Humble IndependentSchool District
Reading Workshop/Writing Workshop
BALANCED LITERACY FRAMEWORK
The framework outlined below is a flexible organizational tool for classroom and reading teachers who want to engage children in a variety of literacy experiences and refine their teaching. In each component, teachers observe children’s responses carefully and draw their attention to powerful examples that illustrate critical processes. The framework for literacy lessons was developed by surveying the research since 1984. A balanced literacy framework is likely to have the following components as part of the daily approach to teaching reading and writing:
READ ALOUD
The teacher provides multiple, daily read alouds to the whole class or small groups. It is a time when we can focus on the most joyous side of reading, helping children to find passion and wonder in the world of print. Read alouds bind the entire class together, enfolding teacher and children in a shared history of beloved stories and authors. Read alouds can do more if we:
- choose books with great intentionality and match them to the standards we strive to teach.
- create a culture in which children get used to listening to stories multiple times so they can digest a story and then look deeply into the internal elements that create a great piece of literature.
- pause and think aloud about the richness of a setting, the precision of verb choice, or the humor in an allusion.
- invite children to take an active role during the read aloud experience, sharing their thinking with partners and taking time to talk about their understanding.
Values / Research
- Involves children in reading for enjoyment
- Demonstrates reading for a purpose
- Provides an adult demonstration of phrased, fluent reading
- Develops a sense of story
- Develops knowledge of written language syntax
- Develops knowledge of how texts are structured
- Increases vocabulary
- Expands linguistic repertoire
- Supports intertextual ties
- Creates community of readers through enjoyment and shared knowledge
- Makes complex ideas available to children
- Promotes oral language development
- Establishes known texts to use as a basis for writing and other activities through rereading
Clark (1976)
Cochran-Smith (1984)
Cohen (1968)
Durkin (1966)
Goodman, Y. (1984)
Green & Harker (1982)
Hiebert (1988)
Huck, Hickman, Hepler (1993)
Ninio (1980)
Pappas & Brown (1987)
Schickedanz (1978)
Wells (1985)
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SHARED READING/INTERACTIVE READ ALOUD
Shared reading and interactive read alouds are powerful tools for deepening thinking, expanding oral language, highlighting essential standards, and learning target standards. Making text available to our students by providing student copies of text, enlarged versions (big books), overheads, etc., allows the teacher to involve students in reading and thinking together.
Our children
- learn how print works and discover how the illustrations illuminate the words and enhance the overall meaning of a text.
- develop an understanding of literary elements and a shared language for talking about text.
- discover the meaning of genre and appreciate the many shapes and forms written language can assume.
- build their vocabularies and strengthen their comprehension strategies.
- enhance their fluency as they listen repeatedly to models of phrased, fluid reading.
- glean ideas and strategies for crafting their own writing.
- learn the power of interactive thinking.
Values / Research
- Explicitly demonstrates early strategies, such as word-by-word matching
- Builds sense of story and ability to predict
- Demonstrates the processes of reading extended text
- Like reading aloud, involves children in an enjoyable and purposeful way
- Provides social supports from the group
- Provides opportunity to participate and behave like a reader
- Creates body of known texts that children can use for independent reading and as resources for writing and word study
Martinez & Roser (1985)
Pappas & Brown (1987)
Rowe (1987)
Snow (1983)
Sulzby (1985)
Teale & Sulzby (1986)
Small Group Instruction (Guided Reading/Strategy Instruction)
The teacher works with small groups who have similar reading processes. The teacher selects and introduces new books and supports children reading the whole text to themselves, making teaching points during and after the reading. Characteristics of small group (guided reading) instruction:
- Groups are dynamic, flexible, and change on a regular basis.
- Texts are chosen at an appropriate level for each group; there is no prescribed sequence.
- Introductions focus on meaning with some attention to new and interesting vocabulary.
- Focus is on the student, not the lesson.
- Teacher and students actively interact with text.
- Questions develop higher order thinking skills and strategic reading—not limited to factual recall.
- Students read entire text silently.
- Focus is on meaning.
- Students read independently.
- Assessment is ongoing and embedded in instruction.
