Tomkins Chapter 3

I really enjoyed this chapter on young readers and writers because I'm really passionate about teaching younger students at a time when they are just learning to read and write! In my TE 301 class, we spent a lot of time on literacy instruction particularly in the younger grades. We even made binders full of resources on concepts of print, alphabetic principle, fluency, phonological awareness, etc. Also that year I was in a kindergarten classroom for field placement and I was able to really observe some of the strategies talked about in this chapter within that classroom. As this chapter mentions, my CT in the kindergarten classroom gave her students a variety of different types of print to work with. They worked with calendars, newspapers, narrative and informational books, song lyrics, etc. Allowing students to work with different types of print makes them better prepared for literacy in the future. If students are introduced to a wide array of print at a young age, they will feel more confident, know what to expect, and understand the purpose of the lesson more so than their peers with less experience with different types of print.