The IRP and Student's Language of Learning

         At first glance the PLOs for Kindergarten seem to present the future teacher with an easy task. The guidelines are simple and allow for a great deal of freedom in instruction. For example, it seems almost unavoidable that over the course of a school year a student should have a great deal of practice using oracy to ask questions or to express themselves. Drawing pictures and listening to stories seem like activities that come naturally to children, and already by way of these activities many PLOs have been satisfied.

            However, the IRP as a whole also presents the future Kindergarten teacher with a great challenge. Research presented in the document points to the great responsibility resting with Kindergarten teachers in building the foundations for a child’s literacy, and their future academic abilities as a whole. Though the PLOs for Kindergarten are basic in nature, they are also of the utmost importance. The abilities, learning strategies and attitudes toward literacy that children develop in Kindergarten are foundational to the rest of their learning, and to the rest of their lives. A crucial point made in the IRP document is that it is not just the knowledge gained in a child’s first year of school which is important, it is the attitude towards literacy, and the child’s own beliefs about their own abilities which make all the difference for their experiences in future grades.

            Children enter the kindergarten classroom at all different literacy levels, and as the IRP points out it is not unusual to have a Kindergarten classroom where there is “a five-year range of literacy-related skills and functioning”(IRP from Riley 1998). Today’s ELA students are a diverse group with vastly varied ability and interest levels, and this is especially true in Kindergarten. While school can be an equalizing influence for students from different backgrounds, in Kindergarten students are not coming from a previous grade in school. They are coming from greatly different lives. Many of them may have been in preschool for years, where they may have started to build their literacy abilities already. Many might have had little to no formal exposure to language building activities at all. These, along with countless other variables contribute to the diversity of students entering their first year of school.

            The result of this diversity is that ELA students learn in as many different ways as there are students in the class. Each individual student brings their own storied background of experiences into the classroom, along with their own learning styles. It is the great responsibility of the teacher to find a way to harmonize all of these voices, to meet the needs of each individual and help them each to understand and make meaning of language.

            Today’s ELA students will learn best in a variety of different ways, and each student will present a unique challenge and a unique potential. As future teachers we must find a way to communicate literacy to each individual student in ways that teach to their learning styles. In a way the teacher must learn each student’s language of learning in order to teach them the universal language of speech, images and symbols that allows us all to communicate with one another.