1 Personal Literacy Portfolio Personal Literacy Portfolio: 30% Tamara Elias ID: 260534142 EDEE 223-002 Language Arts Beverly May & Lesley Pasquin McGill University April 11th, 2016 2 Personal Literacy Portfolio Table of contents Response to fiction/non-fiction text & reflection………………...……….………..……..3 Personal profile/literate person…………………...……………………………………….7 Personal narrative & reflection………………………………………………………...….9 Poem or “free write” & reflection………………………………………………………..13 Self-selected item from Toolbox & explanation ………………………………………...15 Statement of Language Arts teaching philosophy…………………………………….....17 References………………………………………………………………………………..19 Personal Literacy Portfolio 3 I. This is a critical journal response I wrote for another English class I took this semester. This class was called Literature for Young Adults and we were asked to write journals every week about the books we covered every week in order to serve us; in order to help us record our experience of the text as we read it, points in the narrative that resounded with us and our experiences as a teen, or in what ways the text affected us now as adults. Since we were often asked to reflect on our teen selves in this class, in these entries the teacher was looking for both a critical and personal analysis (e.g. what does the story prompt in relation to our memories of being a teenager? What resonates with our experiences and perspective on young adulthood now as an adult?). Response to the fictional text: Carrie, by Stephen King Following our class discussion about what feelings reading horror and fiction can bring to people, and my group discussion on the book; Carrie by Stephen King. I realized I’ve found a new form of literature I enjoy reading. “By confronting imaginary fears, they are confronting their own anxieties in a safe place while they are learning to accept their responsibilities associated with becoming adults” (Bucher & Manning p.72). Teen me would have been very thankful for a book like Carrie, or any other engaging horror story like this one, it could have allowed me to feel not so crazy as I thought I was, as a teen, or not as alienated. By confronting fears and anxieties that come about in teen life through books, in my opinion this could have been helpful when I was self-reflecting, and learning to accept reality for what it is. In the end we are all human, and we can help each other by creating bonds with one another. And as an individual we can allow people to help us when we can’t seem to help ourselves, sometimes we can’t see any other perspective but our own. I think that’s what often happened to me as a teen, I would always forget that everyone is human and needs help at some point, were not all that different, and that we’re not alone, and that it’s just about knowing that it’s okay to ask for help and to deal with our emotions instead of suppress them. Carrie unfortunately was alone, or at least her telekinesis powers made her feel alone, and of course her peers who bullied her. It made me wonder whether she could have helped herself if she had someone to rely on. In Carrie, the theme of coping often came up, like when Carrie gets rejected enough times, it’s either fight or flight, and she definitely fights or when Sue Snell doesn’t help Carrie in the moment she needed it the most, and after the fact of how Sue dealt with her feelings of pity and or guilt. I hope teens are encouraged to read horror and fiction. In Personal Literacy Portfolio 4 order to achieve instinctive coping skills, greater awareness of what horror worlds hold, both real and imagined, could help spark adolescents’ imagination. Honing these skills in an engaging manner can also have a positive impact on teens, such as experiences with discussing these topics with teachers in a safe space and even with themselves (if they were positive experiences). Learning to cope in the imaginary world through reading, can create space to practice and reflect on experiences that teens may or may not have yet experienced, making them better prepared in the real world. Being a teen involves many things, including learning to steer new responsibilities, knowledge, and awareness of others in the right direction. Teen me would have loved to learn about how to deal with emotional pain, or the many queries I asked myself as a confused and self destructive adolescent. If students had this knowledge and awareness, this might create more balanced adults to later go on into the real world and create better opportunities to help others. Learning to have control over your actions as a teen, and owning the powers of your developing mind would be a healthy skill to practice and communicate about with more knowledgeable peers or adults, for example in doing so, Carrie might have been better capable of controlling her powers and used them for herself to work towards a better future. Books can say a lot but unfortunately I’m not convinced that teen me would have understood the lessons Carrie brings to surface, so I’m still unsure whether it’s the mind and what it’s capabilities are as a teen and whether it’s about discipline. Because now I really appreciate the lessons I am learning from the books we’ve covered and the process of uncovering layers and symbolism of real life found in books. All this to say, there are many other interesting and impactful themes that Stephen King brings to life in Carrie, but as I am training to become a teacher I’ve focused on writing and reflecting on something that is very important to me; that students learn early on to develop emotional intelligence, in hopes to make their lives as adults easier and more progressive. A reflection on how and why I would ask students to respond to literature in a Language Arts classroom: In chapter 1, (Tompkins, Bright, and Winsor, pg. 2) a Librarian named Sally Bender writes about her procedure in teaching her grade 2 classroom about the