Literature - Beliefs or Assumptions

1. I assume we must continually account for the student’s affective/ emotional response to literature and strive to make it positive for a variety of different types of literature, genre, and story elements.
2. I believe that teachers must provide a variety of different types of literature, genre, and story elements in a positive manner.
3. Children’s literature is essential for the development of an educated citizenry. Therefore, we assume literature must be included in the planned, enacted, and experienced curriculum.
4. Children’s literature has undergone significant changes over the years and we assume children’s literature is evolving with significant changes happening now and unimaginable changes in the not too distant future.
5. I believe there are many sources to help locate children's books, authors, activities, literature selection aids, and literature review sources.
6. I believe research related to children's literature is helpful to teachers.
7. I believe there are multiple forms of literature that can be used to teach literacy in the classroom.
8. I believe multiple forms of literature must be used to reach all students in some way or another.
9. I believe instructional techniques to achieve success must include: a variety of channels of communication, integration with all aspects of the students' lives and learning, representations from a variety of genre, and local and global cultures.
10. I believe literature is studied in a manner that allows students to have significant intellectual and emotional transactions with this variety of literature in a manner that develops their self-efficacy and appreciation of literature.
11. I believe it’s important for students to understand the human side of artists, authors, composers, poets, producers, actors, actresses, musicians, playwrights, and illustrators of children's literature.
12. I believe students’ can learn to appreciate literature and different literary genre by being involved in many different literary activities.
13. I believe students can understand and analyze children's literature and its literary elements.
14. I believe assessments helps us understand how to help students understand, use, and enjoy literature. I believe that assessments help us know what students know and where to we need to start with each of them.
15. I believe literacy is more than understanding and having skill in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and creating and interpreting graphic representations.
16. I believe literacy is everything in life including books, television, signs, radio, music, movies, and anything that gets students thinking, imagining, feeling, and recalling.
17. I believe today's students are more prone to being literate in pop culture: TV, movies, music, videos, electronic games, and the use of electronic audio and video equipment and advertising. As teachers we can and must use the background students have in these different types of literature for understanding the stories and elements within these different pieces of literature and facilitate their learning and guide them to literacy within in other genre particularly those dependent on text to tell a story.
18. I believe literacy is also communicating ideas, feelings, and just plan talking.
    We assume that students shouldn’t be talking in the classroom, I believe that is where much of their learning comes from, classmates.
19. I believe children’s language skills increase by using their language skills in the classroom and getting feedback.
20. I believe any growth in language will result from interacting with challenging and above level language.
21. I believe not all children learn at the same level or in the same way, that is why many different activities need to be used and not everyone has to do the same thing.