Checklist for an Effective Literacy Program

(Counselors Affecting Reading Everyday). My plan would involve developing one-on-one counseling sessions where the students would start off by taking a learning style inventory as well as a reading interest inventory. The purpose of the learning style inventory would be to help the students as well as their teachers to understand how each individual child learns and processes information. The reading interest inventory would serve the purpose of helping the students to find a particular type of text that they may enjoy reading. Upon completion of the learning style inventory and reading interest inventory, the students would begin meeting with the counselor to receive one-on-one reading opportunities using books that students self-select based on their interest. This one-on-one meeting will serve to meet the needs of those students who stated that they did not have anyone at home to read with. The students will utilize the school’s Accelerated Reading program to take quizzes on the books they read with the counselor. After earning their first five Accelerated Reading points, a book will be purchased for the student based on their interest. This incentive plan will serve as a means to provide personal books for those students that do not own any as well as attempting to help them to get over the fear or taking reading tests. During these weekly meetings, the counselor will provide a variety of reading text (based on student

In the prior Literacy Action Plan, the material, resources, and information used and found were done for specific reasons. These reasons were found by using data from state assessments and district assessments from Okeechobee School District. Janice Greenberg stated “Tony Wagner goes on to say that children will need seven basic survival skills to succeed in the world that awaits them which are as follows: 1) Critical thinking and Problem Solving, 2)Collaboration across Networks and Leading by Influence, 3) Agility and Adaptability, 4) Initiative and Entrepreneurialism, 5) Effective Oral and Written Communication, 6) Accessing and Analyzing Information, and 7) Curiosity and Imagination” (Greenberg, 2011). These are also reasons why students should be proficient in reading and writing and why we have to write a Literacy Action Plan so we have action set into place to help our students achieve proficient scores in Reading and Writing.

The English department does a wonderful job of finding texts that keep the students interested in what they read, but challenges them with new vocabulary and terms they would not normally use. These topics are also at different lengths that target specific skills that all students need and at different levels so that students with different developmental levels can improve. The English department also works with our school’s library to find some of the newest books that the students will enjoy and do their best to bring those books in. The school’s librarian and one of our freshman English teachers have started a “Book Club” on campus so that students could read some of the newest books and be able to talk about them in an educational setting. Many students are a part of this new club and some of them have stated that this club has really helped them improve their overall reading and summarization skills.

Regarding the literacy program at my high school, we have very few strengths. We do not perform with an outstanding rating in any of the characteristics on the Literacy Program Analysis Survey. The characteristics we rated adequately in include direct instruction, teacher modeling of processes, differentiation, and opportunities to write. We are most successful with direct instruction; our language arts department directly ties direct instruction to modeling. As one of the two language arts instructors, I can say with certainty that our department’s approach to writing instruction relies on the teacher modeling thinking processes. My senior class, for example, just finished their first critical analysis paragraphs as an entire class. We used our SmartBoard to compose compelling topic sentences, to identify the best possible pieces of support, and to develop our skills in elaboration. Students wrote their paragraphs down as we worked collaboratively, and they kept these to use as models for their own responses to a new article. As part of our daily instructional processes, all teachers are required to begin their classes with brief questions about the day’s objective to which students reply in written form. In this way, students are given opportunities every day to learn how to organize and elaborate on their own ideas

Zero to Three is an organization that was established in 1977 by some of the best experts in health, child development, and mental health. The main focus is on the development of infants and toddlers. The main goal of this organization is to guarantee that all babies and toddlers are given a strong start in life. Promoting an understanding about key issues that affect young children and their families. Key issues include infant mental health, child care, early language and literacy development, early intervention and the impact culture has on early childhood development (About Us, 2016).

Within the field of education, a continuous debate about the most effective manner in which to provide reading instruction has been on-going since the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty Report of the 1960s. The primary focus of that debate is whether a skills-based approach or a meaning – based approach was most effective for teaching beginning reading skills (phonemic and phonological awareness), comprehension, and enrichment. (Frey, et.al, 2005) The silks-based or direct instruction approach to reading instruction focuses on explicit and systematic instruction of letter-sound correspondence, phonological and phonemic awareness, and their relationship to reading and comprehension. The meaning- based or balanced

The Literacy Collaborative program strives to utilize purposeful, explicit, and guided instruction designed to ensure learner independence. The program provides opportunities for students to engage in authentic, collaborative, and holistic language acquisition through the use of high quality rigorous cross circular instruction. The program is structured within a framework that allows educators to create a dynamic learning environment that allows for flexible grouping, collaboration, and actively involving students in the learning process. Moreover, “teachers engage students in a selection of specified activities, including interactive read-aloud, shared-reading experiences, targeted vocabulary and phonics lessons, guided reading and writing

