In my current role as an English teacher, I promote literacy frequently and with regularity.
On Fridays I have First Chapter Fridays, where I read a few pages of a book, play an audiobook, or play a book trailer that thematically relates to our current unit, and I ask for students' Five Star Feedback. I review the students' Five Star Feedback and often reply with more questions to help me gain a better understanding of students' reading preferences. Each day, I start my day with reviewing the agenda, assignments, objectives, and I include a brief media chat that relates to our activity or unit. For media chats, I may highlight a book, movie, song, or website. This has been something I incorporated in 2021 after creating a YA Media Chat for coursework.
|
In 2021, my school did not host any Read Across America Week activities, but I did hold several contests for my students. I invited students to submit book reviews (these were made into a digital flipbook), design bookmarks, or sign up to read on First Chapter Friday.
I also created and display a "currently reading" poster, which I made more of for colleagues who requested them, and updated an LRC display for National Humor Month in April. |
I incorporate children's literature as mentor texts to demonstrate specific skills. For example, I read The Knight Who Said No and ask students to identify punctuation as I read aloud and then we discuss how the author's use of the punctuation impacts the story. I also enjoy incorporating read alouds of texts that tell a different perspective of the same story, such as The Wild Truth when we study Into the Wild.
|
|
With my passion for literacy and SEL, I have an strong desire to develop bibliotherapy opportunities for students. After informing my principal of my ideas, she requested that I contact the Student Services department to begin collaborating for the following school year. Upon initiating the idea with the department, I was asked to present at their department meeting to introduce bibliotherapy. In my presentation, I defined the practice, explained what I have done thus far, and examples of how different schools implement the program. We are collaborating to plan for bibliotherapy sessions led by Student Services team during next school year.
|