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Running Head: PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO 1
EDEE 223: Language Arts
Heidi Dimou’s Personal Literacy Portfolio
April 11th, 2016
McGill University
PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
Table of Contents
Response to non-fiction text…………………………………………...……………….p. 3
Personal Profile of self as a learner……………………………………………….…….p. 6
Personal Narrative………………………………………………………………………p. 7
Free Write…………………………….………………..……………….……………..p. 10
Self- selected item reflecting Language Arts teaching competency………………..…p. 12
Statement of Language Arts teaching philosophy………………………………….....p. 14
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
Response to non-fiction text
This is my response to the article ‘When is Creativity’ by Diane Jaquith (2011).
Here is the link to the text: http://www3.kutztown.edu/arteducation/PDF/57549509.pdf .
Diane Jaquith explains that art teachers need to develop strategies to enhance creative
thinking and creative art making. She begins by saying that intrinsic motivation can
activate children’s creativity. Intrinsic motivation, like personal interests and curiosity,
are related to creativity (Jaquith, 2011, p.77). Knowing the student’s interests can really
help spark their creativity and also to creative problem finding and solving. If a student is
curious about something that interests him, he will find different to express that interest
in his artworks;, this will enable the student to develop the necessary creativity skills.
Extrinsic motivation can delay creativity in students. If the student is distracted by
outside sources, for example, strict teacher expectations, deadlines, or importance of
grades, this won’t help the student develop his creativity.
I believe it is important for students to gain independence and autonomy while
doing an artwork. According to Jaquith (2011), “Choice-based teaching and learning
promotes learner autonomy through arts-based practice focused on multiple studio
centers” (p.78). To become curious, independent and able receive help from others,
teachers must know and become aware of each child’s interests. These intrinsic
motivators can help bring out children’s’ personal interests. Teachers need to find their
students’ interest, so they can feel safe to share those interests in the classroom. Intrinsic
motivators can really improve children’s creativity, rather than teachers giving students
problems to solve.
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
Self-directed learners help the teacher and her role. Jaquith (2011) says, “the
teacher’s role shifts from instructor to facilitator, living resource, and guide” (p. 79). The
way that teachers motivate and encourage their students have an effect on their artwork.
My favorite passage from the article is “Finding a balance between direct teaching and
facilitating for independent work is critical to support autonomy and creativity in class”
(Jaquith, 2011, p.79). This balance is very crucial for a child’s learning and motivation.
The teacher can support the child’s learner-directed pedagogy and their interests.
Teachers must know when it is time to be facilitators and when it is time to give
instructions and certain expectations.
Something that interested me and inspired me while reading this article by Jaquith
is how can teachers can identify and observe when a student or learner’s creativity is
sparked in school art programs.? Jaquith (2011) mentions a few strategies that can help
encourage creativity during art class. For example, minimize effects of extrinsic
motivators, organize lessons on intrinsic motivators, and let students make choices, help
identify intrinsic motivators that influence the child’s creativity. (Jaquith, 2011, p.81).
This can really help students become independent and it is very important that these
strategies can have effects in the younger years of children.
After reading and responding to this article by Diane B. Jaquith, I realize why it’s
important to ask students to respond to texts, more specifically in a Language Arts
classroom. For myself, it helped me realize that creativity is important in a teacher and a
student’s life; therefore it helps students learn something they didn’t know about. This
gives the students a chance to reflect and communicate their views, opinions, and
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
thoughts on a text. It’s good for the students to see things from another perspective and
become aware of the different viewpoints. Students practice their writing as they respond
to the text and use author’s quotes accurately to back up their opinions or statements. The
students’ response can help the teacher identify if they understand the texts, its main
ideas and the meaning behind it. A way to have students to respond to a text could be by
having them read about a topic they are willing to learn more about.
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
A personal profile of self as a learner
I think of myself as more of a learner than a writer or reader. I enjoy learning and
gaining new knowledge. Being knowledgeable can really affect my teaching career.
Using my talents, abilities, learning styles, stages of development and readiness can help
me learn new material. As a future teacher, I have learned so much over these years of
schooling that finding something I’m interested in has enabled me to find ways to learn
and discover about it. This is how I would like to be in my class with my students.
