I am having an extremely similar situation to Julia. Last semester, I was in my classroom during their literacy time all four hours of the week. Literature is rarely incorporated. Their literacy time is focused around centers. These centers will have different activities that vary from worksheets, to rhyming matching, and to writing. They will work on letter-sound knowledge, practice sight words, and work on writing and reading their own work. I rarely see any literature being read. When it is read, it maybe focuses around a theme they are working on, or a holiday book.
This is also different from how I plan to use literature in my classroom. All three of us just finished our student teaching for child development, and in the labs, we would read the children at least two stories a day. We would carefully plan how literature was used and places around the classroom. The books that were brought in were specifically picked out to support a well-rounded anti-bias curriculum. I agree with Julia that these centers that I am observing are very helpful to the students, I feel as though my students need to be exposed to more literature. Although I am only there four hours a week, I may be missing out on their literature portion of the day.
In Leland's article, I liked all the different things the students could do with the literature and that the literature talked about social issues. By having many different activities to do with the literature, it helps to support all the students that are at different developmental levels. That is how I want to structure my classroom, and also how I think my mentor teacher should, since it is a kindergarten class.
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