Classroom Practices For Supporting Early Literacy Instruction in tcrsb

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  Assess children’s reading and make decisions for next steps of instruction
  
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  Demonstrate effective reading strategies
  
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  Provide children with opportunities to read and practice a variety of approaches to text
  
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  Respond to student reading, and encourage students to reflect on their reading process both orally and in writing
  

Within the Reading and Viewing strand, teachers instruct young readers keeping in mind the three main indicators of successful reading: accuracy, fluency and comprehension.

Teachers in Tri-County Regional School Board are aware that reading without comprehension is not really reading, and that proficient readers use the following strategies:

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  Activate prior knowledge
  
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  Create visual and sensory images from text as they read
  
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  Draw inferences to form conclusions
  
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  Ask questions (of themselves, of the author)
  
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  Determine the important themes and ideas
  
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  Synthesize what they read to create new understandings (Miller, p 8)
  

Activities and strategies which support the development of Speaking and Listening are interwoven with reading and viewing experiences. Teachers must provide frequent oral language experiences for students and be diligent in their observations and assessments of student progress.

Learning to write, just like learning to read, is a developmental process and students progress through discrete stages: emergent, early, transitional and fluent. Teachers of Grades Primary to Three in Tri-County Regional School Board understand that, while the writing process will look different at different stages, students can engage in writing activities (through shared and modelled experiences) from their first day of school. (Teaching in Action P-3, p. 43)

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  Enjoyment
  

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  Independent and instructional reading levels
  
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  Comprehension, fluency, accuracy
  
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  Comfort with a variety of genres
  
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  Use of/knowledge of strategies for comprehension and word solving
  

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  Teachers provide a range of writing opportunities
  
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  Students need authentic purposes for writing
  
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  Student engagement in writing increases when they have choice in terms of topic, form etc.
  
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  Student engagement in writing increases when they write for an authentic audience
  
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  Student acquisition of the conventions of print takes time and should not be the focus of writing evaluation
  

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  Students benefit from having a range of opportunities
  
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  Active listening skills must be taught
  
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  Conversational skills must be taught
  

Students benefit from clear feedback which highlights areas of strength and next steps for improvement.

(Johnson and Keier, p. 26)

The goal of a BALANCED reading program is to encourage students to develop strengths in these key areas:

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  Accuracy – independent, instructional, fluent
  

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  Fluency – expression, phrasing, punctuation, rate
  
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  Comprehension – literal understanding, deeper comprehension (making connections, questioning, inferring, visualizing, determining importance, synthesizing)
  

Reading workshop begins with a mini lesson. Mini lessons focus on specific concepts (text selection, monitoring/self-correcting strategies, comprehension strategies, word-solving techniques etc.) and are short in duration. Excellent ideas for mini lessons can be found in:

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  Reading with Meaning, Debbie Miller
  
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  Kindergarten Teacher’s Resource Book, Miriam Trehearne
  
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  Of Primary Importance, Ann Marie Corgill
  
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  Growing Readers, Kathy Collins
  

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  The teacher reads a variety of texts which are above the independent reading level(s) of the students
  
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  Read-alouds are crucial for vocabulary development and the development of story sense.
  
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  Scaffolding (support for students who are being read to) involves activating their prior knowledge, predicting, and monitoring their comprehension during the reading.
  
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  The read-aloud experience should be enjoyable.
  
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  The instructional focus in on comprehension.
  
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  There is a balance of fiction and non-fiction.
  

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  The read-aloud experience can be interactive.
  
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  Reading aloud is the single most important activity in order for students to build the knowledge and skills required for reading. (Trehearne, p. 42)
  

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  Students and teacher read all or parts of a text together (often big books, charts etc.)
  
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  The instructional focus can be on comprehension and/or accuracy and fluency.
  
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  There is an opportunity for the teacher to highlight high frequency words, reading vocabulary, as well as onset and rime.
  
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  There is opportunity for discussion which fosters the development of a community of readers and creates a shared love of stories.
  

