Foundations of Literacy and Comprehension

First of all, I have discovered that I really like the textbook we had to read from. It will be a great tool for when I am teaching in a special education classroom. It provided many examples and charts so that understanding the material was easier. I liked how it gave good examples of questions/prompts for measuring things like reading comprehension. It also listed some good children's literature that is effective for development of phonemic awareness.
This reading kept reiterating how important it is for teachers to record students' performance, observations, etc. and keep documentation on it. This is certainly necessary to monitor and evaluate students' literacy progress and changing interests. Doing this, as a teacher, I can more effectively teach and focus on the students' needs. I have learned the importance of this in my previous grad classes.
Play is SO important for language development. My undergrad is in Speech and Hearing Science and it was always stressed how play plays such a huge role in a child's development, especially in language. In our classrooms, we need to remember to consistently give our students free time for "informal drama" and play centers, especially for the lower grade levels. Reading aloud to children is also important to facilitate language and phonemic awareness development.
Chapter 11 mentioned three different factors that affect the reading comprehension process. One of these factors was the reading environment. Personally, I think this is the probably the most important of the three. I know that I definitely have the most difficulty comprehending what I'm reading when there are distractions. Also, keeping in mind the learning disability simulations from last week, I was able to see how classrooms can often be quite distracting and this can make it nearly impossible to comprehend anything.
We all need to take these ideas/information into our classrooms and keep them in mind when we are teaching!