Values / Research
- Provides the opportunity to read many texts and a wide variety of texts
- Provides opportunity to problem-solve while reading for meaning (“reading work”)
- Provides opportunity to use strategies on extended text
- Challenges the reader and creates context for successful processing on novel texts
- Provides opportunity to attend to words in text
- Teacher selection of text, guidance, demonstration, and explanation is available to the reader
Fountas & Pinnell (1996)
Holdaway (1979)
Lyons, Pinnell, & DeFord (1993)
McKenzie (1986)
Meek (1988)
Routman (1991)
Wong, Groth, & OFlahavan (1994)
Vaughn, 2003
INDEPENDENT READING
Children read on their own or with partners from a wide range of materials. Independent reading provides an opportunity to apply strategies that are introduced and taught during read aloud, interactive/shared reading, and guided reading. The self-selection process of Independent Reading places the responsibility for choosing books in the hands of the student. While students are free to choose what they like, they must be encouraged to select a variety of literature and to select materials at their independent reading level. These materials should be read without teacher support. During independent reading time, reading appropriate leveled books improves students’ comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency.
Values / Research- Provides opportunity to apply reading strategies independently
- Provides time to sustain reading behavior
- Challenges the reader to work on his/her own and to use strategies on a variety of texts
- Challenges the reader to solve words independently while reading texts well within his/her control
- Promotes fluency through rereading
- Builds confidence through sustained, successful reading
- Provides the opportunity for children to support each other while reading
Holdaway (1979)
McKenzie (1986)
Meek (1988)
Taylor (1993)
Therrien, (2004)
Shared Writing/Interactive Writing
Teacher and children work together to compose messages and stories; teacher supports process as scribe and/or using a “shared pen” technique that involves children in the writing.
Values / Research- Demonstrates how writing works
- Provides opportunities to draw attention to letters, words, and sounds
- Enables children’s ideas to be recorded
- Creates written language resources for the classroom
- Demonstrates concepts of print, early strategies, and how words work
- Provides opportunities to hear sounds in words and connect with letter
- Helps children understand “building up” and “breaking down” processes in reading and writing
- Provides opportunities to plan and construct texts
- Increases spelling knowledge
- Provides texts that children can read independently
- Provides written language resources in the classroom
Holdaway (1979)
McKenzie (1986)
Sulzby (1985)
Button, Johnson, & Furgerson (1996)
McCarrier & Patacca (1994)
Pinnell & McCarrier (1994)
WRITING WORKSHOP OR GUIDED/INDEPENDENT WRITING
Children engage in writing a variety of texts. Teacher guides the process and provides instruction through minilessons and conferences. Children write their own pieces, including (in addition to stories and information pieces) retellings, labeling, speech balloons, lists, etc.
Values / Research- Helps writers develop their voice
- Provides opportunities for children to learn to be writers
- Provides chance to use writing for different purposes across the curriculum
- Increases writers’ abilities to use different forms
- Builds ability to write words and use punctuation
- Fosters creativity and the ability to compose
- Provides opportunity for the independent production of written text
Britton (1983)
Calkins (1983; 1986)
Giacobbe (1981)
Graves (1983)
Graves & Hansen (1983)
Bissex (1980)
Clay (1975)
Dyson (1982)
Ferreiro & Teberosky (1982)
Goodman, Y. (1984)
Harste, Woodward, & Burke (1984)
WORD STUDY (PHONICS, SPELLING)
Students are systematically taught about letter-sound relationships, spelling, and strategies for encoding and decoding words. We teach children how to transfer what they learn during this time into their own writing and reading work. We contextualize the work we do in word study with the work that readers and writers do in their own texts. Woven through the activities in the framework, teachers have opportunities to help children notice and use letters and words; knowledge is further fostered through the use of alphabet centers and word walls.
Values / Research- Helps children become familiar with letter forms
- Helps children learn to use visual aspects of print
- Provides opportunities to notice and use letters and words that are embedded in text
- Provides opportunities to manipulate letters and make words
- Provides a growing inventory of known letters and words
- Helps children link sounds with letters and letter clusters
- Helps children use what they know about words to solve new words.
Cunningham (1995)
Read (1970; 1975)
Schickendanz (1986)
Henderson (1972/81)
Ehri (1980/98)
Gentry (current)
Templeton and Bear (1991b, 1998, 2003)
Joseph, (2002)
Documenting Children’s Progress
- Teachers systematically gather observational data over time to document the progress of individual children. Some formal assessments are used; data are aggregated to assess overall effects of the program.
- Provides information to guide daily teaching
- Provides a way to track the progress of individual children
- Provides a basis for reporting to parents
- Helps a school staff to assess the effectiveness of the instructional program
- Provides children with evidence of their growth
Reference:
Fountas, Irene, and Gay Su Pinnell. 1996. Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children. Portsmouth
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