history of quilting. To give a brief summary, she uses books that encourage the reader to design their own quilts, but more importantly she chooses books that also have themes embedded in them, such as family, health, social studies, mathematics, and art. With all this rich material Sally gets her students excited about learning, and quilting, which may Personal Literacy Portfolio 5 later lead to some of the students becoming very passionate about quilting in their lives that later become committed to the art. The reflection they have about the literature is expressed through quilts made in class. The themes in all the books relate to important concepts about life, and the creation of quilts represents all of these lessons they learn woven together, it is a project that has the students excited about reflecting on their learning. All this to say, she has left the students with a gift; the gift to appreciate and enjoy reflection as part of learning. This also brings me to the question as to why myself as a teacher do I need to encourage reflection about everything. In teaching the students how to quilt, Sally Bender was able to link her lessons on the beauty of craftsmanship to family history, earlier times, designs in nature, other cultures, recycling, and electronic communication. Sally Bender says, “The quilt is a perfect metaphor for the classroom-begin with small pieces and, through hard work and creative design, achieve a masterpiece of unity” (Tompkins, Bright, and Winsor, pg. 2). If I replace the quilt with writing, students can also learn to appreciate writing, and the masterpiece at the end can be a billboard in the classroom with each student’s masterpiece of writing posted. Sharing work (Tompkins, Bright, and Winsor, pg. 17) with classmates is one characteristic of how children learn while becoming competent language users (NCTE, 1996). Finally, this brings me to thinking about how many different ways I can ask students to respond to a text in a Language Arts classroom. For example, the reflective journals my teacher had us write in response to the fictional texts like Carrie was helpful because it’s somewhere my classmates and I could make connections by reflecting on our Personal Literacy Portfolio 6 prior in school learning and personal learning experiences and meaningfully make connections to what we had learnt in the text. In a constructivist framework, students learn by relating new information to prior knowledge. Some activities I can include as a teachers can include in a language arts class are blogging, journal writing, and collaborative writing, while being consistently assessed along the way, these are all forms of writing that encourage students to think critically (Tompkins, Bright, Winsor, pg. 22). Providing lessons that cover techniques of parody and comparison and having exercises with these text forms, and later leading into discussions about culture, questioning of power and the dominant people in society and stereotypes can also enhance students’ reflective pieces (Tompkins, Bright, Winsor, pg. 22). The role of I have as teacher is to help students develop active, critical, and metacognitive reading strategies and to encourage students by sending learning opportunities their way that help them develop as reflective citizens (Tompkins, Bright, Winsor, pg. 22). My commitment as a teacher to critical literacy is also part of the learning experience, therefore the students learning of critical reading and writing skills depends on the knowledge I have as their teacher. The process of students reflecting on where and who produced texts, advertisements, history texts, and studying the present social culture, can help them imagine a different world (Tompkins, Bright, Winsor, pg. 22). In a classroom, in order for myself as a future teacher to scaffold in students’ learning, it is important that I am aware of the level of understanding each student has grasped from the lesson, unit or chapter, and writing a reflection is a key distinction in Personal Literacy Portfolio 7 knowing this information about my students. Exit cards can be used for this, or short reflection pieces on what the students have learnt and why these particular details resonated with them. II. A personal profile of yourself as a writer, reader, or learner and producer of various literatures. On January 11th, 2016 in our Language Arts class, my professors, Leslie Pasquin and Beverly May spoke to the class about thinking of ourselves as writers, readers and or producers of various literatures and following from this statement about what it means to be a literate person. In the moment, what I wrote about was myself as a reader and a writer, although I am not a professional writer, it’s the two activities I related to the most out of the three. After really understanding what the professors meant about a personal profile, I reflected and thought about what these questions really meant in respects to myself as a learner. Here is what I wrote in that moment in class (an edited version, since it was a quickly jotted down during the class exercise): I think of myself as much a writer as a reader. In school, it’s impossible not to read and write and pass or at least try and get good grades. In order to reflect and write an essay I’d need to firstly have read some sort of information. As a student in university, this position allows me to be motivated as both a reader and a writer. Now that I think about it, without university, I don’t think I would be much of a writer or reader, I’d probably sit around outside and try drawing, but getting myself to read and write has often been a hassle. As a teen, I was rebellious and my mentor suggested that I write in a journal to help me release any of this energy I had built up. Unfortunately, this exercise did not help me express myself. I didn’t write to help or keep me out of trouble; I ended up writing all the troubles