CREATING A LITERATE ENVIRONMENT

Rebekah Compton

Walden University

EDUC 6706

What is a Literate Environment?

A literate environment is a community of learners, comprised of teachers and students, that work together to strengthen literacy skills.

According to Angelillo (2008), “Together students and their teacher create their classroom community, and the type of community they create strongly influences the learning that takes place” (as cited by Tompkins, 2009, p. 16).

Why is a Literate Environment Important?

A literate environment is important for teachers and students alike because it supports individualized instruction that is much needed in the classroom.

To create this type of environment, teachers must focus on the learners, texts, and instructional practices they choose (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009b).

How is a Literate Environment Created? Getting to Know the

Literacy Learners

Assessing students through cognitive and non-cognitive assessments to determine strengths, weaknesses, interests and motivations

Selecting engaging, level appropriate texts

Creating and implementing lessons based on student needs and interests

Promoting critical thinking and student response to various texts

Supporting students in becoming metacognitive learners

Framework for Literacy Instruction

Learners Affective and cognitive aspects of literacy learning

TextsText structures, types, genres, and difficulty levels matched to literacy learners and literacy goals and objectives

Instructional PracticesDevelopmentally appropriate research-based practices used with appropriate texts to facilitate affective and cognitive aspects of literacy development in all learners

Interactive PerspectiveReading and writing accurately, fluently, and with comprehensionBeing strategic and metacognitive readers and writers

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.

Use instructional methods that address the cognitive and affective needs of students and the demands of the particular text.Promote students’ independent use of reading strategies and skills.

Critical PerspectiveJudging, evaluating, and thinking critically about text

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.

Response PerspectiveReading, reacting, and responding to text in a variety of meaningful ways

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.

(Walden University, 2011).

Getting to Know your Literacy Learners.

• “Understanding how students learn, and particularly how they learn to read and write, influences the instructional approaches that teachers use” (Tompkins, 2010, p. 5).

• “When the teachers see clear areas of interest there is the opportunity to gather resources to try to meet individual students’ needs within a context that is already motivating and interesting to the student” (Afflerbach, 2007, p. 162).

Before planning lessons, it is critical for teachers to know their students, not only on an academic level, but a personal level as well. Teachers must analyze information received from cognitive and non-cognitive assessments to create lessons that will best meet each student’s needs. Through assessing and analyzing, I was able to address the needs of my students, while planning for their interests and motivations.

Getting to Know your Literacy Learner

Example of non-cognitive assessment: Elementary Reading Attitude Survey:

Example of cognitive assessment: AIMSweb Reading Curriculum Based Measurement:

Creating Textual Arrangements- Selecting Engaging Texts

• Selecting engaging and appropriate texts helped me to create and improve my literate environment. Through focusing on student needs and interests, I was able to locate texts that were level appropriate but held student interest. The texts were successful in building student’s knowledge of certain topics.

• Textual arrangements are an excellent tool for teachers to use to enhance and build student knowledge on a topic (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009f).

The goal for creating an appropriate textual arrangement is selecting engaging texts based on the needs of each individual student (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009a).

Framework for Selecting Texts Dr. Hartman provides a

literacy matrix that assists teachers in selecting appropriate texts based on their student’s needs. Dr. Almasi extends the matrix by adding text difficulty.

Text Difficulty Concerns: Readability Concept Density Text Length Structure Font Size Visualizations

Textual Arrangement

The textual arrangement I created was based on a story from the reading basal series. The story A Weed is a Flower: The Story of George Washington Carver, served as the basis of the arrangement. The students showed interest in reading nonfiction texts, so I expanded the arrangement based on student interest. The remaining texts addressed were nonfiction or realistic fiction.

Online Texts

• “The Internet is rapidly changing what it means to be literate” (Tompkins, 2010, p. 7).

• The online text I used in my textual arrangement was a media text. Through accessing multiple forms of texts, teachers will insure that students are gaining multiple enhancing experiences. The online text can be located at: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/news/history-archaeology-news/mlk-day-vin/.

