Entry #11: This Is The End *cues Adele's "Skyfall"*

Reflections on Content

We dove deeper into a variety of topics within literacy development this semester, and these are just a few that stood out. 

Phonics

Something I didn't mention earlier: going into this class, I hated phonics. Or rather, I hated phonetics, and most everything it touched.

As I've mentioned, I was a linguistics major in undergrad. In my foundational linguistics course, we had a unit on phonetics and phonology, which makes sense because it's a foundational part of linguistics. 

I struggled so much with that unit. 

I had such a hard time hearing the differences between the phonemes and figuring out which ones were being used in words. I had to go in for extra help with my professor, and still, I didn't feel like I understood what was happening. I was flying by the seat of my pants, and it was terrible. 

I don't know how to say this without sounding annoying, but I think it left such a bad impression in my mind because it was the first time in school that something didn't come easily. I've worked hard in school my whole life, of course, but most of the time, nothing was particularly difficult. If I struggled, it was never for a long time. Phonetics was different. I just couldn't get it. And so I hated it. (I know: that's not a great growth mindset...)

Now, by a series of events that had to do with a professor I adored and lack of judgment by me, I ended up in a class about pronunciation (which dealt with phonetics and phonics) and a semester long research elective about pronunciation (like I said, lack of judgment by me). While I actually really enjoyed the pronunciation class and actually felt semi-smart by the time I finished my research project, I still had my knee-jerk hatred of phonetics and by extension, phonics. I understood what I was talking about (mostly), but it just felt hard.

So when I saw that phonics was going to be one of the deeper dives, I tried to wrangle my enthusiasm.  

It didn't really work.

I just had this sense of dread that phonics was so essential to the reading process - that it was the reading process (even though I knew objectively this wasn't true) - and I wasn't going to be able to understand how to do anything with it. 

But phonics turned out to have a lot of things that intrigued me. Phonics isn't the be all, end all of reading, and it doesn't have to be this complex thing to teach students. You aren't trying to isolate sounds like I was doing in undergrad, and you don't need to remember all the IPA vowel symbols, which I still can't. Through the article we read on phonics, "Everything you wanted to know about phonics (but were afraid to ask)" (Stahl et al., 1998), I was able to see the principles you need for phonics instruction. And they weren't scary. And as the article said, "Although phonics instruction is an extremely important part of beginning reading, it is only one part" (Stahl et al., 1998, p. 344). There are other important aspect; everything isn't just phonics all the time. 

Spelling

As we've established, I can't spell. (Tangent (I know, I do a lot of these; my brain is a mess): I literally had a dream the other night where I was trying to convince someone that spelling wouldn't matter in the future, and I'm convinced it was prompted by that blog post I wrote. *clears throat* Anyway.) 

I thought spelling was spelling tests and spelling bees. That's it. That's how you dealt with spelling. I had spelling tests all through elementary school (lot of good it did me), and we all had to try for the spelling bee in middle school (none of us got very far), and that's what I thought spelling was in school.

But through Tompkins (2017) and Stahl et al. (1998), I learned about inventive spelling (now: phonetic spelling). And I love it. It is great way way to literally see students' understanding of phonics. Their graphophonemic awareness is on display for the teacher in a way that most concepts can't be displayed. 

So spelling isn't just spelling tests and bees. It is phonics and word patterns and affixes and root words and more than anything, trial and error. 

Fluency

I knew about fluency in the context of speaking. I knew how to build students' second language speaking fluency through activities such as 4/3/2 (I even wrote a paper about it!). I knew fluency was important.

But I had no idea what it consisted of in reading and especially not in writing. 

Tompkins' (2017) chapter and Rasinski's (2014) article, "Fluency matters," were eye-opening. There were components of fluency! There were things you could do to improve fluency in reading and writing! I even recognized tests that I had taken as a kid that were measures of fluency! 

It made sense. You needed automaticity in reading and writing. You needed speed, to a certain extent, in reading and writing. You needed prosody in reading or voice in writing. These were clear, easy to understand things to look for in students. I even used this knowledge in another class in making a reading intervention plan: fluency instruction seemed like the thing that would make the most impact on the student's reading. 

Reflections on the Blog

I think we've established that I don't have the best track record of slowing down and connecting to readings (as noted here and here). Having to write a blog post after reading, though, made me connect and actually consider what I thought about what I read. And unlike other formats, where I am hyper-concerned with citations and formatting and perfect language, I could just write what I thought in the blog. It allowed for deeper connections - because a lot of times I don't write about certain things for classes because I don't consider it "academic-y" enough. I don't think like "an academic"; I think like a snarky 21 year old because that's what I am. It was a nice change to be authentic in what I wrote because I'm often ... not ... in writing for school. But I could be in this, and my experiences that I normally wouldn't write about were just as valuable in considering literacy development, if not more so. I could consider what I've gone through and then honestly talk about what I would do in the classroom. 

Classrooms, like life, aren't nice, neat theoreticals. They are messy, and this writing format helped work through that.

References

Rasinksi, T. (2014). Fluency matters. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 7(1), 3-12. 

Stahl, S.A., Duffy-Hester, A.M., & Stahl, K.A.D. (1998). Everything you wanted to know about phonics (but were afraid to ask). Reading Research Quarterly, 33(3), 338-355. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.33.3.5

Tompkins, G.E. (2017).  Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

(If this is a little ramble-y at times, I just want to say my new (or relatively new) meds are messing with my head just a *little* bit... I tried waiting until my head was a little more clear, but it doesn't seem to be clearing up. Just to be completely upfront here.)