I squared with the idea of content areas and incorporating it into the classroom intentionally, “When we say we surround ourselves with content, we mean it. Everyone knows what we are studying because our rooms are drenched in whatever it is. . .We thread content and areas of study throughout the day and surround our students with the themes we are studying” (Buhrow and Garcia, 2006, p. 124). This immediately made me think of the human body unit we are doing for a few weeks at school right now and how we have the human body EVERYWHERE in our classroom. From text sets, to teeth, to comparing with actual animal bones, to language experience charts and my most favorite--our personal “human body” that we made from tracing a student and using different materials to represent parts of the body. Involving the students in their learning and saturating their classroom environment with the content that they are studying about has been super beneficial. I have students coming in and telling their parents about what they are doing in class and what they have learned and I know that it’s all making sense to them.
One idea that has pointed me in a new direction of thinking is making big books as a class or as maybe a small group with my kids, “Big books are ideal outcomes because children are familiar with them. They have experienced them in class through read-alouds, and by reading them on their own and with the library media specialist. For those children who like to make books, they are a good way to make their thinking visible” (Buhrow and Garcia, 2006, p. 114). I’ve never thought about making a big book with my class out of chart paper but I think it’s a phenomenal idea. I know my students enjoy when I read a big book and then allow them to get a chance to look at it in the library during centers. How cool would it be to have a big book that our class made together with the student’s words and pictures so that they can feel like an author and writer. If the text is simple enough, they would be able to “read” it without much teacher help just by remembering what we talked about when we made the book and using the pictures as context clues. I think this is a great idea that I might want to try with my students. I’m also thinking I could get the chart pages laminated so that the book would be well protected through all the use it would get.
Some of things still circling in my mind is the idea of students publishing their work and this becoming a source of empowerment and information in the classroom, “By displaying work, students can take pride in what they have written. It also gives the other children access to environmental print. The outcomes give kids the opportunity to share and see what their peers are working on, which gives them access to new ideas and information” (Buhrow and Garcia, 2006, p. 106). In Pre-K, we don’t have very many kids that continually go through the processes of writing and make it officially to “publishing”. Most of my students will connect a drawing to something that’s important to them or something that we read. They don’t do much writing on these pieces on their own, however, we do write dictation on them. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that all students have access to this print and the information on them because most of my students are not traditionally reading yet. I wonder what I can do as a teacher to enhance their print access more readily, despite the fact that most of my students have still in the pre-phonemic and early phonemic stages of writing and reading.