The teacher engages the students in phonological awareness experiences using pictures and oral language including:

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  Rhyming (recognizing and generating rhyming sounds)
  
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  Segmenting (words, syllables, sounds)
  
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  Isolating sounds (beginning, ending, and middle sounds)
  
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  Blending sounds (blending syllables, blending sounds)
  
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  Substituting sounds (changing word beginnings, making new words)
  

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  The instructional focus can be on comprehension and/or accuracy and fluency.
  
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  The teacher groups students according to strengths and needs.
  
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  The teacher establishes the focus for the group.
  
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  The teacher chooses appropriate texts at the instructional level of the students in the group.
  
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  The teacher provides a brief, appropriate introduction.
  

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  The teacher monitors the students as they read.
  
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  The teacher provides an opportunity to discuss the reading experience and to make meaningful teaching points such as appropriate book selection.
  
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  The teacher has an opportunity to administer running records during small group instruction.
  

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  Students read “just right” and easy books independently.
  
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  The teacher confers and monitors student reading strategies and comprehension.
  
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  The teacher collects information about students as readers – interest, comprehension, ability to select appropriate texts.
  
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  The teacher has an opportunity to administer running records or other forms of reading conferences, to both assess individual students and to provided one-to-one instruction.
  

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  The teacher will focus on the student learning in order to extend and solidify strategy use and comprehension.
  
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  Students will share their understandings and thoughts. (See Happy Reading DVD, Debbie Miller)
  

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  Student completes sketches/drawings that reflect the content of a text (characters, setting, an event) (visualizing)
  
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  Student composes a short “sentence” that responds to text (prediction, opinion, feeling) (inferring)
  
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  Student completes drawings which show a sequence of events or a list of events (determining importance)
  
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  Student makes a simple statement which summarizes text (synthesizing)
  
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  Student is able to draw or write about something in his/her own life when prompted by a text (making connections)
  

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  Students should be handling books from the first day of Grade Primary.
  
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    Small group instruction (guided reading) should begin when classroom routines are established. (Aim for the end of October.)
    
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  When students can one-to-one match and understand directionality, they should work with texts which force them to look at text (level C). Triple Treats (Scholastic) are very useful for this purpose.
  

1. 
   These are instructional targets only. Not all students will reach these benchmarks with their
   

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   In order to make progress as readers, all students must receive reading instruction at their own instructional reading levels.
   
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   During independent reading time, students read texts that are at their independent level (easy text).
   

A comprehensive writing program in the primary year should include attention to:

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  Modes of Writing: expressive, transactional, poetic
  
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  Forms of Writing: journals, stories, reports, logs, poems etc.
  
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  Traits of Writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions
  

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  30-40 minutes, daily
  

The teacher conducts a short, focused lesson. At the Primary Level, this is a great time for instruction on letter recognition, vocabulary etc. An anchor text (chart, big book, read-aloud) is also useful at this time.

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  The teacher holds the marker and demonstrates specific writing skills often using a chart.
  
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  Students learn that print is thoughts written down.
  

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  The teacher holds the marker but the students contribute ideas.
  
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  The students learn that print is thoughts written down.
  
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  This is a perfect opportunity to teach sound-symbol correspondence, letters, concepts about print, and phonological awareness.
  

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  The teacher shares the marker with the students as they construct text together.
  
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  Students may write individual letters, word parts, or whole words, while the teacher writes the rest.
  
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  This provides opportunity for teachers to work with spacing, letter formations, upper and lower case letters, high frequency words, spelling strategies.
  

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  Students work in small groups on a common writing task.
  
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  The teacher groups students according to: form of writing, topic, interest, strengths/needs.
  
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  Students support one another.
  
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  Teacher provides support as needed.
  
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  The teacher emphasizes “No Excuses” words and notices words that are spelled incorrectly, but places most value on content.
  

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  Students must write daily.
  
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  The use of invented spelling is important as this is how students develop and assess their knowledge of sound-symbol correspondence
  

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  Students work on writing pieces independently.
  
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  The teacher confers with students to work on specific skills.
  
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  The teacher emphasizes the value of the content, but notices “No Excuses” words and words which are spelled incorrectly.
  
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  The teacher collects information to inform future instruction.