What does balance in a literacy look like in K-7 with the redesigned curriculum? What counts? How do we maintain an emphasis on inclusive, whole class teaching in both reading and writing, while also including small group and 1:1 structures?

1. Implementing a Balanced
Approach to Literacy
Burnaby
September 27, 2018
www.slideshare.net/
ayebrownlie.burnaby.balance

2. Curriculum Design
• Engaging
• Voice and choice
• Deepening thinking
• Involves learners in assessment conversaEons
and decisions
• Moving learners toward independence

3. Big Ideas – Gr 3
• Language and story can be a source of creaEvity
and joy.
• Stories and other texts help us learn about
ourselves, our families and our communiEes.
• Stories can be understood from different
perspecEves.
• Using language in creaEve and playful ways helps
us understand how language works.
• Curiosity and wonder lead us to new discoveries
about ourselves and the world around us.

4. Adapted from Sharon Jeroski
What has changed in your
literacy programming – or the
balance of your literacy
programming - in the past 2
years?
What hasn’t changed?
What would you like to change
or add?
What would you like to keep?

5. The Balance
• Whole class reading is thinking instrucEon
• Shared reading – modeling strategies and co-
creaEng meaning
• Small group/guided reading/readers’ workshop/
literature circles
• 1:1 conferences – oral reading, comprehension,
feedback
• Choice and independent pracEce
• Daily wriEng, oVen connected to reading

6. Do not be afraid to teach!!!

7. • Reading is understanding.
• Reading is always about making
sense.
• Reading has many forms and is
required across disciplines.

8. • Read the following slides.
• NoEce the strategies you use as you read.

12. Graphic Novels

13. This is My Rock
- David McCord
This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun;
This is my rock
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky
This is my rock,
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face.

14. Strategy Cards – Catching Readers
Before They Fall (Johnson & Keier)

15. Ministry of Educa=on’s Defini=on of
Literacy
Literacy is the ability and willingness to make
meaning from text and express oneself in a
variety of modes and for a variety of purposes.
Literacy includes making connec=ons, analyzing
cri=cally, comprehending, crea=ng, and
communica=ng.
B.C. Ministry of EducaEon, 2017
15

16. The teeter totter
kids
kids curriculum

17. Who are your learners?
• Class Review
• EPRA/DART – a performance based reading
assessment
• Strengths
• Stretches
• Search for pa]erns to guide your teaching
• Respond to the informaEon you collect
• No plan, no point

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19. A Way in…..GET COMFY with the Performance Standards

22. Grade 4 Grade 5
+’s Can use a web
Can organize informaEon
Make simple connecEons
Foci Text Features – can’t use them
to extract informaEon
Strategies – need them
+’s Check for understanding but may
not use strategies
Can use note-making frame
Foci Note-making in own words
Strategies needed
Maid Ideas/Details
Text Features
Grade 6 Grade 7
+’s One or two strategies
Get gist – don’t misread
Some main ideas
Simple inferences
Make simple connecEons
Foci Need more strategies
Lack details and thoroughness in
note-making
Support inferences
Need to connect more widely
+’s One or two strategies
Get gist – check for
understanding
Main ideas
More thoughcul inferences
ConnecEons have impact on
understanding
Foci Evidence and detail in note-
making
Personal opinion, with
evidence

23. Fountas and Pinnell – interviewed in the
School Library Journal, Oct 15, 2017
• It is our belief that levels have no place in
classroom libraries, in school libraries, in
public libraries, or on report cards….
• We designed the F&P Level Gradient to help
teachers think more analyEcally about the
characterisEcs of texts and their demands on
the reading process.

24. • The goal was for each teacher to learn about
the characterisEcs of each level to inform their
decisions in teaching …
• We created the levels for books, and not as
labels for children…

25. Background knowledge has a greater impact on
being able to read a text than anything else.
-Doug Fisher, Richard Allington

26. Writers’ Workshop – Student
Diversity 3rd ed
• The foundaEon of your literacy programming
• Establish this first!!!!
• K/1 – begin with interacEve wriEng, wriEng/
drawing/creaEng text in front of your learners,
represenEng thinking with drawing, adding
le]ers and sounds
• 2-7 – write in front of your students, at least 2
whole class wriEng in response to experiences,
read alouds, classroom inquiries each week

