Shona Hendrickson

Walden University

EDUC 6706: The Beginning Reader, PreK-3

Instructor: Dr. Martha Moore

Creating a Literate Environment

What is a Literate Environment?

● A place where one develops skills to communicate

authentically through speaking, listening, reading,

and writing (Cooper, 2000).

● A place rich in language and print (Cooper, 2000).

● A place accessible to all students regardless of

their

learning abilities, home language, or learning styles

(Ruckdeschel, 2011).

Three Essential Parts of a Literate Environment

1. Getting to Know Literacy Learners

2. Selecting Texts

3. Literacy Instruction

-Interactive Perspective

-Critical Perspective

-Response Perspective

Getting to Know Literacy Learners

Literacy remains paramount in learning, not only

for language development, but also as the foundation of all

academic disciplines including science and mathematics

(Huffaker, 2005). Literacy is a process that begins in

infancy and continues into adulthood, if not throughout life

(Tompkins, 2010).

In order to create a literate environment, as

teachers we need to first get to know out students. We

need to get to know their cognitive and non-cognitive

abilities (Laureate Education Inc., 2010b). This information

about our students is important as it will contribute to their

success in reading (Afflerbach, 2007).

To provide an effective classroom environment that caters to

the cognitive needs of students, it is important that assessment be

done to see what reading levels they are at. Assessment should be

done to test their vocabulary skills, reading fluency, comprehension

skills, decoding skills, etc.

Examples of Cognitive Assessments

Running Records

Comprehension Questions Activity

‘Words I Know’ Test

Teachers must get to know their students better in order to

have their best interests at heart (Laureate Education Inc., 2010d).

Teachers need to find out about students’ interests, family

background, experiences and what motivates them. The better you

know your students, the better you can connect them with texts

that impact them in profound ways (Laureate Education, Inc.,

2010b).

Examples of Non-Cognitive Assessments

Journals

Composition Exercises

Selecting Texts Texts are presented in many different forms today (Laureate Education

Inc., 2010). All of which has a place in the literacy classroom whether

it is in the form of printed books or digital media. However, when

selecting texts for students, it is important to think about text

difficulty, readability, length, structure, size of print and visual support

(Laureate Inc., 2010). This is very useful in creating a literate

environment

I now realized from Dr. Almasi that texts selected should fall on the

continuum of linguistic to semiotic and narrative to informational

(Laureate Education Inc., 2010). Selecting texts through this Literacy

Matrix, will allow me as a teacher to consider a variety of literacy

experiences that would be best suitable to students’ needs and

interests.

Literacy Matrix:

The literacy matrix is a 2 digital construct for analyzing and

selecting texts (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010). Texts selected should fall

on the continuum of linguistic to semiotic and narrative to informational.

A text with no illustrations at all tells a story that is linguistic and

narrative (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).

A text that is made up of only pictures is semiotic and narrative

(Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).

Even though both of these are narrative texts, the way the

narrative is communicated differs.

Linguistic Hard

Narrative Text Information Text

Semiotic

Easy (Laureate Education Inc., 2010f)

Things to think about when selecting text

Length of text Size of print Number of sentences Text structure

Perspectives in Literacy Learning

Literacy Lesson: Interactive Perspective

Interactive perspective is a strategy/style of

teaching geared towards getting students to construct

their own meaning from any experience. It does not

mean leaving students to make whatever sense they can

from any experience, but, needs the interaction of

teachers to interact and challenge student thinking

exposing them to new ideas (Hammonds, 2011). In

reading the interactive perspective focuses on students

being strategic and metacognitive readers and writers;

meaning students can read and write accurately, fluently,

and with comprehension.

Through this practice, I learned that the

goal of the interactive perspective is to help

students become strategic readers and writers

(Laureate Education Inc., 2010i). This can be done

through the use of strategies such as read aloud,

shared reading, word walls, word sorts and K-W-L

charts.

The lesson I created for the interactive perspective

focused on comprehension of informational text. In this lesson,

students read a book about Gardens. The K-W-L chart was used

to get students to interact with the text. Students had to

identify what they knew about gardens, what they wanted to

know and at the end what they learned from the text about

gardens. This lesson was effective as it got students to open

up and share their experiences. Students were also able to

make connections with the text because it was within their

experience which is an important aspect of the interactive

perspective.

Literacy Lesson: Critical and Response Perspectives

The critical and response perspectives are two

important components of literacy instructions that should

be used by teachers.

The critical perspective teaches students how to

critically examine text; while teaching students to think

about who wrote the text and how the author feels about

the topic they are writing about (Laureate Education Inc.,

2011).

The response perspective on the

other hand gives students the opportunity

to experience and respond to text

(Laureate Education, Inc., 2011).

However across each perspective, the

teacher must be cognizant of planning for

the learners, the texts, and the

instructional practices (Hoffman, 2011).

Teaching a lesson using the critical and response perspective

has given me ideas of how I could create a literate environment. In

order to get students to develop the skills of thinking critically and

responding to text, text would be selected on topics such as

ethnicity, race, gender, or social status. This would give students

the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of the author based

on text content.

When students examine texts critically, they would begin to

think more deeply about them; and that is vitally important

(Laureate Education, Inc., 2010a). According to Dr. Almasi, looking

at text and examining it from different perspectives can allow

students to look at the believability of what they read (Laureate

Education, Inc., 2010c).

Activities to reinforce the critical and response perspectives:

- Open-mind portraits

- Question-Answer-Relationships (QAR)

- Questioning the Author

- Response Journals

References

* Afflerbach, P. (2007). Understanding and using reading assessment, K–12. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

* Cooper, J. D. (2000). Literacy: Helping children construct literacy. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

* Framework for literacy development [Lecture notes]. (2011). Retrieved from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com

* Hammonds, B. (2010). Interactive teaching approach. Retrieved from http://www.leading-learning.co.nz/quality-learning/interactive-teaching.html

* Hoffman, B. (2011). Framework for literacy instruction: 3 Perspectives. Retrieved from http://mylearningspringboard.com/framework- for-literacy-instruction-3-perspectives/

* Huffaker, D. (2005). The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs to Promote Literacy in the Classroom. AACE Journal, 13(2), 91-98. Norfolk, VA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/5680

* Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011). Perspectives on Literacy Learning [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

* Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). Analyzing and selecting text. [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

* Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010a). Analysing and Selecting Text [Webcast]. The beginning reader, Prek-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

* Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Changes in Literacy Education. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

* Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010c). Critical Perspective. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

* Laureate Education Inc. (2010d). Getting to know your students. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, PreK-3 . Baltimore, MD: Author.

* Laureate Education Inc. (2010f). (Executive Producer) Analyzing and Selecting Text. [webcast]. The beginning reader, PreK-3. Baltimore: author

* Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010i). Strategic Processing. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

* Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). Assessing word knowledge. [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

* Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). Getting to know your students. [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

* Ruckdeschel, S. (2011). How to create a literate classroom. eHow Web. Retrieved May 8, 2011, from http://www.ehow.com

* Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.