Students should have the choice to what they want to learn about in the classroom. This
will help learn to challenge them just like it challenged me to find ways to learn about
something I’m interested in. I also learn with because of my curiosity, therefore I would
want my future students to learn though curiosity, engagement and experiences, and not
because they have to.
I have also learned best by applying knowledge and having hands-on experiences.
When I was in Child Studies at Concordia University, I used the knowledge I learned
from my classes in my field experiences and that is where I learned the most. I learned
more through my hands on experience of being in a daycare setting than being in
classroom at school. The same goes with my first field experience at McGill as well
because I got to experience how it was to be in a school setting and how it is on a daily
basis. By observing and participating, I get to learn how teachers manage their classroom,
their teaching strategies, their schedules and routines. I learn through making mistakes as
well;, I believe that’s when I learn the most from my peers and supervising teachers. It
helped me noticed what mattered the most and deepen my knowledge.
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
Personal Narrative: Summer in Greece
In the summer of 2014, I traveled to Greece with my family and I met up with
friends to visit an island. I had the time of my life on this island, where I met so many
people, Greeks and tourists. I felt free being away from my parents and away from my
life back in Montreal. I was more adventurous, social and not afraid to live. We had
stayed on this island for 4 days going out and trying new restaurants. It was something
different every night. When I returned back to Athens, my brother and I met up with my
parents, where I was to see them again.
We traveled to our village a few hours away from Athens. My father grew up in
this village and we would stay at his old house where my grandmother still lived. We felt
very happy when we came to the village, especially my dad because it’s where he grew
up. It always felt nice to be in the village;, it was different than being in a city or on an
island. You knew everyone around you and everybody knew you. I knew where the café,
the supermarket and the restaurants were because theyre weren’t far from each other. The
air felt fresh and the sky was light blue. With the view of the highest mountain in Greece,
Mount Olympus, I definitely felt away from the city life. I enjoyed it. Everyone was so
friendly, always greeting each other and waving. I had a few friends in the village and
some 2nd and 3rd cousins that I was very close with, where as the other people my age I
had only seen them once or twice. During my days in the village, I would wake up go for
a walk then have my coffee and take a nap. In the afternoon, I would wake up from my
nap and start getting ready to hang out with my cousins. There was a certain spot where
the younger adults, like myself, would hang out; it was at this café/bar.
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
Around the middle week of August, there was the big festival happening in my
village because of a holiday for 2 nights in a row. The night before the festivals, my
brother, cousins, friends and I went to the café/bar to celebrate the holiday because all the
young people were there. I had fun that because I met so many people from the village.
But one person stood out me. A friend introduced me to him and we just hit it off. He was
sweet but mysterious at the same time. I liked it him and I think he liked me too. A few
days after this night, we were hanging out with the whole group, with my friends and his
friends.
We had this chemistry that I had never felt before even in my last relationship.
The attraction was there;, we had so much to talk about, and, in some way I felt like a
different person when I was with him. I felt free. He made me feel special. This went on
for another few weeks. We had expressed how we felt about each and how strong our
connection was. I never had this connection with anyone before maybe it felt different
because I was on vacation and I was in another country; I wasn’t sure, but I loved the
feeling. When it was my time to go back home, we said our goodbyes. It was hard but it
had to be done. We promised each other we would keep in touch and we did. When I
came back to Montreal, we spoke everyday by texting on ‘What’s AppUp’ and through
Facebook. This lasted for 1 year; I loved him. But I lived in Montreal and he lived in
Greece. In some way and deep down, we both knew it wasn’t going to last because we
came form different worlds, had different lifestyles and different futures. When I didn’t
visit this past summer, it was hard to get that connection back. We both lost touch and
continued on with our own lives. It was hard at first, but as I continued on with my life, I
met someone. He was kind, sweet, and treated me good. But it wasn’t the same
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
connection. I hadn’t gone to Greece since the summer of 2014 and I’m not sure if I will
go this summer because of my new relationship. He was my first love, but I guess it
wasn’t meant for him to be my last.
It’s important to ask students to write narratives and stories because they give life
to the information. It’s more interesting and intriguing than an informational text.
