Balanced Literacy
I find that this section is kind of overwhelming to write! I'll do my best to organize my thoughts, but this will definitely be a work in progress.
My board and province are committed to balanced literacy. This means that, instead of having to follow a reading program, we are expected to pull from a variety of high quality sources to help our students grow as readers and writers. Helping my students learn to love books and communicate their thinking is the most rewarding and exciting part of my job!
Balanced literacy means exactly what the name implies - balancing literacy instruction to provide multiple entry points for students. Throughout the day and the week, children are actively engaged in...
- Listening to stories
- Reading texts of all kinds, alone and with others
- Discussing and critiquing texts
- Writing for a purpose and an audience
- Learning how language and words work
- Thinking, thinking, thinking; talking, talking, talking; and listening, listening, listening
Literacy is not an isolated thing. Like all enduring learning, literacy needs a social context; we make meaning by grappling with difficult concepts and talking it through with others.
In order to help our students grow as readers and writers, our school uses the gradual release of responsibility:
- Modeled reading and writing (I do, you watch)
- Shared reading and writing (I do, you help)
- Guided reading and writing (you do, I help)
- Independent reading and writing (you do, I watch)
OK, OK, I could go on about this for hours, but instead I'll get to the "stuff". This is some of what I do in my classroom:
literacy choices and small group instruction
While I mention my favourite professional books for teaching reading and writing on the various subpages, I also compiled a list of all of them here.
