Literacy #5

This weeks readings talked about the different methods of teaching. I was really interested to revisit the concepts of top-down and bottom-up literacy. I think that the most important gift you can give to students is to make them responsible for their own literacy. When they have the power to decide how they will build the skills they need to be competent readers, they are more likely to develop those skills with confidence and thorough understanding. I have seen in my class room both top-down and bottom-up literacy occurring at the same time. My teacher gives them a lot of independence and autonomy in their reading selections and timeline for reading. She also assigns a lot of writing assignments that give them the opportunity to decide what they want to write about. However, she does also focus a lot on preparing them for the EOGs, so most of their guided reading aims to teach them the basic skills needed to ensure that they are successful on the standardized testing at the end of the year. This is an approach that I am still uncomfortable with because I remember being taught to take the test, and I remember hating it. It did not instill in me a love for reading. My parents and local librarians really helped foster my independence in literacy by letting me pick out books I loved. I also wrote stories and made up plays which helped me to feel more confident in reading and writing. It was because of this, that I did well on the EOGs, not because of the Blast-off curriculum they were using at the time. To this day, I still cringe when I think of the front cover of those workbooks with the rocket blasting off, but I remember fondly the summer reading packets from the local library.