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Parents Reading to Me
My parents read to me from infancy. My dad will still occasionally tell me stories about reading to me when I was little. I believe this helped to instill my love of books. We are following the same example with our girls and they are both avid readers. This is a picture of my husband reading to my eldest daughter when she was just a couple months old. -
Chapter One Reading Intervention
Learning to read did not come easily to me and I received extra support in first grade. This intervention helped me to not only catch up, but also to love reading. -
Getting Ahead
At my second grade conferences, my parents were informed I was now reading well above grade level. This news instilled great confidence in me and I would be a strong reader for the rest of my schooling and beyond. -
Reading Aloud to My Class
In the spring of fourth grade, I read a challenging book aloud to my class. I pronounced the word 'fatigue' "fat-i-goo" and one of my classmates corrected me. This taught me an important lesson: even though I had an impressive vocabulary due to my extensive reading, I didn't know everything. There would be many more mispronounced words in my future. Later, I heard, "Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading." This saying rang so true for me. -
Essay Writing
In sixth grade, we had an assignment to write a five-paragraph essay. My second and third paragraphs said the same thing, but in different words. My teacher and parents had to work really hard to convince me of this. It was an important lesson for me and one that stuck with me. I was always more careful with the content of my writing after that. -
German Language
I began taking German in seventh grade and continued through my freshman year of college. Learning a second language helped me gain a deeper understanding of the conventions of English. -
AP US History
My junior year of high school, I took AP US History. My teacher was phenomenal, and in addition to teaching us the content, she taught us valuable literacy skills. It was in this class I truly learned skills such as effectively highlighting a text and taking useful notes. These skills have benefited me in every class I have taken since and are also important life skills. -
Teaching Second Grade
In 2009, I moved to second grade and also began using Daily 5. My class was full of struggling readers. I was determined to give them the extra support they needed and all of them made tremendous progress. A group of students weren't even using actual letters when they wrote on the first day of school. I will never forget the day I was in small group with them and I could READ every one of their sentences. I still feel the joy. That was the year I began to feel confident as a literacy teacher. -
Discovering Lucy Calkins
My last two years in the classroom, I used Lucy Calkins' Units of Study for teaching writing. It transformed the way I taught writing and I saw incredible growth in my students. I didn't quite figure out the best way to meld Daily 5 with Lucy Calkins, but I hope to resume that journey when I get back into the classroom. -
National Board Certification
I earned my National Board Certification in Early and Middle Childhood/Literacy: Reading- Language Arts. This was something I worked very hard for and am deeply proud of. I had to demonstrate a thorough understanding of teaching literacy through 4 different entries and six different exams. The process involved a lot of reflection and I grew a lot as a teacher of literacy. The photo shows me with my family after the pinning ceremony.
