COMMITMENT TO BALANCED

LITERACY
Ellie Kolodzieski
EDUC 640 Balanced Literacy
June 2014
CONTENTS
! Introduction
! The Basis of My Commitment to Balanced
Literacy
! The Six Ts
! Time
! Text
! Teach
! Talk
! Tasks
! Test
! Additional Examples
! Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
I am a Title I Reading Resource teacher for students in grades
1
st
-5
th
. I mainly focus on 3
rd
grade and up, but this varies depending
on student needs. The majority of my time working with students
happens in my small office. I work with 1-4 students at a time.
Rarely do I work in the regular classroom per an inclusive setting;
although this is definitely a goal of mine. The intervention I use
mainly is Fountas & Pinnells Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI).
For dyslexic students, I use Barton.
This projects goal is to present my commitment to Balanced
Literacy. As a reading intervention teacher, I am always striving for
better methods of guiding my students into becoming lovers of
reading. I aim to assist them in becoming motivated readers with
excellent fluency, comprehension, and accuracy. I believe that
Balanced Literacy is a methodology that will help me in achieving
this goal.
I also aspire to share these modalities with fellow colleagues so
that they may integrate Balanced Literacy within their classroom
and increase the success and motivation of their students as readers
and writers.
THE BASIS OF MY COMMITMENT TO
BALANCED LITERACY
My commitment to Balanced Literacy is
based off of Richard Allingtons What Ive
learned about effective reading instruction from a
decade of studying exemplary elementary
classroom teachers. He discusses six features
(the 6 Ts) of effective elementary literacy
instruction. These are areas that Allington
suggests support effective teaching, a research-
based strategy for attaining the goal of no child
left behind.
The focus of time suggests that students should spend
more time reading and less time doing other stuff. This
stuff can include an over-use of pre-reading activities such as
front loading or the use of comprehension worksheets or
copying vocabulary definitions. I am bound through students
IEPs to provide an intervention with fidelity. While this is
great for many students, it doesnt help with the time factor.
An increase in reading time needs to happen within the
classroom.
MY COMMITMENT TO
! commit ":
! Work towards inclusive settings where I can incorporate
more reading time in the classroom.
! Encourage and support classroom teachers to provide more
reading time for their students and fewer less-effective
activities by:
! Increasing guided reading.
! Adding more independent reading.
! Amplifying reading in other curricular areas, including art,
science, math, and social studies.
! Reach towards extensive reading which allows students the
opportunity to consolidate the skills and strategies that
educators are teaching.
AN EXAMPLE FOR
! While working in an inclusive setting, provide
guided reading assignments and time for
independent reading. Students will be provided
the skills and knowledge needed to pick just
right books for themselves.
Allington suggests that students need a rich
supply of books they can actually read.
Successful reading will allow them to become
self-sufficient and skillful readers. Successful
reading is described as the ability to perform
with a high level of reading accuracy, fluency,
and comprehension (Allington, pg. 5).
MY COMMITMENT TO
I commit ":
! Recognize that I need to provide more high-success reading rather
than instructional difficulty reading, when working with developing
readers.
! (When using LLI) Start students where their independent reading
level is at (per accuracy and comprehension), rather than their
instructional reading level (which is where I have begun in the past).
Students will be more successful and more motivated if they are
successful from the beginning and can build off of that rather than
being challenged from the beginning.
! Encourage and support classroom teachers in providing multi-level
texts within their lessons. Specifically making sure that developing
readers are provided books that they can successfully read.
! Drive through the point that high-success reading occurs through easy
texts that students are able to read accurately, fluently, and with strong
comprehension.
! Provide texts that are appropriate for various reading abilities when
working in inclusive classroom settings.
AN EXAMPLE FOR
! Student placement in LLI groups will based on
their independent reading level so as to provide
them with a higher likelihood of successful
reading.
Modeling cognitive strategies through active
instruction allows students to gain needed skills
in becoming successful readers. By modeling and
demonstrating the use of cognitive strategies
(decoding, editing, self-regulating, and
summarizing), students are more likely to learn
and retain these skills. These skills then need to
be transferred through to the student so that
they may become independent readers.
MY COMMITMENT TO
! commit ":
! Provide direct and explicit demonstrations of
useful strategies.
! Model the thinking that goes into decoding, self-
monitoring, summarizing, and composing.
! Transfer these cognitive strategies by teaching,
demonstrating, and modeling and then gradually
releasing the responsibility upon the student so
that they may become independent readers.
! Provide support for colleagues in the I do, we do,
you do method of instruction.
