To be able to teach a concept, a teacher needs to understand all of the other contributing concepts that are built upon to attain the intended understanding. Additionally, a teacher should know what will come after and what a student could be potentially moving toward. The linear denotation of this process is a learning progression.

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From the learning activity in class, I learned that learning progressions are hard to discern, and complicated. While a learning progression may be a linear denotation of the order in which a student is expected to learn, learning actually takes place in different ways and likely will not be linear at all. The order in which the student learns could be completely sporadic according to the teacher’s line of thinking, but learning progressions are still important because they allow the teacher to identify potential gaps in the learning. For me, the activity of trying to build a learning progression solidified my understanding of curriculum and lesson planning; learning progressions are like the link that was missing between these concepts.

It also made me understand that reading, an activity that came naturally to me as a child, is actually quite complicated. This newfound comprehension helps me to come to terms with why my own children, and many children, had difficulty learning to read. Both of my children struggled with blending the sounds that letters make, such as when ‘s’ and ‘h’ together make the ‘sh’ sound, so sounding out words was nearly impossible for them. For years, we repeatedly went over letter sounds, combinations, and sight words, and eventually, they started to read. I wish I would have understood learning progressions while our family was going through that struggle, because I think it might have helped me to be able to identify the aspects that they did not understand and work on those, rather than just continuing to read with them daily. Understanding the learning progression and being able to actively address problem areas could have alleviated loads of frustration for everyone involved. However, in hindsight I am grateful for the experience because I believe that it and my new knowledge about learning progressions will help me to be more aware when students in my class are struggling, able to identify where their problems are coming from, and also to feel like I have options to help them.