Hello All. Welcome to A Voice For ELA. Here I hope to provide a forum for evaluating the various components of teaching elementary English Language Arts. Each entry will focus on a different instructional level within that group and today I will focus on the early years of Kindergarten and Grade One. I have a particular affinity for this group, as I am passionate about early literacy.
Developing literacy in the early years of a child’s education is crucial. My experience as an Educational Assistant and my work as a Literacy Links Facilitator and Literacy Camp Coordinator for a public school division in Winnipeg, have further reinforced my interest and value of early literacy. My experience in these positions has provided me with some insight into the diversity of the field.
Children start walking at different times, say their first word at different times, learn the alphabet at different times, yet, at the age of 5 they are all thrown into a Kindergarten classroom, with Velcro or lace up shoes, and are meant to start learning together. The resources and strategies necessary to provide an adequate literacy education for each of those students are enormous. However, once those resources are put into place it is amazing how so much growth, change and excitement can happen.
To me, ELA in K-1 classes will look like a mosaic of words, colours, pictures, diagrams and videos. The classroom will be a place where children can interact with the words and images that they see by questioning and interpreting their surroundings. For example, one of the walls might be designated a “Word Wall” and over the course of the year as children learn words they can add them to the word wall using different forms of visual representation.
The classroom will be a place of expression where children will be encouraged to use language, song, and sound to describe what they see and feel. Teaching the components of story could be in the form of a drama, a wordless book or a collection of sounds. Most importantly, the classroom will be an enjoyable place where the idea of ELA isn’t a subject matter so much as an everyday experience that promotes expression, imagination with a side of fundamental letters and sounds.
I will leave you with a short story about how incredible it is to work with these young minds.
I was doing some literacy work with a struggling reader in grade one. I had written sentences on paper and cut them into individual words. The child had to put the sentence back together so that it made sense. They were using their understanding of how a sentence starts and ends, the words they knew, and what meaning they could attribute to these words. When the child had correctly put the sentence together she said, “ That doesn’t make any sense!” The sentence was: My little brother is tall.