I got myself into, in a manner of which made it sound like I thought I was funny. Other things I wrote about were about being heartbroken by boys, and broken friendships. The journal entries were very poorly written, terrible slang language, run on Personal Literacy Portfolio 8 sentences, and just things being said that had no meaning. It was a seriously horrible journal, filled with stupidity, even though I kept writing, I wasn’t learning anything new about writing or anything new about myself. I was just feeding the stupidities. From this experience, I recently realized what was missing; it was that I had no one correcting my writing in order for it to improve. So in reality, even though I kept writing nothing changed, my writing skills were at level 1 and they stayed at level 1 even after writing at least 50 journal entries. I left the journal behind for a while and stopped writing and when I went back to it, I read it over; I was embarrassed that I did not know how to write, and that’s when I got rid of the journal. I realized that I wasted a lot of time thinking that I was practicing my writing skills and that there was no essence of any valuable content in it. Becoming a reader and a writer is something you build, just like character building. But sometimes you need a little bit of guidance to bring you back to the center, or else you can end up becoming a drifter and letting things happen to you instead of making things happen for yourself in the world, sometimes we don’t know what’s best, or we just don’t know what we’re doing and need help. Questioning myself as a writer and reader today showed me to that I am someone who needs guidance, guiding questions and purpose in what I am reading and writing. I don’t like things that don’t have purpose, I’m so stubborn that I try to find purpose in everything I read, even when the only purpose is that I need to do my readings for class or write an essay for class that I’m not inspired to write. To elaborate on this point with an example; if I had to read an article for a class, I would try to relate it to my present state in life and take some kind of lesson from it, in order to further reflect on this reading and give it purpose in my life, which often makes this process confusing, because no one can relate to everything. Now the only time I write is in university, and as draining and long the process is because of my lame writing skills, I end up enjoying the writing part of university because it challenges me to re read until I understand what the text is trying to provoke, and then to challenge myself even further I have to reflect on it as a future teacher, giving the assignment purpose. What I’m told to write in university is usually really interesting and rewarding because it exercises my vision of being a teacher. It’s always more enjoyable to be a writer when I feel strongly about a text, writing about it allows me to share my perspectives on various topics and explore them deeper, and because my work is reviewed it enables me see my faults and think about how I can improve my skills as writer and in expressing my ideas and understanding, which in turn, I hope will make me a better teacher. A literate person is someone who can listen, speak and summarize what they have learnt, someone who can read and think clearly, logically in different contexts such 9 Personal Literacy Portfolio as abstract art, media, literature; fiction or non-fiction, and people as well as someone who can express their feelings, ideas, values, beliefs and knowledge (Language Arts Intro PPT, 2016) authentically. A person who can extract meaning and understanding from everything and every situation in life, and someone who can read the world; where their words have a direct link to their world, they do what they say, and can make sense of their experiences in the world. III. A personal narrative Looking for a Place Called Home I was getting ready to go out, prime teenage years, the buzz about going out drinking and dancing was at the peak of its time. As each of my friends arrives, the excitement level rises. We’re all getting dolled up, sharing all our resources whether it was clothes, make up, or the latest gossip, it felt like family. Finally, when we were all ready, we made our way out to the bar. As we arrive at the bar, at the back of every one of our heads is, “oh my god, I hope my make up is still perfect, maybe I should have worn that pink top and not this black top, I look like shit, I should have kept the first thing I tried on…I guess…nooo. I guess I can’t look that bad, all the girls said I look great!” and after these few thoughts I was (and whoever was thinking the same) comforted by the idea that my friends had of me, even though it was not a logically comforting thought since they weren’t people who would say if I looked bad anyway, I still just went with it and regained my confidence back again. So we get in, and get ourselves drinks and walk around to mingle, we agree to stick together, but really we never end up doing that, everyone chooses one girl to tag along with to make sure they aren’t left completely alone and we each choose girl we know we will probably have a somewhat fun night with, or just the most comfortable around and less socially awkward. With all this non-loving behavior and the unbearably loud music, you could only imagine how conversation would be at a bear minimum or just none at all. Casual smoke breaks are taken throughout the night, but instead of talking to each other, every girl ends up talking to strangers that are outside smoking too, comments going left and right like, “Hey man, how good is the vibe in there? The music is dope man, I want Personal Literacy Portfolio 10 to go back in there and get my dance on, but this cigarette is just too good right now man...and then everybody chuckles.” After the buzz from smoking, we go back into the club and continue to drink