Balanced Literacy

Balanced Literacy Maybel M. Hern á ndez B á ez 845-03-3523 COMU 2019

Who proposed it?
Marilyn Jager Adams proposed a balanced approach to literacy in 1990.
This proposal was based upon the work of Patricia Cunningham, Richard Allington, Dale Willows, and Marilyn Jager Adams herself, along with other reading experts.

Year of popularity
The Balance Literacy approach is based on:
Noam Chomsky’s conception of linguistic development.
Chomsky believed that humans have a natural language capacity, that we are built to communicate through words
This approach became popular in the 1990s and remains so through out the 2000s.

What is Literature and Why do We Study It?
Literature
A composition that tells a story, dramatizes a situation, expresses emotions, analyzes and advocates ideas
Helps us grow personally and intellectually
Provides an objective base for knowledge and understanding
Shapes our goals and values by clarifying our own identities, both positively and negatively
Literature makes us human

Genres
There are four genres of literature:
Prose Fiction
Myths, parables, romances, novels,
short stories
Poetry
Open formed and closed form
Relies on imagery, figurative
language, sound
Drama
Made up of dialogue and set direction
Designed to be performed
Nonfiction prose
News reports, feature articles, essays, editorials, textbooks, historical and biographical works

The importance of literature in the classroom
Literature will allow you as a teacher to bring reality to the classroom. The proper and balanced use of literature in the classroom will develop an important interaction that will enhance the students to further their personal growth outside the classroom. These newly acquired skills are the basis for social interaction as well as self developmental activities.

The importance of literature in the classroom
Students acquiring English need a strong and supportive context for learning, one in which they can experiment with language without fear of failure, one in which the acquisition of literacy in a second language is seen as an exciting and meaningful endeavor (Rueda, 1991).
Teachers can encourage students to enhance their oral and written communication with activities such as dramatization and art. In conversations, they can focus on the message students are conveying rather than elements of form, grammar, and pronunciation (Allen, 1991).
Literature and literature-based instruction provide a rich source of language, vocabulary, and syntax in a way that oral language alone cannot. A thematic organization of literature offers ways to extend linguistic support and to offer a variety of reasons to read, write, and talk (Allen, 1991).

What is Balanced Literacy?
Is a well rounded fluid approach to
teaching communication arts.
It is not a fixed approach or a
specific program curriculum.
It enables teachers to fully meet
all of the language arts needs of
their students.
“ Balanced” instruction combines the best elements from phonics instruction and the whole language approach.

What is Balanced Literacy?
An approach for teaching literacy that is widely used in classrooms.
Balanced literacy incorporates all reading approaches realizing students need to use multiple strategies to be come proficient readers.
It combines themed, guided instruction with independent work in reading, writing, and oral language.
Develops a balanced approach where students are learning to understand text as well as how to read text.

Principles of Balanced Literacy
The teacher arranges instruction and reading opportunities so that the children can acquire or create as many kinds of reading knowledge as possible.
Instructional methods sometimes considered opposites or contrasts are used so that the positive features of each, especially those features not present in the other way of teaching, can permit the fullest array of possible learning to occur.
A wide range of reading materials should be used in the classroom in order to meet a variety of knowledge goals.

Used for real communication.
You don’t focus on
errors.
Learning involves risk.
Topics should be of
students’ interest.
Teachers and students are
all learners, risk takers and decision makers.
Principles of Balanced Literacy

Teacher’s Role
The teacher's role is:
to guide and model literacy behavior for children to emulate.
to meet the needs of all the children in the classroom which include physical, emotional and intellectual growth.
to create an environment filled with meaningful, inviting and authentic activities, employing developmentally appropriate teaching techniques.
to engage students in experiences that make literacy events meaningful and help the students make connections and build on their prior knowledge.
to maintain an environment that places an emphasis on meaningful dialogue, negotiated meaning, and understanding facilitates authentic literacy experiences.
to create a classroom environment that supports emerging readers and writers through modeling, scaffolding, monitoring, and facilitating classroom talk .
to encourage students to develop their own unique interest and abilities.
to create an accepting and inviting atmosphere for learning.

