Reflection

Reflecting on the Course that Inspired this Site

An Honest Look Back

Throughout the course, for which this website was built, I learned about various tools and strategies for encouraging students to read, write, and engage in literacy practices. Many of these tools were showcased in an idealized context far removed from the reality of my classroom community. However, I know my students and have found ways to incorporate many of these tools and practices in the classroom through culturally responsive and real-world adjustments.

Every step towards building a community of readers, teaching students the craft of writing, and providing opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know and can do through digital composition must start with knowing our students. This requires cultural and contextual literacy, the ability to read the room and assess the learning needs of our students.

Fostering a community of readers requires building mental stamina. My students need to develop reading habits, which can be accomplished through intentional reading. This means I need to identify students' interests and provide reading that engages those interests. I must also learn about the reading challenges my students face and make appropriate accommodations such as extended reading times, proportionate breaks, and the use of audiobooks. Guiding their reading through text-dependent questions and using activities like character maps will help students develop stronger reading comprehension. Using multimodal texts such as graphic novels, low-level-high-interest books, novellas, and audiobooks can help generate interest in reading. Lastly, using texts that will support both the interest and language development needs of my English Language Learners will ensure they do not get left behind when building a community of readers.

Teaching students how to write will always be a challenge. We can teach our students the rules and structure of writing, walk them through the process of developing and organizing their ideas, but teaching them when and how to apply those tools and strategies is difficult. This is where we teach students to read like writers (Marchetti & O'Dell, 2015), getting them to pay attention to how writers use writing strategies to create contextually appropriate works. During my poetry unit, students read several poems, paying attention to the way authors used poetic devices to convey meaning and create imagery. Additionally, students need to write daily to practice and develop their writing skills.

Finally, digital composition is one way to support the learning experience of the whole class. It embodies universal design for learning (UDL) strategies and helps students develop technology and digital literacies. Digitial composition is an exciting and engaging way to help students reach their academic and language development learning goals. And, if we're clever, the use of digital composition can also provide space for inclusive, social and emotional learning!