and dance, with slight glances here and there at each other, smiling, and laughing, looking like we’re all having a great time. And still, no communication has been made between any of us, pretty pathetic, makes you think about why you’re even friends. The night is over, and I’m back home, feeling more alone than ever. I think to myself, “what is causing me to feel so lonely, I have a family, two healthy parents, no divorce, and friends that hang out with me? Why am I so confused and what am I so concerned about? This thinking is taking me nowhere positive.” “I guess I’ll just watch some TV and eat food, yeah…I’ll feel better after that.” This continues on, weekend after weekend, year after year. I go along with it. Enjoying the little moments where I think I’m truly happy because I have people around, and I’m part of something, so I think I’m okay! I’m being normal, this is what people do; this is happiness, everyone else is happy, so this must be it! I’ll just keep going, I’m happy too…I think, not when I’m alone with my thoughts though…but other than that I’m happy…totally!” A few years later… ‘Mr. Right’ shows up, he reminds me that this isn’t just it, that there’s more to life than partying and being liked and accepted by others, that there are many things in life to get passionate about; there are dreams to be dreamt. “Live T! He teaches me. Be free of all that keeps you weak and leaves you powerless, empty and alone. Be rid of those things, continue to ask the why about everything around you and everything you do, live by what you say, tell the truth and always have empathy.” I find hope in his eyes, and beauty in his imagination of what could be. I leave my immediate family to be with him. He repeats these lessons to me, I don’t listen, he repeats; I don’t listen, and on, and on, and on… I feel desperate to live up to his standards, I try and try to impress him and make him feel good about who I am. Anxiety, stress, and depression start surfacing even after a few seconds of this, but after three years it becomes impossible. I tried, but in all the wrong ways, I didn’t let myself be myself, and I fraud him and I the opportunity of really knowing who I am. Personal Literacy Portfolio 11 I’m left feeling empty again. I begin to think about my friends, and how he said I did the same with them, and I begin to realize, “I was the same with them,” I thought to myself. These ideas and emotions bring me to a panic about the life I’ve been living, my mind goes blank because of my fear of the unfamiliarity I had with these concepts. I realize I hadn’t thought of any of my actions that deeply. As I’m panicking, I try to calm myself down by trying to remember a place called home. I can’t find it. I start going backwards into my mind and trying to make connections with my old feelings of emptiness I had after a night out with the girls, and it all came rushing back to me. I’m lost again, confused, hurt, and still looking for home… A few years later… I leave, and go back to my family’s home, and realize Mr. Right was not the right one for me, feelings of loneliness and emptiness begin to rise up again… Although this time there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I see hope this time and I want to see the light, even if this means being alone, I’m determined. I reflect, and realize all I was missing was myself to lean on, all I needed was to listen to myself and pull my head out of the sand, the emptiness was not knowing, not knowing myself enough to express myself in the world. Nothing made sense because I hadn’t made sense of it before going out into the world, and I wasn’t able to make sense of it during my journey. Thank god Mr. Right was there to help me and to give me hope again. Now I know, my home is within me; I was just out searching in all the wrong places. Finally, I knew it was time to start my journey as an active participant and not a bystander. “Be accountable, take control of your life, and stop letting life happen to you.” A reflection on how and why I would ask students to write narratives and stories in a Language Arts program: Personal Literacy Portfolio 12 Writing personal narratives are to have students integrate his or her knowledge of texts into their own writing, to follow a process when writing, to use writing as a system for communicating and constructing meaning, to construct a profile of their self as a writer, and to self-evaluate his or her writing development (Language Arts Intro PPT, 2016). Some ways I can ask students to write narratives and stories in a Language Arts class is by using literature. Reading a book to the class or having the students read a narrative of a child of the same age, that way it will be easily relatable to them and give them a sense of what a narrative looks and sounds like. This example is flexible, because it can be used with all ages of learners, with the younger students; I would use picture books for example, The Relatives Came and When I Was Young in The Mountains by Cynthia Rylant, and or the Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. In a Language Arts class with older students, a book I would is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, which would expose the students to a form of writing they can get in touch with, and in this lesson with this particular book, a discussion on First Nations people can also arise. The all round goal is to inspire the students to get inspired by themselves and within this begin to practice writing their own narrative and story pieces. As a future educator I think it is really important to make links with different subjects to the students in order to allow students to have better learning experiences, for example in writing narratives the students get to talk about what they are familiar with, themselves! This can make an assignment like writing a narrative more engaging. Personal Literacy Portfolio 13 These