Literacy is everywhere in my classroom. My teacher does not have a specific “literacy time” because she believes in integrating subjects. She thinks that her kindergarteners learn better from integrated subjects rather than specific time focusing on each individual subject. My teacher loves books and she reads a lot of them daily. She has them predict what the book is about, what the characters are like and what will happen next throughout the book. One thing I think she could also focus on, is talking about the pictures. She has all sorts of books with different modes in the classroom and has talked about what it means by the text colors, when the font gets bigger, etc., but hardly ever talks about the pictures and the meaning behind some of them. Based on the reading by Hassett and Curwood, this is important to have the students recognize and so when they are reading on their own it will help them understand the story better. She also uses a lot of the different strategies talked about in Langer’s reading about being out and stepping into the text and relating to them and the other strategies the author talked about in that article.
Her literature she does incorporate into the literacy portions of class are of all different types of modes talked about in the reading by Hassett and Curwood. She has all different types of books too. One thing I think she could expand in her collection, is more difficult topic books, like talked about in the Leland article. Some examples could be divorce, homelessness and other tough and awkward topics that most teachers want to avoid. I think she may not have these in her classroom currently because she does have young children and it is a catholic school. When we talked before about books, she said she had to be careful of the book selection because it is a catholic school. She does include literature in all subjects and the kindergarteners seem to learn really well through this way of teaching.
