Maricruz Armenta

Professor Teri Abbott

LBS 400
19 November 2014
English Language Arts Reflection
The English Language Arts/ English Language Development framework is a guide that
helps implement the ELD standards. These content standards are meant to prepare students for
college and career readiness because they cover the skills that students will need. These skills are
reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language skills. The framework is organized into five
distinct themes: meaning making, language development, effective expression, content
knowledge, and foundational skills. The framework also points out that these ELA standards are
emphasizing new things such as exposing students to rich informational texts, responding and
arguing based on textual evidence, and using more academic language in the classroom.
After reading the English Language Arts framework, I realized that in order to teach
English Language Arts and Literacy, teachers need to be able to lead group discussions, provide
guidance in close readings as well as guidance in analyzing texts. In addition, there are many
students who are English learners so teachers need to be able to teach English to students who do
not speak the same language. Teachers also need to provide primary language support for these
students as well as scaffolding to provide support for students who are struggling.
My English courses and fieldwork experiences prepared me for teaching the ELA
standards. ENG 305 is one of the courses that prepared me for teaching because I had to do a lot
of close reading and analyzing of what we read. In ENG 308, I had to analyze and engage in
close reading of children's literature. This course was also about poetry and scansion, which was

very useful because it helped me grow an appreciation for children's poetry. My fieldwork
observations have also prepared me because I have seen the way that students learn to read
words by blending the sounds of each letter in a work. I have also seen the kind of informational
texts to which 1st graders are exposed.
I feel well prepared in guiding students in reading comprehension and close reading. I
enjoy reading every day and I hope to instill a love of reading in my future students as well. I
also feel prepared for teaching students whose primary language is Spanish because I am a
Spanish speaker. I feel less prepared for teaching students who speak another language because I
am afraid that there might be a language barrier. I need more skills for teaching English learners.
The artifacts that I plan to share in this area of my portfolio are going to be this ELA
reflection. I am also going to possibly include the ELA lesson plan that we were assigned to do
in class. I am also thinking about including essays that show I can make arguments based on
textual evidence. These work samples demonstrate my knowledge because they show that I have
learned about the ELA standards. The lesson plan would show that I am capable of creating a
lesson plan in this subject area. Any essays that I include would show that I can use textual
evidence to make arguments.