Personal narratives give the chance to students to write about their personal life
experiences. It can vary from being a memory, a feeling, to an event or a special moment
that impacted you in your life. It’s personal; therefore the students have the choice how
they want to write and what they want to write about. A way we can ask students to write
stories is that they can write by retelling a story they have read or enjoyed. This helps
them change the language and use their own words. The students can write using stories
they have read and create their own stories with different ideas, characters or events
depending on what they want it to be about. They can write about a story they know but
change the plot and make up their own. This will encourage students to write because
they make all of the decisions in their writing and it gives them that independence of
creating new elements in their story.
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
Free Write: ‘Every Morning’
She woke upevery morning
of having the choiceto be anyone she wanted.
It was amazing that she always chose to be
herself everydaywithout hesitation.
I wrote a free write because it gave me the freedom and independence to write
about anything and express myself without using rhymes. For myself, it’s important to be
yourself and not have the choice to be someone you’re not. The meaning behind it is very
powerful. The message is that being yourself is the best kind of person you want to be
everyday and people will like you for who you are.
Poetry is an important art that students need to experience in school. It can help
students develop their writing skills. This can help them engage in their writing by using
words they feel comfortable with. With poetry, they can freely express their emotions,
feelings, ideas, thoughts and opinions. It increases their literacy, linguistic awareness and
it will enable them to expand their oral and written vocabularies. Students can learn that
poems have rhymes and that there are different types of poems. It allows students to
chose the words they want to use in their poems and express themselves in a creative
way. Teacher can ask students to write poems by discussing poetry in the classroom and
to encourage them to think about other students interpret poems. To introduce poetry to
students, they can write a poem that’s title “This is Me”, therefore they would write about
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
who they are as a person, their characteristics, etc. This can be a great way for teachers to
get to know their students. They can also write “I Wish…” poems or write color poems
do develop the strategies of creating sensory images and painting word pictures. Another
way to introduce them to poetry is to read poems aloud with the students and discuss the
features of the type of poem.
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Self- selected item reflecting Language Arts teaching competency
An item that I chose that reflects my Language Arts teaching competency is my
online teaching blog/portfolio. I created this online portfolio in one of my classes last
year as I was using the web software called WordPress. Through this website, I learned
all the features of it and found out what I needed to include to make an online portfolio.
The link my portfolio is https://heididimou15.wordpress.com/. In my portfolio, I have
included my teaching philosophy, my professional development, my biography, and work
samples that include resources, lesson plan, units, projects, assessments and an annotated
bibliography. This portfolio is an ongoing learning process for my teaching career and
performance. My online teaching portfolio is where I can freely post anything that I’m
interested and my views on teaching and education as well as to inform visitors of the
kind of teacher I would like to be. This can be a tool that can be useful for employers,
friends, teachers and parents.
This portfolio is significant for me because it represents who I want to be as a
teacher. I update my portfolio with new posts as I write about what I have done in my
classes at McGill from lesson plans to group projects and LES units. My engagement and
development with this portfolio emphasizes two MELS competencies which are
competency 10, to cooperate with members of the teaching team in carrying out tasks
involving the development and evaluation of the competencies targeted in the program of
study, taking into account the students concerned, and competency 11, to engage in
professional development individually and with others. To develop competency 10
through this portfolio, I can visit or follow other teacher’s portfolios and get inspired
from their views on teaching. By visiting other teacher’s portfolio, I can expand my
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knowledge on teaching. I develop competency 11 by having the opportunity to improve
in my teaching career. As I add all my work that I have accomplished and that I’m proud
of to my teaching portfolio, it encourages me to reflect on my journey and connect with
others. As I connect with others, I learn new things everyday about education and the
teaching career.
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
Statement of Language Arts teaching philosophy
As for my initial Language Arts teaching philosophy, language arts are essential
to emphasize as the art of communicating in a classroom. In my classroom, I would
introduce the six language arts, listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing, visually
representing and relationships among the Language Arts. Before introducing the 6
language arts, as a future teacher, I would get to know my student’s’ prior knowledge and
find out what their interests are. I believe students chose what they want to learn about
because they will become more curious and want to learn through exploration. Students
learn both strategies and skills through language arts instruction. As I have learned in my
Language Arts class and other my other class at McGill, students need to learn a few
strategies related to language arts, such as, visualizing, connecting, evaluating, predicting,
generalizing, finding meaning and organizing ideas (Tompkins, G., Bright, R. &Winsor,
P., 2015). These strategies will help the students, as they read, to analyze what they’re
reading and to respond to it.
