Recap: EDEL 305

Recap of EDEL 305: Language Arts in the Elementary School

When I was building my school schedule for the fall term, it was required that EDEL 305 was to be taken in the fall term, before my IFX. Thus, this course is a pre-requisite for my student teaching. I initially registered in the 8 am class, forced to have a huge break from this class to the next. Luckily, closer to the start dates I was able to transfer in the later class time, happily getting rid of my break.

Thoughts Throughout 

The grade for the course is broken down into four components: midterm and final (understandable); major assignment and participation marks. I found the midterm and final fair as it was all written, but my hand and wrist were hurting for hours on end right after the exams. I find that with curriculum classes we sit in tables forming groups (roughly about 6), rather than in individual rows. This approach was helpful because our professor provided multiple opportunities for group collaboration within our table partners. I remember we did group activities such as playing spelling games, creating concrete poems and analyzing children's literature. Fun, right? Here's a picture to prove it! 

Some topics that we learned and discussed were reading, spelling and writing. I never knew before, until this course, is how emphasized language arts can be, and is, globally. Also, exposure to language arts at an early age has an enormous influence in learning not just language arts, but learning and experiencing language in a child's later years. My favorite topic that I learned from this course related to the importance of children's literature. With my experience from working at the library in the summer, I was expected to read children's literature (mostly picture books) to children of various ages. Understanding more about the differences between a read-aloud and shared reading, gives me more guidance in choosing more appropriate books for my students, especially the younger ones.

What are my favorite books to read to children? You can check them out here! If you also know of any other fantastic children's book to read to children, please share them! I'm curious in what other people think. 

Final Thoughts

As mentioned earlier, other than our midterm and final, we were also graded on class participation and an assignment. I participated and attended in every class so those were easy marks. However, our one main assignment for the course was worth a whomping 40%. Yes, our assignment was worth double our midterm mark. To sum up our assignment, we were to choose ten resources (i.e.,. children's literature, community resources, etc.) and 10 activities and introduce them to a language arts classroom tying it all together to a theme we individually selected.

We didn't get our assignment back not until we wrote our final. After talking to our professor, she wanted to give each of us thoughtful comments and feedback about this assignment. After waiting (extremely) patiently for them, I couldn't be happier with my mark and feedback given by my professor. But I'm glad that we were given this assignment because it'll be something I can reference to when I am teaching language arts!