I Think Educators Should Be Teaching Literacy - 3097 Words

Introduction: Dr. Seuss once said, â€Å"The more you read, the more you know. The more you know, the more places you’ll go!† (Reading Rockets, 2013). This is a perfect quote to describe how important and powerful literacy development is for students. Reading gives children an abundance of knowledge and teaches them new things that they will take with them out into the world. It allows students to gather useful knowledge and escape into something enjoyable and relatable all at the same time. This paper is going to explain my beliefs on how I think educators should be teaching literacy in their classrooms based on my personal beliefs of the balanced teaching approach. I am a progressivist and an existentialist and believe in a balanced†¦show more content†¦Letting them make text to self-connections will give them confidence in their learning and a better understanding of the material. The more confident students are, the more they will enjoy reading and want to learn (Parkay Stanford, 2010). Existentialism stresses the experiences of individual students, giving them a way to think about their own life and what has meaning and truth to them. The use of creative thinking is commonly applied during this teaching approach. Existentialist educators allow students to ask questions, draw inquiries, and find conclusions independently. I connect with this approach because I believe that children should be thinking creatively while putting themselves in personal situations that will connect them back to what they are learning. The benefit to this approach lets students pick experiences that they have had and apply them to their learning to provide them with meaning. This philosophy approach provides teachers with ways to implement hands on experience learning of their students (Parkay Stanford, 2010). A balanced teaching approach allows students to receive all styles of teaching. According to Pressley and Allington, â€Å"Our best understanding of the research currently available suggests there are valid aspects of both skills-emphasis and meaning-emphasis approaches when beginning reading† (2015, p. 53). Both approaches are