AN EXAMPLE FOR
! Use the Fountas & Pinnell Prompting Guide 1 and 2
during LLI lessons. This allows me to:
! Teach Model
! Prompt Together
! Reinforce Release responsibility to student
Talk should be incorporated into the
classroom. Talk should be problem-posing,
problem-solving talk related to curricular
topics (pg. 10). This conversational-style talk
should be used to discuss ideas, concepts, and
hypotheses as well as strategies and responses.
Questions are more open rather than those
limited to a single correct response. The success
of this method relies heavily on the teachers
expertise rather than the reliance on a scripted,
instructional product.
MY COMMITMENT TO
! commit ":
! Engage in structured talk specifically related to
our lessons, rather than just posing questions,
having my students respond, and then validating
the answer.
! Allow my students to discuss ideas and strategies
with one another as well as responses to the
texts.
! Support other teachers in providing time for
students to talk about what they are reading.
AN EXAMPLE FOR
! Incorporate conversational style talk into lessons,
rather than just comprehension questions after
reading a text. We can discuss ideas, such as
Why do you think the author decided to end the
story that way? or If there was a sequel to this
story, what do you think
Longer assignments, versus many, shorter
tasks, provides students with more substantive,
more challenging and more self-regulation
work (pg. 12). Managed student choice is also
imperative in providing student ownership of
their work.
MY COMMITMENT TO
! commit ":
! Provide longer assignments that are more
substantive and challenging within an inclusive
classroom setting.
! Offer managed student choice.
! Encourage colleagues to exchange shorter tasks
for longer assignments.
AN EXAMPLE FOR
! In an inclusive setting, create a larger, more
substantial unit that is more challenging and
provides for student choice, such as this Balanced
Literacy 1
st
grade Ocean Unit
Evaluation of student work should be
focused more on effort and improvement and not
just achievement status. Where high-achieving
students often dont have to work hard to earn
good grades, low-achieving students usually
struggle to earn a good grade regardless of their
effort or improvement (pg. 13). It is important
to recognize students growth and to track their
effort.
Rubric-based evaluation: where students start
AND where they end up
! Rubrics: shift responsibility to student provides
information needed to improve their grade
MY COMMITMENT TO
! commit ":
! Evaluate my students efforts and growth.
! Recognize improvement based on where students
began as well as where they ended up.
! Create and use a rubric to evaluate students. I
do not assign grades so this would be for the
students to track their growth and effort (as well
as for student records).
! Co-implement a rubric-based evaluation with
colleagues to assign grades.
! Work with students on these rubrics so that they
become responsible for earning their grades,
seeing their growth and tracking their effort.
AN EXAMPLE FOR
! Create a Student Reading Toolkit for each student I
work with. Among pages such as Word Collector,
My Book Log and Is it a good fit book for you?
students will also have their own personal goals
(related to comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and
expanding vocabulary) as well as an I know my
reading level page. This goal recorder and reading
level page will allow students to track their progress
and check on their effort gradually releasing the
responsibility upon the student.
Spring Choice Board
2014 Regier Educational Resources, Images Graphics Factory.com
Spring Words
Print all the words you can
think of that have to do
with spring. Print each
word in a different color.
Signs of Spring
Make a list of different
signs of spring. Try to
come up with ten or more
ideas.
Spring Picture
Draw a picture of spring.
Use crayons or markers to
make it bright and colorful.
New Birdhouse
Sketch a design for the
ultimate birdhouse. What
would it look like? Spring Book
Choose a book about
spring. Find a comfortable
place in the classroom to
read your book.
Acrostic Poem
Print the letters in the word
spring down the left hand side
of the page like this:
S
P
R
I
N
G
Perfect Picnic
Make plans for the
perfect picnic. What
would you eat? Who would
you invite?
Spring Symbol
Choose a symbol to
represent spring. Draw a
picture of your symbol.
Write about why you
chose this
symbol.
Bee the Teacher
Make up 3 math problems
about the spring. Create an
answer key. Give the
problems to a friend.
Think of a word,
phrase or sentence
that begins with
each letter.
ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES OF BALANCED
LITERACY IN THE CLASSROOM
! Provide for student choice
through a Spring Choice
Board. This option
provides both reading and
writing activities.
EXAMPLES, CONT
! Create a Writers Workshop (in an inclusive
classroom) where we will focus on the following:
! Modeled Writing
! Interactive Writing
! Shared
! Independent
! Writing Conferences
! Small Group Instruction
! Word Study
! Assessments
CONCLUSION
It is my goal to begin incorporating balanced
literacy modalities into my teaching practices
this coming fall. I hope to meet with colleagues
to provide the various ideas I have listed in this
presentation. I aim to be a go-to person for
classroom teachers in regards to improving our
literacy program.
My hope is that students reading skills will
increase, their desire and motivation will grow
exponentially, and all six Ts will be successfully
implemented!
Ellie Kolodzieski