Double Entry Journal #3

3 things I learned about teaching literacy development: Using contrastive analysis, which is where you study the pair of languages with a view to identify their structural differences and similarities, can lead to code switching. "By using their own words to describe these patterns, students move from what they intuitively know about language to an understanding of language variation and how it works in different settings and with different audiences." Another thing that I learned about teaching literacy development is to let students use their informal speech in the classroom and acknowledge it as a valid language which does not have to be corrected and is not wrong. Students interviewing their parents and grandparents to find out how their Appalachian English has changed over time is also a good way to teach literacy development. To know where you came from and where you are now is very important.

2 examples from my schooling experiences that reflected effective or ineffective literacy instruction for speakers of non-standard dialects: My teachers always corrected students who would say "ain't." It was not allowed in the classroom. We were always supposed to speak with proper grammar. During another school experience the students who spoke with a dialect were constantly being corrected. During all of my school, no one ever encouraged the use of contrastive analysis. Students were never allowed to speak without proper grammar.

1 relationship between the strategies for the teaching of literacy presented in this article and inclusive practices: The strategies presented in this article encourage students to be themselves, to talk in their dialect without correction. Teachers want the students to feel comfortable to talk in their dialect in the classroom. In contrastive analysis, they find similarities and differences in the two languages. I think this relates to inclusive practices because we, as teachers, want to find similarities between all of the students. Whether it's their dialect or special needs that sets children apart, we want to include everyone to feel comfortable to be themselves in the classroom.

Honoring Dialect in the Classroom

Citations:

Epstein, P., & Herring-Harris, L. (2011, September 15). Honoring dialect and increasing student performance in standard english. Retrieved from http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3655

Elise. (2010, October 12). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://ejanowicz.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/honoring-dialect-in-the-classroom/