After reading through the syllabus, my goal for this course is to become more familiar with the Language Arts curriculum in Michigan, and to gain practice assessing learners of various writing and reading levels. I am looking forward to learning about different teaching styles that can be used in language arts so that I can accommodate all of my students in the future. Throughout grade school in language arts classes, our curriculum would consist of reading a book and reflecting on it. I'm interested to learn how to teach a more engaging language arts class while covering the necessary standards.

Chapter 1 of the Gibbons text reminded me of one of the students in my field placement, Kelly*. She was born in the U.S. but her parents speak nothing but Spanish at home. Kelly* speaks fluent English and Spanish, but she has a difficult time with reading and writing. Her parents are illiterate in English so Kelly* doesn't have any support at home for reading and writing. I worked with her last semester because I took TE 301 and 401 concurrently, so I am going to continue working with her this semester to assess and scaffold her learning and progress.