Self Evaluation/Reflection

          Reading Education 430 has been a very insightful class that I have learned a lot in. Going in to this class I did not know how to enhance students reading or teach students how to read. I now feel comfortable in doing so all because of this class. Also, I did not know there were so many skills that went into teaching reading. Phonemic awareness, oral language, fluency, comprehension are all vital aspects when it comes to teaching reading and learning to read that have all been made clear through this course. I will be interning in a kindergarten class next year therefore I know that I will carry everything that I have learned from this course to my experience next year. I would not feel near as comfortable going into my internship, especially in kindergarten, without knowing the information I have gained from this course and all of its resources. I know that when I teach small groups and reading lesson I will feel more confident and aware of what I am doing and what I am teaching.

         After the first day of class when I saw how many articles we had to read for this class I was honestly not too happy. My opinion changed quickly when I read the first few articles because I learned a lot of valuable activities and techniques that I can use through reading them. Before this class I had never used blogger.com before. I really liked this idea instead of writing papers because I felt like we could interact as a whole class. I truly enjoyed reading everyone's blog post to see what they thought was interesting from the articles.  I thought this was a great idea and would be good to use in the fall and spring courses. 

       Overall I feel like this class was a good deal of work, but definitely worth it in the long run. I now have a literacy portfolio full of great articles, ideas, and activities that I can use in my classroom one day. Also, I have gained great knowledge in different areas of reading from everyone's Inquiry Projects. I know that I enjoyed researching my topic and learned a great deal from doing so. I feel like I have worked harder in this class than I have almost every other class that I have taken. I am so happy to say that I have completely grown confident in teaching reading in only one month. I would assess my grade in this course to be an A.