Philosophy of Teaching Reading My beliefs about best practice for literacy instruction are to ensure all my students find their love and enjoyment for reading. I can think back and remember when I fell in love with reading. I was in second grade and had two influential people reading to me and piquing my interest. My second-grade teacher who would read Ramona the Pest chapter books and my mother who read Care Bear books at night before bedtime. Hearing them read aloud to me immediately sent my imagination into another world. My mother read with such enthusiasm and animation I had her read the books over and over just to hear her passion. My hope is that all students feel this interest in learning to read and reading to learn.
In my classroom I plan to teach reading following, “The Six Ts of Effective Elementary Literacy Instruction” written by Richard Allington. The six T’s are time, teach, texts, talk, tasks and test.
Time – focus on less stuff versus reading during most of the class time. Concentrate on guided reading and more independent reading during all subjects like social studies and science.
Texts – I plan to emphasize on offering more texts so the students can grow into proficient readers. I intend on matching each student’s reading level throughout the class day instead of just during reading instruction. Evaluate and review so that a student is on their level of reading accurately, fluently and with solid comprehension by creating multi-level curriculum so that it meets the needs of all the different reading levels in the classroom.
Teach – I propose to teach through modeling reading and connecting with the students while decoding words, summarizing and understanding the reading material. Think of this as a training session on reading. Demonstrating reading skills and showing students through modeling.
Talk – I will encourage discussions throughout the day with teacher to student or student to student. During the discussions will include problem-solving techniques for lesson instructions. I want to encourage every student to converse freely using strategies. These discussions will produce ideas, theories, and strategies by giving open ended questions.
Tasks – I will prepare longer assignments instead of shorter tasks that only offer busy work. Longer assignments will include writing workshops, reading whole books, and research projects that will incorporate reading, writing and social studies. In order to guide students, I propose to allow these papers and projects to be student choice.
Tests – My assessments will include rubric-based evaluations to grade. I believe this will encourage students to work harder as an individual. Assessing students with rubrics gives the students the all the information they need to improve or enhance their grades.
I believe this to be the best approach to literacy instruction because it involves all students no matter what reading level they are on. This approach also encourages me as a teacher to provide rich literacy lessons so that in the end the student is finding their love of reading.
Issues I have experienced in the field of reading instruction are teachers using too many fillers. In other words, they use busy work instead of literacy instruction. Modeling to students your love for reading will encourage the students to imitate the action. My goal is to read to my students at least 15 minutes per day. I want to read as my mom read to me with passion, so the students feel the same excitement I did growing up.
My goals of reading instruction are to teach literacy with students reading to learn and provide reading engagement. In order to achieve that goal, I need to teach fluency. I will offer a classroom library to build reading using high-frequency words. Another goal so that I accomplish my goal is teaching comprehension. When I teach comprehension, I will build on their prior knowledge. Lastly, my goal as a teacher is to motivate my students to read. I plan to provide a literacy rich environment with a classroom library, books with pictures, and poetry to capture their interest.
My philosophy is based on the following resource for the teaching of reading: Reading Rockets. (2019). The Six Ts of Effective Elementary Literacy Instruction. [online] Available at: https://www.readingrockets.org/article/six-ts-effective-elementary-literacy-instruction