Missouri Early Learning Standards

Summary: This article consisted of the standards for early learning literacy, the reasons behind each standard, as well as suggestions on how to accomplish these. It broke down the standards into categories and explained how each category impacts the child. It did an excellent job of assuring the reader the each standard is equally important, and to ensure the best results you cannot have one without the other.

In all honesty, this article reinforced why I am not called to teach younger children. I do not really enjoy things that involve story telling, imagination, creativity with words, singing aloud, etc. While I would like to pretend I do, in all reality that puts me out of my comfort zone and I do not really enjoy it. Now, someday when I have my own children, I know that will change and I will want to help them with these things but until then, I will stick to cruntching numbers and helping older students prepare for their careers.

Reading this article gives me a whole new appreciate for my own elementary teachers and anyone else who goes into that field. As I was reading the article, I could relate to it through personal experience that I did all these things they were talking about and at the time I loved it! As a child, you have no pride and don't care what others think about you so story telling, singing, drawing, and other forms of expression are a blast. Now, none of those things sound very fun to me. When expectations were stated such as 'pretending to be a firefighter,...pretends to move, run, jump, crawl like an elephant, airplane, dancer,...' I started to laugh because I was thinking how I would never do that. I began to write down in the margin, 'what if that is not someone's personality to act like this', and then I realized that when I was a child I loved to do these things. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days and not have a care in the world and gladly do anything with enthusiasm.

As I stated earlier, I remember doing all of the things they suggested as a child, but at the time I had no idea they were helping me become more literate. Even before reading this article I just assumed those were all compartmentalized activities. But now, I have seen the bigger picture and realize that in early education, it is all tied into together. Reading and writing are also supported by art, PE, music, etc.  They all equally play a role into the child's' success in literacy and the more often these suggestions are all done, the better the results will be. And even though these things may not be my fortet, it does not mean that I cannot incorporate them into my secondary classroom and continue to help reinforce what they already learned as a child. I can still read aloud to my high school math students and can still have them reflect in journals what they learned for that day.