As I was reading through the Sulzby & Teale article, I was struck by the idea that literacy starts to develop from use of real life application and use of reading and writing to achieve goals. This idea makes perfect sense after reflection, yet I had never really considered it exactly that way before.
This premise leaped off the page for me in relation to what I'm currently learning about teaching middle schoolers. In class this past Wednesday, my small group focused on the cognitive changes that adolescents go through: one change is increased boredom/frustration with material that doesn't connect to their own lives. Relevant, meaningful curriculum is best practice for students K-12, but I'm really fascinated with the idea that it develops much earlier than that: with children even younger than 14 months, in relation to their emerging literacy.
While thinking further through this idea and what it might look like in a classroom, I thought of the writing curriculum used in my main placement classroom. I am student teaching in a first grade classroom, in a public school district, somewhere in the state of Washington, with a really, really wonderful master teacher (MT). In MT's classroom, students use "Small Moments" where they write about experiences from their own lives. The real life connection is obvious - students use their own experiences to shape the stories they tell. The work is engaging - they have the choice on what to share and when. Additionally, it helps strengthen classroom community as students learn about each other in meaningful ways.
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