My philosophy is that I want to provide children with the best education possible. Every student has the ability to read and write, but all students are going to have different ways of learning. Some strategies will work better for some than others. It is my responsibility to find creative and fun ways to spark their want to learn. I believe to be effective in literacy instruction and assessment I have to develop strategies that balance vocabulary, reading and writing. I think with these three components including a positive learning environment that my instructions will be effective. I believe by providing students with instructions, modeling, guided practices, and independent practices; that

SMES staff members understand the importance of early literacy skills. As a staff, we are committed in providing early reading instruction beginning in preschool and kindergarten in hopes of closing the achievement gap in reading. Our primary reading goal is for all students to read at grade level or above grade level by the end of their third grade school year. We want to ensure our third graders are able to read fluently and demonstrate high levels of comprehension.

In primary schools, literacy is taught through things such as Phonics. In 2012, The Department for Education (DfE) introduced a phonics screening check for pupils at the end of year 1. The check asks pupils to read 40 words, of which 20 are pseudo-words. This allows teachers to identify which pupils have a genuine grasp of decoding and which pupils are in need of further support. “Since 2012, the proportion of pupils meeting the expected standard has increased from 58% to 74% in 2014”. Literacy enables children at a young age to understand how the alphabet works and concentrates on speaking and listening skills, phonological awareness and oral blending and segmenting. Additional activities that can be done to help with literacy are drama, guided reading, peer work and talking in groups. Children with good literacy skills are abler to take advantage of the opportunities that they may come across as they would be literate in a subject area. A child should have good word recognition and language comprehension in order to be successfully literate. Furthermore, Literacy skills can be developed outside of the school environment. DfE found that “research has shown that children’s motivation and achievement improve when their parents or carers are involved in their education”.

The data collected from the students’ assessment showed they had a high level of comprehension in using the essential literacy strategy which has been the focus of the learning segment. The assessment is directly related to what the students have been learning throughout the learning segment. The students d had multiple opportunities to practice the essential literacy strategy throughout the learning segment. The first section of the assessment which was the matching of the text features with their purposes was directly related to the learning task they had to perform in the lesson one relating to the learning target “I can match text features to their purposes.” The written response section was directly related to the related skill the students’

Community and parent volunteers will undertake the necessary safety measures to be allowed in the school to assist students with learning. A reading initiative called The Battle of the Books will be carried out in each classroom. Each class will create heterogeneous reading groups and each student will choose good fit books to read from the list within a designated amount of time. Students will generate comprehension questions and play the game, Battle of the Books, within their classroom. The winning group from each classroom will challenge the other winners to another battle. Stakeholders will have assigned times in classrooms to assist teachers and students with book reviews and literature circles to develop higher level thinking skills and strategies. This program is expected to increase reading stamina and comprehension at a non-frustrating, yet challenging level for all

There are three important frameworks teachers should think about when developing lesson plans. The first one is literacy lesson format. This format has three different steps, which include: introducing the text, reading and responding to the text and extending the text. When introducing the text the student previous knowledge should be activated about the subject and the students should develop their own purpose for reading the text. When responding to the text students should do this over the course of the reading. By the end they should be able to go back and summarize what they read while answering any questions they may have acquired while reading. Finally the students should extend the text by making personal connections with the text

The shared book reading program is a teacher-directed literacy program designed to allow the educator the opportunity to model developing comprehension, alphabetics, and general reading achievement skills. The program aligns with the CCSS in that is focuses on the development of comprehension, alphabetics, and general reading skills. Furthermore, the program’s flexible design allows the teacher to utlize formative assessment to create targeted lessons focused on group and individual achievement (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2012).. Additionally, teachers are encouraged to use open-ended questions as well as student’s background knowledge to engage leaners during the lesson. The program encourages the use of quality trade literature

The literature circle activity “read and roll,” did not fit the book “Out of the Dust.” Although there are parts of the activity that would be useful for this book, and the use of the dice to assign what part the student would complete was good. In my class, I would not use this specific active for any literature circle activity. I do not see this as a literature circle activity. The aim of a literature circle according to the text book is to “… discuss their responses to the literature…,” it goes on to say, “the goal of a literature circles is for children to learn to work and think with one another and to value the opinions and views of others” (Short, Lynch-Brown, & Tomlinson, 2014, p. 288). This active