Greetings and Salutations!

Welcome to the blog for the TAL section of E342, Reading and Language Arts Methods!

My name is Nicholas Husbye and I am excited to be along for the ride as we explore the multiple ways to engage students in reading and writing in ways that transcend school. A little about myself: I am a second-year student in the Department of Language Education at Indiana University. I am originally from Michigan, where I earned my degree in elementary education at Michigan State University. After graduating, I team-taught in an urban second grade classroom before moving into a first-grade position in a small school serving a diverse group of kiddos south of Ann Arbor, Michigan. In addition, I have also taught technology to elementary students and have run tutoring programs in a variety of contexts.

Our collective experiences as learners and as teachers will be important as we work together as a group to define our beliefs and understandings about teaching language arts in the classroom. We will use these experiences to connect to our class readings, presentations and activities to better understand ourselves as educators and the charge we possess as such. I will be totally honest with you: there will be questions we tackle over the course of the semester that we will not have the answer to, questions that remain unresolved throughout the course of the semester. Unanswered questions are rampant in teaching but hopefully, as we move through this course, we will come closer to some sort of answer. Please be prepared to think deeply, question often and engage with one another.

There are two core texts we will be using for this class everyone will need to purchase. They have been called into the bookstore and should be arriving shortly. You will not need them for the first day of class.

Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis's Strategies That Work was a book I continually came back to as a teacher. It outlines the strategies most often used by successful readers and then describes lesson plans to teach those skills in a variety of classrooms. It is an easy read - Stephanie and Anne write beautifully and with wonderful clarity, making it an indispensable resource for you as you begin your teaching career.

Phonics is a word that makes me shutter a little, but is an essential instructional strategy for teaching children to read. Patricia Cunningham does an excellent job outlining a variety of lessons and games that will teach children those ever-important phonics skills while helping teachers understand ways to make them fit into their every day routine. Another great resource book. Unfortunately, this is a new edition so I'm unsure there will be used copies.



We will also be engaging in book clubs and you will choose one additional text to read in a small group - I have ordered these from the bookstore, but you will not need them until further on in the semester. I will post links and descriptions of these books at a later time.

When teaching first grade, I would ask parents to send in a letter about their child with them on the first day of school. It was so helpful in forming understandings of who individual children were and how I would be able to best relate to and teach them in the classroom. In preparation for our first meeting on September 8th, I would like you to write a letter about yourself. I would like to know about you as a person so I might help you as a student. Your letter is very open-ended; you can tell me as much or as little about yourself as you feel comfortable. Why do you want to be a teacher? What was the last good book you read? How can I help you as a future educator? Do you pronounce ramen "raw-men" or "ray-men?" This is an ungraded pass-or-fail assignment but please tell me enough so that I have a decent idea of how best to meet your needs over the course of the semester.

I look forward to meeting you! Enjoy these last few days of freedom!