LITERATE ENVIRONMENT

ANALYSIS PRESENTATION

Oluseyi Ngozi-Nwankwo

Waiden University

August 15, 2013

Instructor: Pam Fitzgerald

The Beginning Reader, Pre K-3 (EDUC - 6706R - 2)

 

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS

LITERACY?Literacy is the competence a

student acquires in both reading and writing (Tompkins, 2010).

 

WHAT IS A LITERATE

ENVIRONMENT?A literate environment is an environment that emphasizes the importance of speaking, reading, and writing in the learning of all students. This involves the selection of materials that will facilitate language and literacy opportunities; reflection and thought regarding classroom design; and intentional instruction and facilitation by teachers (Access Center, 2007).

 

Creating a Literate Environment involves different steps. They are: Getting to know literacy learners, Selecting Texts and planning lessons for the interactive, response and critical perspectives of literacy.

 

GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY

LEARNERS 

To be able to teach literacy accurately, a teacher must have comprehensive

information about each student in her class. To have comprehensive

information about each student, a teacher must find out about the

student’s literacy development, to understand them as individuals, and to find texts and topics that engage them

in literacy learning.

 

GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY

LEARNERS 

There are different assessment types that can be used to understand students

and they are classified in two major groups; Cognitive Assessments and Non

Cognitive Assessments.

Cognitive assessments are assessments to understand a student’s reading and

writing skills while non-cognitive assessments are assessments that

involve understanding the other factors that affect a student’s reading and

writing.

ANALYSIS  

I used the Elementary Reading Attitude survey (McKenna & Kear, 1990) to assess my students’ non cognitive skills and the Informal Reading Inventory comprising of an oral reading test and a comprehension test to assess my students’ cognitive skills. The Elementary Reading attitude survey is a survey measures why students read; for academic purposes or for recreation purposes.

ANALYSIS  

Getting to know my Literacy Learners enabled me plan literacy Instructions that met their literacy needs. I was able to identify areas in which they struggled like long vowel sounds and words with the ‘ed’ ending.

ANALYSIS  

It also helped me design activities that will motivate my students based on the assessment results that one of the students I worked with lacked motivation. The research to enable me understand my students also help choose instructional themes that were engaging and fun for my students since from the assessments, they preferred reading for recreational purposes than reading for academic purposes. I used Dinosaurs as the theme for all the instructional activities so while the students were deriving fun from learning about dinosaurs, they were also learning the needed skills in reading and writing.

ANALYSIS  

As the literacy educator, I must differentiate my literacy lessons to ensure that all of the literacy needs of my students are meet. Generally, with this research, I was able to understand that I must first learn about my students, the environment from which they come from, their prior knowledge, what they already know with regards to literacy and other aspects of their lives to be able to plan adequately and meet their literacy needs.

RESEARCH  

Getting to know your literacy students involves finding out about the whole child, what he/she loves (Laureate Education, n.d).

SELECTING TEXT  

Text used to teach students literacy skills are not chosen in isolation, they are based on assessments to understand individual students. Selecting text for students is also based on selecting text that is appropriate for the student. This involves choosing text according to their types; linguistic, semiotic, narrative and informational texts.

SELECTING TEXT  

It also involves placing into consideration the text length, the level of difficulty of the text; if it should be used for independent reading or for guided reading. In selecting text, a teacher must also consider the words in the text; the number of syllables in the words, how new vocabularies are being repeated to make the word easier for the student to understand.

LITERACY MATRIX

 

SELECTING TEXTS  

 It also involves placing into consideration the text length, the level of difficulty of the text; if it should be used for independent reading or for guided reading. In selecting text, a teacher must also consider the words in the text; the number of syllables in the words, how new vocabularies are being repeated to make the word easier for the student to understand.

ANALYSIS  

 The research on selecting text based on the assessments previously carried out on my students has enabled to understand that I should be able to understand the text type I am choosing for students; semiotic( text with pictures), narrative(text telling a story), linguistic (text with lots of words) and Informational (text giving details about something).

ANALYSIS  

 Through this research, I was also able to see the usefulness of using informational text for students. Informational texts are texts whose primary purpose is to convey information about the natural or social world (Duke, 2004). Using informational text will enable my students have detailed knowledge of the world around them and avoid the fourth grade slump (Laureate Education, n.d).

ANALYSIS  

 Selecting Texts for my students enabled me to see the importance of using new literacies in my literacy instruction. New Literacies in the 21st century help students develop literacy skills that are important for their future participation in a digital world. Also using computers increases students’ motivation to read, write, and learn (Castek, Bevans-Mangelson, & Goldstone, 2006). The online text that I used were semiotic and used as read alouds and games, they were engaging for my students, the students were motivated to learn and they were able to acquire a lot of information about dinosaurs while having fun.

ANALYSIS  From this research, I have

learned to always choose the right text for my students, decide on the types of text, and ensure that I use a combination of new literacies and informational text amongst other texts.

 

RESEARCH

To avoid the fourth grade slump, students should be taught the skills needed to understand informational text (Laureate Education n.d). Providing opportunities for students to use the Internet at school helps them develop literacy skills that are important for their future participation in a digital world (Castek, Bevans-Mangelson, & Goldstone, 2006). 

LITERACY LEARNING: INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE  Use a variety of informal and formal assessments to determine areas of strength and need in literacy development; determine texts of the appropriate types and levels of difficulty to meet literacy goals and objectives for students and, use instructional methods that address the cognitive and affective needs of students and the demands of the particular text and promote students’ independent use of reading strategies and skills.  