I believe my main goal, as a future teacher, is to create a language-rich classroom
where students are encouraged to speak, listen, read, write, view and visually represent
through different means of strategies, techniques and methods. In order to improve these
literacy skills, instructional scaffolding by the teacher is necessary, as it is important
come up with a variety of instructional techniques that aim students toward independence
and a better understanding of the material.
By creating the language arts toolbox, discussing and sharing with peers of ideas,
I have come to realize that the different means of resources, techniques and methods can
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
be adapted in the language arts classroom. Students can learn to develop the literacy
skills through a piece of literature, a poem, alternative communicative medias, digital
technology and current social issue. These methods have enabled me to do research on
how they target the language arts competencies and what the students will be doing to
meet these competencies. As I use personal expression to work on my literacy portfolio, I
have come to notice what it means to be a literate person. I have used the strategies of
connecting, evaluating and visualizing, to write these pieces of literature that reflect my
views and my thinking. For my portfolio, I chose what I wanted to write about and what I
was interested about, which made me feel independent and write freely. I made
connections and visualized what I was going to write about which helped me in my
writing of each submission. The language arts toolbox and portfolio will serve as
educational and informational tools for myself in my future classroom.
D (5), Marginal
C+(6.6), Problematic C (6), Very Problematic
B+ (7.6), GoodB (7.3), Acceptable B- (7), Adequate
A (10), Exceptional A- (8),Very Good
A response to a fiction or non-fiction text and a reflection on how/why we ask students to respond to text in a Language Arts classroom
Marginally developed response
Some aspects of the response are superficially developed &/or not connected to LA education
Response is meaningful (i.e., focused, substantive), adheres to conventions explored in class, and is clearly written. Connections to LA education are clear.
Response is provocative (i.e., provokes new ideas on the part of the reader) and demonstrates critical thought. Connections to LA education are compelling
7.3
A personal profile of yourself as a writer, reader, or learner.
Marginally developed profile
Profile indicates some understanding of what it means to be a reader, writer or learner.
Profile indicates a thorough understanding of what it means to be a reader, writer or learner and how that impacts teaching.
Profile indicates a deep understanding of what it means to be a reader, writer or learner and how that will be critically reflected in teaching.
7.3
A personal narrative or story
Marginally
Some aspects of the narrative are
Narrative is well-developed (e.g.
Narrative is well-developed, well-
7.6
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PERSONAL LITERACY PORTFOLIO
and a reflection on how/why we ask students to write narratives and stories in Language Arts
developed narrative
superficially developed &/or not connected to LA education
descriptive, detailed, focused), well-written (adheres to structural& grammatical conventions) & meaningful (there is a message, purpose, or clear focus). Connections to LA education are clear.
written, evocative (i.e., it evokes feelings, a spirit, or a sense of time/place), and thought-provoking (i.e., it provokes thought). Connections to LA education are compelling
A poem or an example of a “free write” and a reflection on how/why we ask students to write poetry/freely in Language Arts
Marginally developed poem
Some aspects of the poem/free-write are superficially developed &/or not connected to LA education
Poem/FW is meaningful, adheres to conventions explored in class, and is clearly written. Connections to LA education are clear.
Poem/FW is well-developed, evocative, and thought-provoking. Connections to LA education are compelling
8
A self-selected item that reflects your competency as a Language Arts teacher and an explanation of its significance
Marginally
developed item
Some aspects of the item are superficially developed &/or not connected to LA education
Item reflects competency as an LA teacher
Item reflects exceptional competency as an LA teacher
9
A statement of Language Arts teaching philosophy that is informed by and reflects your Personal Language Arts Portfolio and the content of your Language Arts Toolbox
Marginally developed statement
Some aspects of statement are superficially developed
Statement is fully developed and reflects competency/positioning as an LA educator
Statement is exceptionally clear and compelling.
8
47.2Comments: A number of writing issues. Overall, work is well done, particularly your self-selected item. Some work needed in the response and the profile (see feedback in text).
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