This semester, I had the pleasure of being involved in many different classrooms at Gordon Terrace Elementary School. In my first few weeks, I spent time in a grade 3 class, which gave the unique opportunity to observe the classroom, how the students engaged with their teacher and how the classroom has been set up. As an avid reader, and someone who is constantly curious about what books / book series are currently popular with kids, I took particular note of their in-class library right off the bat.
I was thrilled to see that so many of the books I read as a kid are still present within the classroom, such as Magic Tree House, Junie B Jones and Captain Underpants! How nostalgic! Next thing I noticed was that the books were all bundled by series, but each bucket had a small coloured sticker on them, which I was keen to learn more about. After asking a student, they let me know that each colour corresponds to a genre of book. I am personally a huge neat freak about books and love to make sure that there is a cohesive structure. When discussing this with the student, it was made very clear that the structure the teacher had created was clearly implemented, as each student knew exactly how to find a book they might be interested in simply by checking the colour of stickers and the bin labels. My worry about this is ensuring that these remain organized. This level of organization would have to include a goliath quantity of skimming through and ensuring that the books are still properly maintained. For something like this, perhaps a student could be responsible each week to ensuring this gets done, like a class librarian. Ultimately, while it’s easy to get frightened of the work surrounding this library, with its high amount of maintenance, there are certainly work arounds that could make this library a huge success, and like I said, the students all knew exactly how it worked and how to use it effectively.
Next, I moved on to try and find an alphabet wall, which is of course, incredibly easy to do. This class had an incredibly effective alphabet wall! See below!
I really enjoy this alphabet wall, because each letter is given multiple examples (apples AND ants) to showcase the first letter of each of these words. This gives students a constant reminder on the way these letters are used and effectively displays both uppercase and lower case. Love it! I also couldn’t help but admire the sound and pronunciation wall below, that I was VERY impressed with and very much hope to replicate in my future classroom!
Next, I toured the classroom looking for posters dedicated to literacy and was able to find this particular poster.
This poster, as much as I love the positive messaging, doesn’t do much in my opinion. Using a hand drawn picture of a student with some minor changes to incorporate the meaning of the message might not be the motivator that it could be. Posters can be used to give students a reason to take in the hobby of reading, while I find this poster more illustrates the concept of reading. That being said, it’s possible I’m being overly critical and it might be enough to convince students to engage in the hobby, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a call to action on this one. Don’t get me wrong, I am overly thrilled that there was pro-literacy posters in the classroom, but this one might be a little bit outdated.
As I venture into my future practice as a teacher, I have to recall that sharing the joy of reading is the reason I became a teacher in the first place. I want to make sure that my students are given plenty of opportunity and reason to love reading. In my future classroom, I want to have an extensive library (One I am already currently building at home) with a variety of kid appropriate books from multiple different authors. Roald Dahl, Robert Munsch, Dav Pilkey, Lemony Snicket and JK Rowling are just a few different examples of authors whose works are key to unlocking the joy of reading for students.
As a bit of an OCD person, I hope to be able to create and organize my library by difficulty, for instance, a book by Roald Dahl may be placed in an easy-medium grade read for 8 year-olds while the works of JK Rowling or even JRR Tolkien may be placed in the more difficult section of the student library. I also personally love the idea of allowing students an area in the classroom in which to comfortably read. Places like the carpet, or a quiet corner or even a reading nook. I have a desk in my house and I can’t tell you a single time that I chose to read at my desk rather than read in bed or on the couch. Reading should be COMFY!
While I am excited to engage with students about reading on a professional level, a small piece of me just loves talking books with people, that I cannot wait to hear student’s interpretations of different children’s books. I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a couple years ago and formed multiple opinions on the writing style, but how could something like that be interpreted by its built in audience: Kids!