Literate Environment

Analysis

Claudia Wagner

Instructor: Phyllis Mccully

The Beginning Reader, Pre K-3

EDUC 6706R-6

How did I create a literate

environment?❖ I got to know my

students

❖ Assessed students to determine strengths and weaknesses

❖ Selected engaging texts

❖ Created lessons based on students’ needs

❖ Prompted critical thinking

❖ Allowed for response

❖ The first step in creating a literate environment is to learn about the students.

❖ I need to have an understanding of students’ interests, motivation, and cultural and academic

backgrounds.

Getting to know literacy learners

❖ A teacher must get to know students academically as well as personally and socially (Sears,2010).

Getting to know literacy learners

I was able to learn about my literacy learners through use of the following tools.

❖ ERAS (Elementary Reading Attitude Survey)➢ This tool helped to determine how students felt about reading

academically and recreationally.

❖ Running Record➢ This tool helped to determine students cognitive strengths and

weaknesses.

❖ Teacher-Made Questions➢ Afflerbach states the best assessment of noncognitive aspects of

reading is a talented teacher asking questions to which the answers would reveal information about the student’s self perception Laureate Education, 2010).

Selecting Texts

Text selected should be engaging and based on students’ needs and interests. There should be a balance of narrative text and informational text. Using informational text in the early years can help students to build background knowledge and avoid the “4th grade slump” (Laureate Education, 2011).

Selecting Text: Considerations

Difficulty of Text➢ Readability

○ sentence length○ concept density○ singletons

➢ Text length

➢ Text structure

➢ Size of print

➢ Visual support

linguistic

narrative

informational

semiotic

The Literacy Matrix above helped me to balance my text selection.

Selecting Text: Considerations

Online Texts“Using computers increases students’ motivation to read, write, and learn. Stories on the web build students’ understanding of story structures and introduces new opportunities to develop online navigational skills” ( Castek, 2006).

Helpful websites:

❖ www.storyonline.net

❖ www.icdlbooks.org

❖ www.rif.org/readingplanet/content/read_aloud_stories.mspx

Selecting Texts

I selected the following texts to supplement a unit on the seasons and how they affect humans and animals.

The Three Perspectives

In the process of creating lessons tailored to meet the needs of students, I addressed the following three perspectives.

❖ Interactive Perspective: Teaching students how to read.

❖ Critical Perspective: Teaching students to analyze text.

❖ Response Perspective: Giving students the opportunity to share how the story made them feel.

The Interactive Perspective

This perspective’s focus is on teaching students how to read thinking strategically using phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. Students learn different strategies to use when learning how to decode and blend words, and learn to be reflective. There are many instructional procedures used to address this perspective. Some of the procedures are listed below.

❖ Shared reading

❖ Guided reading

❖ Read-alouds

The Interactive Perspective

The goal of the interactive perspective is to teach children how to be literate learners who can navigate text independently (Laureate Education, 2011).

Critical and Response Perspectives

Critical Perspective❖ This perspective involves teaching students how to

analyze text. Questioning text is important in developing understanding and gaining meaning. When addressing this perspective, I need to provide opportunities for students to question the author, make connections, and answer open-ended questions. The students act as “detectives”.

❖ Students need to be able to examine text from different perspectives as it causes deep thinking about text (Laureate Education, 2011).

Critical and Response Perspectives

Response Perspective❖ Students need the opportunity to respond to text. The

response can be oral or written. This helps to further promote understanding of text as responding to text would allow them to make comparisons, make connections, and/or allow for unique interpretations.

❖ Reader response is a vehicle for allowing students to bring their own meaning to a text (Durand, 2008).

References

Castek, J., Bevans-Mangelson, J., & Goldstone, B. (2006). Reading adventures online: Five ways to introduce the new literacies of the Internet through chidlren’s literature. The Reading Teacher, 59 (7), 714-728. Retrieved from http://www.proquest.com.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010). Assessing Motivation to Read. [Video Webcast]. Retrieved from http://www.courseurl.com.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Critical Perspective. [Video Webcast]. Retrieved from http://www.courseurl.com.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Informational Text in the Early Years. [Video Webcast]. Retrieved from http://www.courseurl.com.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Interactive Perspective: Strategic Processing. [Video Webcast]. Retrieved from http://www.courseurl.com.

Sears, N. (2010). Building Relationships with Students. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/tools/29469.htm.

Feedback

❖ What insights did you gain about literacy and literacy instruction from viewing this presentation?

❖ How might the information presented change your literacy practices and/or your literacy interactions with students?

❖ In what ways can I support you in the literacy development of your students or children? How might you support me in my work with students or your children?

❖ What questions do you have?

Thank You