Chapter 2 and 3 of Building a Knowledge Base in Reading

"Interaction is the key: How those around the child-parents, siblings, caregivers-talk and engage in experiences with the child seems to hold critical importance."

-I think this comment and paragraph goes hand-in-hand to what we discussed in the first few meetings of class. Growing up with a sister who was deaf and being exposed to the deaf culture and to sign language made a huge impact on my outlook on life and especially on my learning. I grew up at a more mature rate than other students because I felt as if it was my responsibility to watch over my younger sister, hence I was more independant with my school work and within certain activities. I think the Carnegie Task Force (researched brain development within the first 5 years) makes five very valid points about how the brain grows and develops depending on the surrounding environment.



Emergent Literacy

I found this section to be particulary interesting because as young children we enjoyed learning nursery rhymes, reading funny stories, using our imagination with our friends and understood certain places such as McDonalds based off the giant yellow "M." I find it interesting to see that read alouds before bed time and the modeling behavior we see from our teachers and parents make such a huge impact on our knowledge of literacy. Such as being aware of print and holding a book in the right direction and knowing that books are read left to right. I was a strong reader as a child and I have been working with this fun, energetic first grader who we will call Sally. Sally is very bright, but struggles in reading. She is distracted easily and does not understand simple repeptive things that most first graders should recognize. Today we worked on a fairly easy book called "Moving" and each page had a different animal and described what each animal does. For example one page said "I am a frog. I can jump." Each page started the same..."I am...and I can..." Sally was not able to pick up from this and struggled on each page to read the beginning of the sentences. In my opinion I believe it was because she was not read to as a child and therefore unable to pick up on simple patterns such as that. Emergent Literacy is very crucial for young developing minds.

"As schools find themselves in this richness of diversity (students), they need to be attentive to waht students brings as a framework, building on their experiences, values, and background knowledge to introduce them to more public forms of Literacy."

Culture and Literacy are definately compatible. Reading to children is obviously important, but WHAT you read to children is just as crucial. It is easy for teachers to teach about different cultures but to read and bring a child in on someones own life and culture, I think, has just as much of an impact. Especially if you are to read a book from several different cultures on a montly basis. Diversity is becoming extremely popular for many districts around Texas and being culturally aware will not only make an impact on your students but also yourself.


"By making believe that failure is something kids do, as different from how it is something done to them, and then by explaining their failure in terms of other things they do, we likely contribute to the maintenance of school failure."

Even though this quote is extremely wordy, I think I am following what McDermott is trying to explain. Teachers expect failure from culturally diverse students therefore they will be unsuccessful. It is wise to not expect failure but to expect EXCELLENCE! By doing this it will create confidence and less frustration for a child and to also include his or hers culture into their daily routine so that they have a feeling of security and not an American overload.