Learners’ Role
Develop appreciation skills
Develop reading comprehension skills
Use interpretation skills for everyday situations (not only in the classroom)
Be able to understand and use figurative language present in literature
Communicate effectively while writing or speaking using a diverse lexicon
Connect the read information with previous knowledge
Be able to enjoy literature and develop personal interest furthermore than reading for class purposes

Student or Teacher Centered?
At certain times during a lesson, the teachers may possess more control and occupy a more essential role specifically when a new concept is being taught. Once the students have grasped the concept, the teacher is able to redistribute control which maybe shared equally by both the teacher and the students or the students may have more control than the teacher depending on the nature of the lesson.
Also in redistributing the control, the teacher's role is redefined. Instead of being the primary source of instruction, the teacher now plays the role of facilitator. The teacher's new role gives students more control by allowing them to take an active role in their learning.
The primary goal as facilitator is to play a minimal role to give students opportunities to exert a sense of ownership.

Balanced literacy in the classroom
Proper reading instruction that focuses on a balanced literacy approach needs to be implemented in the elementary classrooms.
The four main components of a
Balanced Literacy Program are:
self-selected reading, guided
reading, phonics and writing.

How to use balanced literacy in the classroom
Self-selected reading:
Is a multi-level approach to reading. The students have the opportunity to choose what they want to read and to decide what they would like to share or respond to. The children should be introduced to a variety of literature through the teacher read-aloud. It is essential for a teacher to conference one-on-one with a few students each day. The teacher must make sure that the students are choosing to read books at their appropriate levels, challenge the children, and discover the connections that the children are making as they read the books.
Having a “Reader's Chair” that is used on a daily basis will encourage students to decipher what material is important that they would like to share with the rest of the class.

How to use balanced literacy in the classroom (cont.)
The main goals of Guided Reading are:
to teach students comprehension strategies
to teach skills to develop background knowledge, including vocabulary and oral language, while providing as much instructional-level reading as possible.
depending on the reading selection, students will read either as a whole class, with partners, or independently.

Comparison of Traditional and Guided Reading Groups
Traditional Reading Groups
Groups remain stable in composition.
Students progress through a specific sequence of stories and skills.
Introductions focus on new vocabulary.
Skills practice follows reading.
Focus is on the lesson, not the student.
Teacher follows prepared "script" from the teacher's guide.
Questions are generally limited to factual recall.
Teacher is interpreter and checker of meaning.
Students take turn reading orally.
Focus is on decoding words.
Students respond to story in workbooks or on prepared worksheets.
Readers are dependent on teacher direction and support.
Students are tested on skills and literal recall at the end of each story/unit.
Guided Reading Groups
Groups are dynamic, flexible, and change on a regular basis.
Stories are chosen at appropriate level for each group; there is no prescribed sequence.
Introductions focus on meaning with some attention to new and interesting vocabulary.
Skills practice is embedded in shared reading.
Focus is on the student, not the lesson.
Teacher and students actively interact with text.
Questions develop higher order thinking skills and strategic reading. Teacher and students interact with text to construct meaning.
Students read entire text silently or with a partner.
Focus is on understanding meaning.
Students respond to story through personal and authentic activities. Students read independently and confidently.
Assessment is ongoing and embedded in instruction

One way to make Guided Reading more multilevel is to divide the class into Book Club groups.
The teacher can select four books that are related in some way and use differentiating instruction, by including books that vary in levels of difficulty to address each student's individual needs.

In order for students to become fluent readers, they need to have a strong phonetic foundation and knowledge of letter sounds.
This is why phonics is a vital component of a Balanced Literacy Program. The lessons should provide a review for beginning letter sounds for those who can benefit from it.
The first ten minutes of this phase of instruction can be devoted to students reviewing old frequency words, followed by the introduction of high frequency words with the use of a Word Wall.
The next step is for the teacher to spend time on an activity which helps the students learn patterns that will enable them to decode and spell many words.
This is an essential component of the Balanced Literacy Program because it will assist students in immediately using phonics and spelling patterns while reading and writing.

The fourth part of the Balanced Literacy Program is Writing .
Students will participate in both self-selected writing (for ex.: journal writing), in which the students can focus on choosing their own topic to freely write about, and focused writing, in which students use the writing process to create certain forms of writing on particular topics.
The teacher should conference with students throughout the writing process.
A great way to motivate students in writing is to have a system in place, such as an "Author's Chair," that would enable students to share their works in progress and/or published pieces with the class.

Conclusions
As an educator, one needs to motivate students, develop their literacy skills and create life-long learners.
By integrating a Balanced Literacy Program into the classroom, an educator is a step closer to reaching these goals and in shaping young lives positively!

Any Questions?

Thank you very much for your attention!

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Balanced Literacy

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