Literature and darkness within our societies worldviews have placed the world as being “racialized, personified, and embodied”. This showed me how people’s worldviews can place numerous limitations on a literary experience. I believe literacy can shape the world we live in and play a role in how people participate in society.

It is important that “how our conception of early literacy must expand” in order to efficiently support our students. I liked this quote because it shows how reading and literacy is a multimodal concept.

A quote that stuck out to me was “To confront societal norms around gender, gender identity, and gender expression in order to open up spaces for children and adults to interrogate and explore their relationship to their own and others’ genders”. I believe it is important to emphasize the importance of integration in classrooms and to create an open space for children to feel comfortable with themselves. It is a necessity that society transforms their social order to achieve increased support. I found it interesting that the speaker focused on social change through either an era, movement, or a lasting impact on society. It is important to weave together the political and the practical. The worldview of political views has had an impact on our society. If the world doesn’t aim at combatting social change, then literacies and worldviews will be limited. There is a literary struggle occurring throughout the entire world. It was interesting that fantasies and literacies can shape the world around us and how individuals live their lives. I enjoyed the point that stated a reader participating in literacy can partake in a journey through fantasy or however they choose to remain in a space of unreal or real. In addition, the reader can choose how to believe the world through their literacy practices. Our collective consciousness can shape our perspective on the world and literature. I found it interesting that our language and the darkness in the world is personified, racialized, and embodied. This showed, to me, how literature and worldviews have placed numerous limitations to our literacy experience. I have learned the importance, as a future educator, to support my students and their exploration of relationships with themselves and others.

I looked at Reading Standards for Literature K-5. A specific category I looked at was determining key ideas and details within a text. In kindergarten, the standard is with prompting and support to ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

According to the author of the reading Rusul Alruball, “Literary analysis is a vital stage in the development of students’ critical thinking skills”. Literature and analysis aids in a child’s intellectual development. I believe it is important for children to have a guide of steps that helps them discover literature and amplify their thinking processes. It is beneficial for various techniques to be utilized to help develop students’ understanding of the elements of literature.

I will support emergent literacy in my classroom by facilitating a welcoming environment and a safe space. Emergent literacy can relate to skills that can be foreshadowed for later success in a child’s life. The more a child can play during reading and writing, the higher chances there are for them to become successful readers and writers. When I teach, I will allow for the development of students to play and express themselves intellectually and orally. To make home and school connections, I will send letters or notes home in order to inform families to practice skills at home, as well. If I give the families suggestions to improve their child’s skills for play, reading, and writing, then the learners will become successful. Literacy and reading skills should begin at birth. These types of experiences begin at home, therefore it is important for the at-home life to be supportive and aware of these experiences. The more exposure the children have at a young age to literacy experiences, the more effective they will be in school as readers and learners. Those individuals who lack these literary experiences will become poor readers by grade four. I believe it is important to have a connecting bridge between the home life and school life. The better connected both of these aspects are, the higher likelihood there is for the child to grow as a student effectively. Literacy-rich environments are so important for a child’s learning. I believe this type of environment can aid in the development of reading, writing, and speaking orally. As a teacher, I will utilize materials that can facilitate literacy and learning opportunities. I will expose my students to various genres of books that they may be desired to read. I will group them in groups or individuals to partake in the reading experience. I believe each student learns in their own way. The more and varying manipulative materials that I can use, the greater learning experience that individuals can have. I would utilize technology, books, projects, and activities to enhance emergent literacy.

The importance of creating a literacy rich environment in the classroom is apparent when developing a classroom structure. The literacy rich environment “involves the selection of materials that facilitate language and literacy opportunities”. Emergent literacy can develop skills that can foreshadow future success, which I found effective and interesting.

The dialogue in the classroom from this video sparks my interest. I like how the teacher engaged the children by raising questions for them to respond to. The teacher left an open-ended response, in a sense, for the students to fill in. She stopped her sentence, which implied for the children to finish the sentence and initiate their thinking processes. I believe this is a strong teaching technique and can further the intellectual development of students. The teacher invited the students to take intellectual risks by raising questions that initiated what the students thought individually. There was a comforting space created by the teacher that I thought played a helpful role in allowing for students to take intellectual risks. The teacher guided the students to intellectually share their thoughts and take risks. The students used objects to focus on the topic of measurement. The teacher raised questions to students about comparing objects through measurement, which allowed for the students to take intellectual risks in how they think the objects were measured compared to one another. If they student did not answer it correctly, they kept working in a positive manner which allowed for them to figure it out. I found it intriguing and effective how the classroom was a safe environment that can play a huge part in creating a space that allows for students to take intellectual risks.

We should increase oral language development in the classroom by allowing for children to express their emotions. I believe it is important to allow for time to let children talk about their feelings for the day. Not only does this allow for the student to express their feelings, but their oral language is also being developed. This will lay the foundation down for each individuals oral development to progress. In the home, I believe in the importance of visualizing and observing conversation. When a child is in the room with an adult or multiple adults, the child can witness how dialogue works and interacts. This can develop their own personal language development as well, but hearing how dialogue works from a different perspective. They can listen to the adult language which can differ from a child’s dialogue. Oral language can include speaking and listening. Listening, I believe, is a huge part of human evolution and a child’s development. Gaps in words known by children can raise a problem with their vocabulary knowledge and being able to speak efficiently. According to the African-American History and the Oral Tradition reading, “Pre-literate or non-literate peoples throughout the world have depended upon the oral tradition to transmit their culture from one generation to another”. There are cultural differences within the world. It is apparent, however, that oral language is a foundation that allows for development through generations and learners.