This past year was my first year to teach.  That being said, I learned a lot of what to do and what not to do.  My orientation (TORP score 66) is heavily phonics influenced.  My students, as a general rule, have a very hard time decoding the English language on their own, and my primary focus (while trying to simultaneously teach Reading) is helping them break down and understand the language.

            Since my student population is heavily socioeconomically disadvantaged and Hispanic, there are some diversities I have to account for in my lessons.  Firstly, since quite a few of my students have a limited understanding of grade level vocabulary, I need to teach words with heavy use of context clues and keep plenty of dictionaries handy for the kids to use them.  Originally, I allowed my students to use their cell phones to look up words (merely as a time saving measure and technology perk), but as I learned that many of my kids didn’t know how to use a dictionary (basic alphabetical order), I had them solely use dictionaries and thesauri to look up meanings of words.  Secondly, as an avid reader, I expected my students to want to read novels as a class.  This was how I learned in school, and I only graduated high school nine years ago.  Unfortunately, though, my students can’t be praised, bribed, or threatened to read outside class.  Given the choice between reading and failing my class for the semester, my students (as a general rule) would rather fail the class.  I had one student say in an ARD that he reads daily – his text messages.  Another student complained about how much reading was int the STAAR English I EOC which she gets four hours to take.  Since novels are no longer in the TEKS, I don’t feel bad for nixing the class-wide novels in favor of short stories being read in class, although I feel that my students’ culturing is suffering from it.  Thirdly, about half of my students do not have internet access at their homes, and therefore cannot do homework that is assigned online.  This eliminates some great opportunities like Flipped Classroom and Google Classroom from my repertoire. 

            These three major concerns of mine highlight what my kids can’t bring to literacy.  However, what they can bring to literacy is the knowledge of two languages (however limited on one end of the spectrum or the other).  As earlier stated, about a third of my student population is Hispanic, and as Spanish speakers, they can understand my unit on Latin roots, words and phrases better than many of my monolingual English speakers.  During this unit, I capitalize on their knowledge.  This, I believe, brings those students great pride.

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My literacy goals for my 8th grade ELAR students this next year is to have all of my students read on grade level, have my students pass all vocabulary tests, and for them to know grade level and content area appropriate vocabulary.