Amanda Blakley

Amanda Blakley

Meet Amanda

Hello! I'm Amanda, and I am a BK Teacher Education Major here at ECU!

Prior to transferring to ECU, I completed an Associate’s degree in Early Childhood Education, and a second Associate’s degree in General Studies.

I hope to pursue my Master's degree after graduation, and one day open an Early Childhood Education Center.

Bedtime Stories

My Early Literacy (Writing)

My Early Literacy (Reading)

I was lucky enough to be raised in a household where reading was a daily occurrence. My dad used to read to my brother and I every night before bed. Our household favorites were Dr. Suess' The Foot Book and Jon Stone's The Monster at the End of This Book.

Kindergarten was a wonderful experience for me in terms of my literacy exposure. We each had a notebook for the writing center where we wrote a sentence each day and illustrated what we were trying to say. Inventive spellings were accepted, and even valued. We used pencils with no erasers because it was "always okay to make a mistake."

Though this was a positive experience for me, it was much different than the approach by Ms. Bell & Ms. Jarvis. Unlike my experience, these teachers avoided the "sound it out" approach, and rather had their students make associations to familiar words, rather than simply the letter sounds. For example, Ms. Jarvis' student Emily associated the beginning letter for "many" with the same sound as the beginning of "Matthew," rather than just knowing that "Mm" makes a certain sound. This was also slightly different than my experience, since we were encouraged to try on our own first, and Ms. Jarvis in this scenario walked through the writing activity with Emily.

My first exposure to books was being read to. When I started Pre-K, I picked up on reading rather quickly. By the time I started Kindergarten, I had already read my first level one chapter book. I remember being told to point to each word and sound it out (I had already been taught to identify letters by their sounds). Fortunately, I picked up on this at a rapid rate, though other students may not have been so lucky.

In the Bell & Jarvis article, Ms. Bell recalls her student, Pedro, that could only identify the letters P and O. He could not identify individual letters with their sounds, though he could consistently name other words (specifically his classmates names) that began with the same letters, and was able to identify beginning sounds in that way.

The Teacher I Want to Be

I want to be a teacher that is able to reach every one of my students on an individual level, as I have developed a new appreciation for each child as a unique learner. Though the memorization of letters and their sounds was effective in my own development of literacy, that method may not reach my students who come from different backgrounds. As I continue my education, I am learning various methods of teaching, which will be able to reach students who learn in different ways. The Bell & Jarvis article provided a few new approaches to assisting children in developing literacy that differed from my own experiences, and many more exist that I am willing to try in order to provide my future students with the most outstanding experience possible.