About this site

This product of learning was created for partial fulfillment of the Master's Degree in Reading Education at Appalachian State University, under the direction of Dr. Woodrow Trathen. These artifacts serve to demonstrate knowledge gained while in this program of study. All artifacts are directly aligned with North Carolina DPI Teaching Standards.

Reading Education Graduate Program of Study and Reflection

Personal Statement and Reflection

I began this graduate program as a result of being asked to tutor a second-grade child in reading.  Tutoring this child took me outside of my comfort zone of working with pre-kindergartners and kindergartners and made me realize there were many things that I did not know about teaching reading.  While I felt very comfortable with those two grade levels, I came to realize that I really was at a loss as to what I should be doing with students who were considerably older than my regular groups of students and who had moved beyond what I would normally teach in reading.

When I entered the program, my primary goal was to complete my master’s degree in reading education and become a reading specialist in a public school.  As I have worked my way through the program, however, I have learned many things that I could apply to my current job as a pre-kindergarten teacher.  Having started my career in a kindergarten classroom at a school where phonics was heavily emphasized, I was “baptized by fire” in giving my students a strong phonics background, although I really did not have background knowledge as to why it was important.  Through courses such as RE 5100 (Teaching Beginning Readers and Writers), RE 5120 (Psychological Bases of Reading), and RE 5715 (Reading Assessment and Correction), I have learned about how knowledge of phonics helps beginning readers to “crack the code” to reading and provides them with knowledge to decode new and unknown words.  This ability to decode quickly and efficiently leads to faster word recognition, thus leaving more room for comprehension of what is being read.  This information makes me feel justified in spending the time that I do in teaching phonics in my current classroom setting. 

Because of my early teaching experiences with a reading and writing program based heavily on phonics, I believe that, overall, my literacy instruction has not necessarily given as much time or focus to other items needing attention when reading, such as fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.  This is something that I came to realize through courses, such as RE 5730 (Reading and Writing Instruction for Intermediate and Advanced Learners), in which I had to examine reading through the lens of someone teaching older students.  If these older students are to succeed in reading, it is important that I put down a solid foundation by exposing my students to new vocabulary and making sure they are comprehending what is being read to them. 

Next, there have always been points here and there along the way in reading instruction that have puzzled me.  One that immediately comes to mind has been the following:  Why do young students often incorrectly substitute particular vowels when writing?  I had often wondered what I was doing wrong in terms of teaching vowels and their sounds.  Until entering this graduate program, I was not aware that there was a very valid reason why beginning writers would substitute the letter “a” for the letter “e” when spelling the word “bed,” for example.  I learned about justifiable vowel substitutions and how students will often use the vowel they “feel” in their mouth, based on tongue placement.  In other words, from the previous example, a child might spell the word “bed” as B-A-D because when saying /e/, the child’s tongue is in practically the same position within the mouth as it would be if the child were saying the letter “a.”  Now that I have learned this, I have been less stressed when my young students have done this repeatedly throughout the year.

Lastly, my pursuit of this master's degree has given me a few opportunities of which I would not have availed myself if I had not been in the program.  Since some of the classes I had to take were geared toward instruction for older students than those with whom I normally work, I was able to read many wonderful books that I am so glad I discovered.  The books in The City of Ember series and The Hunger Games series have been among my favorites.  This master's degree program has also allowed me the opportunity to learn more about literature containing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) characters and how this literature could be used in the classroom.  One of the most powerful things that has come out of my coursework in this program is the memoir I wrote for one of Dr. Ellen Pesko's classes.  I had always wanted to write about my own "coming out" as a gay man because I thought it was a good story and I wanted to get the details down before they slipped from my memory.  Of any assignment, this was my favorite because of its deeply personal and transformative nature. (See memoir here.)

In summary, this program has taught me that what I do as a pre-kindergarten teacher is important in the overall scheme of things because it lays a foundation for future reading instruction.  I have learned that giving choices in reading and writing assignments that fit with personal interests can be very powerful.  While I often wondered how I would ever make use of some of the course assignments, I have been given a chance to see a bigger picture of reading and writing instruction beyond what happens in my own classroom.  That, in and of itself, has been enlightening!