Balanced Literacy Instruction : A Comprehensive Program Of Language Arts Achievement

Guided Reading is a component of a balanced literacy program providing differentiated, small group reading instruction to four to six students with

Within my school teaching literacy takes place in everyday classroom. The format of this teaching varies to include different activities for each day. Certain aspects of literacy are taught every week. The teachers are to ensure that the work planned is appropriate for the age stage and ability of the children. They use strategies such as talk partners and small group work to allow children to develop their oral skills and ability to communicate and cooperate with their peers. Emphasis is placed on the acquisition of effective oracy skills in the early years and foundation phase. Role play areas are set up in partnership with the children so that they can practice speaking Listening and drama based activities within a meanful context.

The literacy block should consist of a balance of whole-group, small-group, and independent practice. Tyner states, “The challenge in orchestrating the literacy block can be best described as putting together a literacy jigsaw puzzle.” (Tyner,2009). The components of a balanced literacy block should include modeled reading such as a read-aloud which should include texts above the students’ reading level, modeled writing so that teachers have the opportunity to demonstrate how a writer thinks while writing about a text, shared reading which includes the teacher reading most of the text but also allows the students to engage in choral reading with grade-level appropriate texts, shared writing to be used to focus on comprehension but may include the writing process as long as it is used together, small-group differentiated reading and writing, and independent reading and writing so that students can use the skills learned previously to produce a final product.

Literacy embraces reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Integrating all of these into a literacy program is key. Teachers must provide endless and ongoing opportunities for their student to read, write, listen, and speak.

Literacy Collaborative is high quality program oriented around rigorous instruction and purposeful teacher-student interactions. It is a framework based on authentic, global, and holistic language acquisition, which include both reading and writing workshops. Within this framework teachers differentiate instruction through flexible grouping such as whole-class, small group and/or individualized instruction. Additionally, teachers create opportunities for students to engage in targeted activites throught the utilization of interactive and shared reading experiences as well as tailored vocabulary and phonologica awareness lessons designed to met individual needs. The Literacy Collaborative framework strives to ehance student learning through engagement, purpose, systematic routines, data based instruction, and targeted interventions. Students are encourage to beome an active participant in their learning experience through student choice, open-ended question, and targeted

In the primary grades, children should have a well-designed phonics program that promotes knowledge of letters, sounds, words, and phonological units (Dorn, Soffos. 2001. P. 21). The literacy coach should help the classroom teachers prepare for their literacy lessons by providing literary resources needed, modeling to show how certain components of the literacy block should look and making sure the teacher understands how to teach the skills they are working on at the time. For example, if a teacher is unsure how to effectively teach reading groups to beginner kindergarten readers, the literacy coach can model how to do so, provide the teacher with additional help and support, and even let the teacher observe other teachers teach. The literacy coach should also make sure the teachers have everything they need to assess students and that the teachers understand the importance of the assessments and how to get information from them to lead new

For this reason, careful research and understanding of what the standards are asking educators to teach is required. Houck (2008) informs balanced literacy is a combination of teaching methods and strategies involving both whole language and skill development. Used correctly, balanced literacy has the potential to meet the needs of all students at their own individual level. All components of reading, including phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, speaking and listening, and writing are taught using this framework. Balanced literacy provides instruction by various methods. The use of read aloud, shared reading, guided reading, independent reading, word study, and writing are all used to provide students with a release of responsibility model in which they go from guided to independent work (Frey, 2005). The need for all components of reading to work together in order for comprehension to take place makes balanced literacy an instructional reform plan worth implementing (Beringer & Abbott, 2010).

Creating and implementing effective lessons for a literacy learner who is struggling with reading and writing takes much effort and appropriate resources. Throughout the Literacy Development course, I have gained much insight and resources that have become valuable tools in addressing students’ literacy needs. Each week, I conducted lessons and activities that targeted the needs of many students, but my initial focus on was on one particular student. His individual reading level, spelling development, and writing abilities were analyzed and the recorded data was used

Before considering the proper balance between content and disciplinary literacy, I must first understand where my students are in terms of their reading skills and ability. One of the most difficult aspects of teaching is being able to meet the needs of a diverse group of learners who come from different backgrounds as well as learning styles and abilities, I do not believe that a proper balance can be determined that will meet the needs of every learner. It is equally important however to insure that a balance exist.

Balanced Literacy provides the foundational structure and scheduling for delivering the North Carolina English Language Arts curriculum in kindergarten through eighth grades. Balanced literacy along with our scope and sequence defined in our pacing guides enhance vertical and horizontal

Literacy Instructional Strategies Babies begin to learn language even before being born and respond to variety of sounds. It’s crucial for parents or educators to build their language skills which will further develop their skills and start to make connections. Literacy is the ability to read, write, communicate, and comprehend if the child can’t read then they will struggle to communicate. The younger the child is taught the better they will develop stronger listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills. Not all children develop in the same way and can struggle with some components of literacy so differentiation is essential for teachers to incorporate in order for the child to succeed.

The use of formal and informal reading assessments provide important data that allow educators to identify at risk students (Tompkins, 2010). The data collected from the assessments address any factors that may prohibit the development of students’ reading and writing skills. In addition to the assessments, the more an educator can learn about students’ backgrounds and their past reading, language development, and writing experiences the more instructional strategies can be designed to specifically meet the needs of diverse learners in the classroom.

Balanced literacy is seen as the truce in the reading wars that have developed in the educational community. Balanced literacy is the teacher’s ability to mix whole learning and phonics to create a reading atmosphere that will foster success in both comprehension and reading. Reading wars have always existed because reading is a critical skill needed in every aspect of a person’s life. Society often makes comments about the things learned in school that do not apply to real world from math to social studies to foreign languages but reading is needed in every aspect of life. A person cannot function in society if they are unable to read.

Literacy is important for young children. It’s so much a child has to know before entering kindergarten. The Essentials of Early Literacy Instruction stressed the importance of teaching literacy. Early literacy is an emerging g set of relationships between reading and writing. Today a lot of terms have been referred to for literacy development for preschoolers the term that’s mostly used is early literacy. The term was chosen because the earliest forms of literacy development are forming reading and writing concepts. Linking early literacy to play is the most effective way to for young children to learn. There are many ways educators can teach literacy activities such as rich teacher talk, storybook reading, phonologic awareness activities, alphabet activities, support for emergent writing, shared book experience, integrated, and content-focused activities, Young children understand print by oral and written language. Asking students to help read a book and turn the page help them understand the basics of a book. There are at least three critical content categories in early literacy: oral language comprehension, phonological awareness, and print knowledge. Children need to learn phonological awareness, alphabet letter knowledge, the function of written language, a sense of meaning making texts, and vocabulary. Alphabetic writing is quite difficult once children understand the language of their community they learn which words stand for which concepts in that language.

Teaching my student reading I notice that it is a complex topic of the text, and their knowledge of their culture to construct meaning with text. I stated in one of the district often several professional learning development doing summer to improve and inform teacher about how assessment the students. There is new instant data for informal and formal assessment called illumination. We are able to assess the students and reteach the material within second of teaching the information. I will continue to implement this development can help the student with organizing, motivating, and guiding the support aids for students in classrooms.