LITERACY LEARNING: INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE  The interactive perspective of literacy learners focuses on literacy instructions that teach students how to read and become strategic processors (Laureate Education, n.d). The interactive perspective involves teaching students how to use their prior knowledge to comprehend text, how to predict what might happen in a text.  

LITERACY LEARNING: INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE  With the interactive perspective, students are taught literacy skills across the five pillars of literacy such as phonics, comprehension and writing skills. Instructional practices that can be used includes being metacognitive, using decoding strategies and chunking for phonics, setting purposes, making predictions and visualizing to make sense of text so as to comprehend it (Laureate education, n.d).

ANALYSIS

 For the literacy lesson I conducted, based on the literacy needs of my students, I continued on the theme; Dinosaurs and focused on word recognition and comprehension for my students. The literacy practices I used include using a mixture of text (online, narrative, semiotic and informational text) to spark up students’ imagination and use their prior knowledge to make predictions and comprehend text.

ANALYSIS

 I also used interactive read alouds and word sorts to teach students how to read and pronounce words with the ‘ed’ ending in their three different forms. I used the theme on Dinosaurs because Dinosaurs were no longer in existence so it was easy for my students to find words in their past forms and learn how to pronounce them accurately.

ANALYSIS

 Through this research, I have learned that the there are many practices teachers can use to ensure that students are metacognitive in their learning, students are able to make text to text connection and text to self-connection, students are able to recognize word forms and pronounce them correctly. Literacy procedures such as read alouds from books and online, online educational games, word sorts are useful practices to use for students.

RESEARCH

 Reading comprehension is an intentional, active, interactive process that occurs before, during and after a person reads a particular piece of writing (Brummitt-Yale, 2014)When students predict, they wonder what will happen to the characters in a book and if they will enjoy it (Tompkins, 2010)Comprehensions strategies are important to a reader because they have the potential to provide access to knowledge that is removed from personal experience (Stahl, 2004).

LITERACY LESSON: CRITICAL AND RESPONSE PERSPECTIVES

 Critical and response perspectives provides students the opportunity to judge, evaluate, and think critically about text and read, react, and respond to text in a variety of meaningful ways. Find out about ideas, issues, and problems that matter to students. Understand the learner as a unique individual. Select texts that provide opportunities for students to judge, evaluate, and think critically. Foster a critical stance by teaching students how to judge, evaluate, and think critically about texts.

LITERACY LESSON: CRITICAL AND RESPONSE PERSPECTIVES

 Find out about students’ interests and identities. Understand what matters to students and who they are as individuals. Select texts that connect to students’ identities and/or interests and that have the potential to evoke an emotional or personal response. Provide opportunities for students to read, react, and formulate a personal response to text.

ANALYSIS: CRITICAL AND RESPONSE PERSPECTIVES

 The lesson for my students on the critical and response perspectives enabled my students to:Use their prior knowledge to critically judge a story and verify the information in a text.Using metacognitive skills to judge the accuracy of information in a text.Critically judge a writer’s intention and judge the validity of a text (Laureate Education, n.d)Respond to text by making connections with information in a text.

ANALYSIS: CRITICAL AND RESPONSE PERSPECTIVES

 Understand the importance of a book’s title and author and that the sex of the Author could affect the contents of a book.Understand that the title of a book, the contents and sequencing of the information in the book are planned intentionally by an author.Respond to text and understand that people need to show care to other persons, animals and things around them.

ANALYSIS: CRITICAL AND RESPONSE PERSPECTIVES

 From this research, I have learned that to create a positive literacy environment using the critical and response perspectives, students need to understand that the author’s perspective is not the only perspective; students can also become active participants of text by developing independent perspectives towards a text (Molden, 2007). I have also learned that the when we use the response perspective, students should be affected and changed by a text.

RESEARCH  

The critical perspective enables students to critically evaluate text and websites for credibility (Laureate Education, n.d)Students can do character comparison, write character journals and double entry journals as they respond to text (Laureate Education, n.d).

REFERENCES  

Brummitt-Yale, J. (2014). What is Reading Comprehension? Retrieved from http://www.k12reader.com/what-is-reading-comprehension/Castek, J., Bevans-Mangelson, J., & Goldstone, B. (2006). Reading adventures online: Five ways to introduce the new literacies of the Internet through children's literature. Reading Teacher, 59(7), 714-728. doi:10.1598/RT.59.7.12

REFERENCES  

Duke, N. K. (2004). The Case for Informational Text. Educational Leadership, 61(6), 40-44. Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Analyzing and selecting text [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.eduLaureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Critical perspective. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

REFERENCES  

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Getting to know your students. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.eduLaureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Interactive perspective: Strategic processing. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

REFERENCES  

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Response perspective: Reading-writing connection. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.eduLaureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Virtual field experience™: Strategic processing [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.eduMcKenna, M. C., & Kear, D. J. (1990). Measuring Attitude toward reading: A new tool for teachers. The Reading Teacher, 43(9), 626--639.

REFERENCES  

Molden, K. (2007). Critical literacy, the right answer for the reading classroom: Strategies to move beyond comprehension for reading improvement. Reading Improvement, 44(1), 50–56.Stahl, K. A. D. (2004). Proof, practice, and promise: Comprehension strategy instruction in the primary grades. Reading Teacher, 57(7), 598–608.

REFERENCES  

The Access Center, (2007). Literacy-Rich Environments. Retrieved February 1, 2008, from The Access Center website: http://www.k8accesscenter.org/training_resources/literacy-richenvironments.aspTompkins, G. (2010). Literacy in the 21st Century: A balanced Approach. Fifth Edition, Allyn & Bacon, Boston.