27. • When students write, they generate
deeper thinking in any content area.
• Kelly Gallagher “The WriEng Journey” EL, Feb
17

28. • Improvement in wriEng is grounded in pracEce,
in gekng words on the page – lots of them.
There are no shortcuts.
• …a “four big essays approach” sEfles young
writers. Worse, it ensures they will never become
excellent writers.”
• Gallagher & Ki]le, EL, April 18

29. • Focus on ideas
• Do not focus on transcripEon – punctuaEon,
capitalizaEon, spacing, spelling, handwriEng,
high-frequency words
• “…composiEonal skills develop, and are
mastered, long before transcripEon
skills” (Flower & Hayes, 1981; Ray & Glover,2008;
Roberts & Wibens, 2010)
• Auguste, “The Balancing Act of Kindergarten WriEng InstrucEon”,
EL, April 2018

30. • “…if you want to revoluEonize your reading
instrucEon, invite wriEng back into the fold.
Give your students Eme to write during class,
and given them feedback that responds to
their craV and their composiEon. Great
wriEng is a communicaEon of great thinking,
so strengthen reading and wriEng in tandem,
not in isolaEon.”
• Bambrick-Santoyo & Chiger, “”UnEl I Write It Down”,
EL, Feb 17

31. Collaborative Story Grammar
Sketches into Writing – Grade 1
Quinn Hildebrand, Altona
• Reading/wriEng connecEons:
– Talking about and drawing character/sekng/
problem/soluEon with read aloud books for 1
week

32. You Get What You Want – Julie
Gassman

33. • Day 1 Model and Guide the PracEce
– 3 random names were drawn to pick characters/
sekng/problem
– Quinn drew on chart paper as the children gave
ideas
– In pairs, children talked about how they would tell
the story and end the story, then drew their
soluEons on white boards

35. • Day 2 Model
• Write the beginning of the story, with one of
the children, negoEaEng how to build a
partner story
• Partners begin a first draV.

36. • Day 3
– ConEnue wriEng with partners.
– Have mini conferences on the big ideas:
characters, sekng, problem, soluEon

37. • Day 4
– Partners came to teacher or EA and had their story
typed, with ‘on the fly’ coaching on punctuaEon,
structure, Etle
– Illustrated B-M-E
– **3rd published piece of the year

44. Lit Circle Response Writing
University Highlands, Burnaby
• ChrisEne Yee, Gr. 4/5
• KrisEna Carley, Gr. 4/5
• Michelle Van-Balkom, ELL
• Combine 2 classes twice a week with Michelle
and introduce a lesson
• SomeEmes 5 adults: also LST and 2 EAs (auEsm,
hard of hearing)
• Meet with each book twice a week
• CollaboraEve planning!!!!

45. • Buffalo Hunt
• Terror in the Harbour
• A Mighty Big Imagining
• Camp X
• Ghost Train
• AVer Peaches
• When the Cherry Blossoms Fell
• The Gnome's Eye
• Flood Warning
• Drita My Homegirl
• Moses, Me & Murder
• Jo's Journey
• Novels are themed on Canadian history and
immigration

46. • Previously read ‘Roses Sing on New Snow’
– Focus on making inferences
• Chose a sentence to ‘explode’ from the text.
• Each of we 4 teachers, wrote a response to the
line to show our understanding and
interpretaEon, in front of the students.
• Students noEced what worked in our wriEng.
• Each lit circle group chose a sentence (with help).
• Each lit circle group ‘exploded’ their sentence,
then wrote in response.
• We circulated, monitored the groups, extended
the thinking.

62. Do classroom assignments reflect
today’s higher standards?
• QuesEon examined by the EducaEon Trust,
2015, in US middle schools
• As quoted by Kelly Gallagher, “The WriEng
Journey” in EL, Feb 17

63. • 38% aligned with a grade-appropriate
standard
• 85% largely surface-level: recall or basic
concepts and skills
• 1% required students to think for extended
periods of Eme
• Almost all could be completed in one period

64. Collective Teacher Efficacy –
John Hattie, Collaborative Impact Conference, 2017
• …the collecEve belief of teachers in their
ability to posiEvely affect students
• Effect size of d=1.57
• New #1 influence related to student
achievement
• It is more than just belief; it is a collaboraEve
conversaEon based on evidence.