedness in students, and further improvement their knowledge of the different concepts of print.