Technology is changing and shaping the classroom everyday. To address these technological advances, teachers must teach students how to become literate through using technology.

Interactive Perspective

Learners Affective and cognitive aspects of literacy learning

TextsText structures, types, genres, and difficulty levels matched to literacy learners and literacy goals and objectives

Instructional PracticesDevelopmentally appropriate research-based practices used with appropriate texts to facilitate affective and cognitive aspects of literacy development in all learners

Interactive PerspectiveReading and writing accurately, fluently, and with comprehensionBeing strategic and metacognitive readers and writers

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.

Use instructional methods that address the cognitive and affective needs of students and the demands of the particular text.Promote students’ independent use of reading strategies and skills.

(Walden University, 2011)

Interactive Perspective

The Interactive Perspective of teaching focuses on teaching students multiple strategies for reading.

More importantly, this perspective teaches students to be metacognitive about the strategies they are using.

Being metacognitive about reading means knowing that some strategies work well with certain texts and being able to choose the correct strategies based on the text(Laureate Education, Inc., 2009e).

Interactive Perspective Instructional Practices

To incorporate the interactive perspective into my teaching, I used a KWL chart. The students used the KWL chart to activate their prior knowledge. After completing the charts, the students were not only ready for the lesson, but they were excited to begin as well.

Try these other interactive instructional practices: Book Talks Guided Reading Interactive Writing Making Words Minilessons Think-Alouds Word Ladders

○ (Tompkins, 2010)

Critical Perspective

Learners Affective and cognitive aspects of literacy learning

TextsText structures, types, genres, and difficulty levels matched to literacy learners and literacy goals and objectives

Instructional PracticesDevelopmentally appropriate research-based practices used with appropriate texts to facilitate affective and cognitive aspects of literacy development in all learners

Critical PerspectiveJudging, evaluating, and thinking critically about text

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.

(Walden University, 2011)

Critical Perspective

The goal for the critical perspective is to provide students with an opportunity to think deeply about what they are reading.

Students using this perspective use skills such as evaluating, analyzing, and making judgments (Laureate Education, 2009c).

Critical Perspective Instructional Practices To incorporate the

critical perspective into my teaching, I used Questioning the Author. Questioning the Author promotes critical thinking by having students analyze the text to determine the author’s purpose for writing.

Try these other critical instructional practices:

Double-Entry Journals Open-Mind Portraits Question/Answer

Relationships Questioning the

Author Reciprocal

Questioning(Tompkins, 2010).

Response Perspective

Learners Affective and cognitive aspects of literacy learning

TextsText structures, types, genres, and difficulty levels matched to literacy learners and literacy goals and objectives

Instructional PracticesDevelopmentally appropriate research-based practices used with appropriate texts to facilitate affective and cognitive aspects of literacy development in all learners

Response PerspectiveReading, reacting, and responding to text in a variety of meaningful ways

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.

(Walden University, 2011)

Response Perspective

The response perspective focuses on providing literacy experiences based on the teacher’s knowledge of the individual student.

Teacher’s must provide literacy experiences that relate to students’ interests and reading levels (Laureate Education Inc., 2009d).

Response Perspective Instructional Practices

To incorporate the response perspective in my teaching, I had students complete an Elementary Reading Attitude Survey. After reviewing the results, I planned a lesson based on the students’ needs and levels.

Try these response instructional practices:

Reading Logs

Double-Entry Journals

Grand Conversations

Learning Logs

Quickwriting(Tompkins, 2010)

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

Laureate Education, Inc. (2009a). Analyzing and Selecting Texts [Webcast]. The beginning reading, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2009b). Changes in Literacy Education. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2009c). Critical Perspective. [Webcast] The beginning reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2009d). Response Perspective. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2009e). Strategic Processing. [Webcast] The beginning reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2009f). Textual Arrangements. [Webcast] The developing reader, 4-6 grades. Baltimore, MD: Author.

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

Walden University. (2011). Framework for literacy instruction. Minneapolis, MN: Author.