are a few links I would use as helpful guidelines for narrative writing and story telling when explaining the instructions to future language arts students: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1253&context=educ_under standings https://www.sbcc.edu/clrc/files/wl/downloads/StructureofaPersonalNarrativeEssay.pdf Narratives and stories can be introduced in fun ways into elementary classrooms. An example I could use as a teacher is having the students write a short and descriptive story of what happened to them every morning or second morning as a practice exercise. These quick narrative pieces will not be graded but will be corrected in order for the students to see recognize where they can make improvements in their writing. These exercises will help feed the students imagination and creativity skills, which will later give them a step ahead when the time comes to write longer narratives that will be graded. IV. A poem you wrote or an example of a “free write” you produced Free write (instructions): -List 3 nouns (person, place or thing) -describe a landscape -add some action. Combine the nouns, the landscape and the action. In the forest, while exploring the mountains in Kyoto where the Kiyomizu Temple lay was one of the best moments I’ve experienced out in nature. We decided to walk through the forest to get to the top of the mountain. Bamboo trees, humming birds up close, colors, flowers and more and more greens…I couldn’t have imagined any more beauty in one sitting. Peace and calm at last. Reaching the top exposing us to the view of the entire city of Kyoto…now that I think about it I don’t know if I would have gone this far on my own, I don’t know if I would have pushed the limits and tested the waters the way we did Personal Literacy Portfolio 14 together. No map, no planned destination, just the vibrant motivation of both our energies to reach the top of the mountain, like two kids racing for the first time on the first bikes they’ve ever owned. A reflection on how and why I would ask students to write poetry/freely in a Language Arts program: To read and listen to literary, popular, information-based texts are to allow students to construct a profile of their self as a reader. To write self-expressive texts is to enable the students to construct a profile of their self as a writer the same way they construct their profile of self as a reader (Language Arts Intro PPT, 2016). In my personal experience with writing this free write in class, it actually made me become more in touch with my emotions. In that moment, I had a beautiful experience, but I didn’t digest the experience at the time the same way I did just now. I feel like this free write helped me relive my experience and appreciate it more and understand how lucky I was. And in appreciating the moment, I also appreciated the person and what being on this earth, in that place, at that time brought to me in that moment. Free writes and poetry are good practice in developing writing skills, and keeping in touch with our inner selves, because of its genuine approach it opens up doors to see what we truly feel. These two forms of writing are only possible when you let yourself go and let the writing take you on a journey. The freeness and less restrictive format give writers the opportunity to just write. I think that’s really special because in free writes and poetry you never know what masterpiece can come of it. Personal Literacy Portfolio 15 V. A self-selected item that reflects your competency as a Language Arts teacher and an explanation of its significance (e.g., something from your LES or your Toolbox) The selected item I have chosen is from my Toolbox; below you will see a creative example of using alternative communication media in a grade 6, Language Arts class. Within the example, I have included the description, connections to the QEP and the evidence of critical thinking within the lesson. Alternative Communication Media Ideas from my group & other classmates -digital story telling -graphic novel -podcast -enhanced podcast (with photos) -theatre -YouTube clips Description: In a Language Arts, grade 6 classroom, podcasts will be introduced using the following website’s examples: http://www.baladoweb.qc.ca/en/spip.php?article902. The students will be shown exactly how a podcast is produced and what they are used for. The students will then be asked to create their own podcast or enhanced podcast of 13 minutes long. The podcasts may consist of talking about something they’ve learnt or very much enjoyed learning in this year’s class. This podcast exercise will happen towards the end of the term of the grade 6, Language Arts class. The podcast exercise will extend the students’ literacy skills through referring to their understanding of their repertoire of knowledge and creating meaningful messages of this through their podcasts. This podcast will highlight their ideas of what resonated with them from their Language Arts class. If there is an overlap of the students’ topics, the teacher will discuss this with them and have them agree together on different topics. This will confirm that each student will be podcasting a different subject. Once the class has finished their podcasts, the teacher will then add them to their existing private classroom blog, which is only accessible by the teacher and his or her students of the class. The final result will be a caption of students’ learning experiences in Mr. M’s grade 6 Language Arts class. For the second example of alternative media extending literacy will be a YouTube clip. Students in the grade 6, Language Arts class will be assigned to find a YouTube video that teaches them a topic or subtopic that they’ve learnt in the class over the year. The teacher will hand out a list of all the topics they’ve covered this year. The purpose of this Personal Literacy Portfolio 16 exercise will be to practice the students