Standard 7
Educators engage in professional learning.
Professional Development- Early Learning Conference January 29, 2024
As a teacher candidate, I was given the opportunity to attend my very first in-person professional development day with my UNBC classmates. I thoroughly enjoyed this experience and can’t wait to attend more in the future. During the morning session, I attended the Effective Primary Reading Instruction seminar given by Adrienne Gear. I realized very quickly how effective and strategic Adrienne is when it comes to empowering students of all ages with seeing themselves as readers no matter what their skill level is. Recognizing that everyone can be a reader and the importance of meeting each student where they are at individually can go a long way. The goal as a teacher is not just to teach the reading skills necessary to pass each grade, but to instil a love for reading along the way, giving each child the space to build a positive reading identity. Adrienne broke down the differences between “book reading” vs “brain reading” and how it’s important that we as educators ensure that both are being met with our students in order to create proficient readers. If all a child can do is decode the text we give them, but not fully comprehend what it means, we are only teaching them half of what they need to know. It was fascinating to hear how the practice of teaching reading has evolved over the decades; starting with basic memorization skills, to then picture books and to what we now refer to as the “science of reading”. As a late 80’s/90’s child, it almost makes me questions how it is that I learned to properly read (kidding of course).Â
One of the biggest takeaways I learned from listening to Adrienne was the importance of creating a holistic reading program within the classroom. With all of the tools and programs to help with phonics, fluency and vocabulary, it is also important to remember that comprehension of reading (aka, brain reading) is also necessary in creating a proficient reader. As Adrienne had stated, we need to make sure we don’t just produce decoders in our classrooms, but that we also pay close attention to whether or not our students are mastering the meaning behind what is being read. This can be done by breaking things down into smaller more manageable skills that help students reach their end goal. With phonics, we need to break down words in order to decode the text properly and with comprehension we need to do the same.  Adrienne discussed breaking comprehension into 5 skill sets; connect, visualize, infer, question and transform. I found that all of Adrienne’s tips and recommendations for implementing reading programs into classrooms were very practical, such as incorporating the Daily 5 into your  weekly routines, creating author studies, starting book clubs, themed read aloud and lots of “turn and talks” to engage in oral language skills. I am so very grateful to have had the opportunity to take part in this workshop and I can’t wait to dive into some of these concepts further and incorporate them into my own classroom one day.
During the second half of the day I attended another Adrienne Gear’s workshop (can you tell I was really interested in hearing what she had to say), called “Writing in the early years”. This workshop went over basic tools for beginning writers, mini lessons for teaching, powerful writing strategies and story workshops. I found this session to be very powerful and informative as the idea of teaching students to enjoy writing sounded very daunting to me, especially for those that do not see themselves as proficient writers. One of the biggest aha moments during this seminar was when Adrienne mentioned the idea of brain pockets replacing your typical journal entries. As a TTUC, I feel I have seen first hand the apprehension and struggle students feel when it comes to journal entries as most don’t really know what to write or where to start. After reading over a few, I noticed that many just wrote the same thing, what they did over the weekend which usually included sleeping, eating and playing video games/sports. After awhile this became very mundane and boring to read as the teacher, so I can’t imagine what it felt like for the student writing it. Adrienne introduces brain pockets in 3 ways; your memory pocket, imagination pocket and fact pocket. She then will ask the students to pick one of these pockets to pull from and write about. This gives the student who dislikes creative writing the chance to tell me all about airplane facts, or the less enthusiastic writer a chance to create a story out of their imagination. I found this tactic to be useful and a great alternative to your general journal writing. Another key area that really resonated with me was the different writing phases in the very early grades. Adrienne discussed the 3 stages of writing as swirly writing, letter printing, sound printing and finally book printing, which is what we as teachers strive for. The fact that there are this many stages to writing blew my mind, but also made a lot of sense. I can’t wait to integrate some of the mini lessons Adrienne went over such as writers workshop, fiction vs non fiction ideas and the five finger planner (topic, detail, detail, one time and feeling) into my classroom one day.
As a new teacher, I really tried to soak up as much information as possible from this day. I left feeling inspired and motivated to take what I had learned and apply it in my own ways. I was also grateful to purchase a couple of Adrienne’s books she’s wrote, so I look forward to diving into these soon.
