Final Blog Posting

Over the past semester, I have learned a great deal about language arts and how I can use it in my classroom one day. I think that language arts in extremely beneficial in the classroom and children need to learn it to be successful readers and writers. There are a few arguments that some methods are better than others but I think that maybe as teachers we should just see what is right for our students.

For our final project in the class, we had to write a book. I thought this was the best project because we experienced first hand the writing process. I am not going to lie, it was extremely difficult for me to use the writing process since I have not in a long time. Even though it was a challenge, I found I learned so much about it and can tell my future students that even I had to write a book using the writing process. After the project, I now realize that I will need to be patient with my students and help them in every way, because I am in college and it was a difficult task for me to accomplish. I am definitely going to use the writing process in my classroom and cannot wait to share with my students that I had to write a book!

Throughout this semester, I have had to observe in a 2nd grade classroom. I loved the teacher and the way she worked with her students. In class we learned about phonics and whole language and after learning about it, I was interested in seeing what teachers used in the classroom. The teacher that I observed used phonics, which seemed to be extremely beneficial for the students. They would still come up to her, asking her how to spell words but she would sit there with them and help them sound it out and the students always got the spelling right. After seeing this work, first hand, I will use this technique when I teach. I think it helps the students be able to spell words on their own and will continue to use phonics until they get older.

I learned a great deal in this class and cannot wait to take what I have learned and use it in the classroom! My junior year is coming to an end and a year from now I will have already done my student teaching. This class has helped me become more confident in language arts and hopefully my teaching, one day, will reflect that.