researching skills and the possibility of scaffolding their learning with videos. The community of learners will then share their videos and explain why they’ve chosen them. This exercise will also teach the students a lot about each other and how they each learn best because the videos will be chosen based on the students’ judgments of the videos strengths and level of learning they got from watching the video. The connections to the QEP: Both the podcast and YouTube learning exercises will be used to evaluate competency 3. They both relate to representing her/his literacy in different media with the creation of their podcasts and video representation of their learning experiences. Competency 3: To represent her/his literacy in different media. Evidence of critical thinking: The evidence of critical thinking will be represented in the students’ final work, exploring prior knowledge through exercising a new skill. The moment the students are asking themselves why what they learnt was important enough to share through a podcast exercises critically thinking skills. The evidence of critical thinking through the YouTube search exercise will be enhanced while they ask themselves which video teaches them something in a different form and does it well. Questioning and evaluating new information (YouTube videos) is the process of critical thinking, the students will be searching for something in particular therefore, needing to ask themselves if it’s the best source, the most clear and many other questions in order to find the best visual learning experience to share with their community of learners. The purpose of this use of alternative communication media is to create a timeline of learning experiences, and to connect these experiences together. The final product puts these experiences into a larger perspective, and leaves the students with a tangible record of the learning experiences that resonated with them. The significance of this lesson with the use of podcasting gives the students the chance to create something not only for grades but also for themselves and their future selves. This also exercises the students’ communication technology skills, which will be skills that they will continue to use and ameliorate throughout their education and life. Personal Literacy Portfolio 17 VI. A statement of Language Arts teaching philosophy that is informed by and reflects your Personal Language Arts Portfolio and the content of your Language Arts Toolbox Before any lesson I plan and organize for my students, ideally I would ask myself: What do I want my students to know? • To understand? • To feel? • To think? • To be able to share and apply to new situations? (Language Arts Intro PPT, 2016). I want to teach my students to use their life experiences, world knowledge and literary background to construct meaning. As my teaching philosophy is still in its development, the key features are building a community of learners, encouraging selfexpression in all ways, reflecting, thinking critically and making linkages between all learning experiences. Another goal I would like students to achieve is self-evaluation, to learn accountability, awareness and empathy. I also want to emphasize through my teachings the importance of process in everything, and the time and patience it can take to complete something such as writing a narrative, a story, or a poem. When writing a poem for example, as the artist Mo presented to us in class, is to start by writing lists (nouns, actions, adjectives, etc…) and to incorporate music, beats and more creative arts in order to allow a flow of writing to begin. Some other features I will be holding onto from our Language Arts program that I will need to incorporate in a Language Arts class as an educator are: The Four Cueing Systems • • • • Graphophonic/Phonological – knowledge of the relationship between sounds and written symbols Syntactic – knowledge of language patterns, systems, structures Semantic – prior knowledge and experience of text, meaning Pragmatic – how books work, use of illustration and images, social and cultural cues (Reading strategies PPT, 2016). Personal Literacy Portfolio 18 As well as making possible the opportunity for students to experience the power of language as a way of making sense of their experiences in the world (Response PPT, 2016), I want them to feel empowered by themselves, to put the effort into their learning potentials. I want students to learn to become quick and efficient problem solvers, to become resourceful and well-educated citizens in society and to leave my class inspired to create their own vision of the world. I plan to use the six language arts in my lessons; listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing, and visually representing and within all this, thinking (Tompkins, Bright, Winsor, pg. 25). These six functions can only happen with literature, knowing how to use a language effectively and to move people with words is an experience and I plan to teach by giving the students an experience. The human experience that literature presents is primary. The reader seeks to participate in another’s vision: to reap knowledge of the world, to fathom the resources of the human spirit, to gain insights that will make life more comprehensible (Response PPT, 2016). Louise Rosenblatt 19 Personal Literacy Portfolio References Preschool and Elementary. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2016, from http://www1.mels.gouv.qc.ca/sections/programmeFormation/primaire/index_en.a sp Tompkins, G. E., Bright, R. M., & Winsor, P. J. (2015). Language Arts: Content and Teaching Strategies (Sixth Canadian Edition ed.). Toronto: Pearson Education. Pasquin, L., May, B. (n.d.). Response. Lecture presented in McGill. Pasquin, L., May, B. (n.d.). Reading Strategies. Lecture presented in McGill. Pasquin, L., May, B. (n.d.). Language Arts Introduction. Lecture presented in McGill.