My Literacy Rich Classroom

This semester, I have been surprised by the literacy levels of my students. They are able to verbally express their ideas and participate in classroom discussions. They are able to ask questions about content and hold conversations with their classmates regarding the material. They are not able to, or often struggle with, writing out their ideas. When it comes to short responses, the students often write their responses in bullet form rather than in complete sentences, even if the directions state complete sentences. When students do write in complete sentences, they often are fill with grammatical errors.

September 30, 2013
My literacy rich classroom looks like students are beginning to feel comfortable with openly discussing ideas with their classmates. They are comfortable sharing their ideas with their peers as well as in front of the class. My students are actively engaged in these conversations and discussions. My students are reading the chapters from their textbook as well as beginning to research current events and articles from newspapers and journals.

December 15, 2013
My literacy rich classroom looks like students who are comfortable sharing current events with their classmates and sharing their events in front of the class. They are actively engaged in researching current events and reading about their events. They are also comfortable with researching their event to discover background information to learn more about the topic. They are writing outlines for a current event research paper and are beginning to write a paper on a current event of their choice. They are in active discussion with their classmates as well as myself about their topic and other current events they are finding throughout the period.

May 30, 2014
My literacy rich classroom looks like students who are comfortable verbally sharing current events with their classmates as well as with the entire class. Furthermore, my classroom looks like students who are comfortable reading journal articles and other scientific resources for current events and researching those articles to gain background information. My classroom also looks like students who are comfortable sharing their findings in essay based and short summary based formats. My students are continually reading, writing and discussing current articles in science with their classmates. They are capable of independent learning in using research tools to find other journals and articles to support or gain additional information on their article. Furthermore, my students are capable of independently directing a classroom discussion on a given science topic. They are also capable of fully expressing their viewpoints, opposition statements, etc. in paragraph or essay format with minimal grammatical errors.