This document discusses creating a balanced literacy environment in the classroom. It emphasizes assessing students' literacy skills to guide instruction, using assessments like the Yopp-Sing test for kindergarteners. A balanced approach includes explicit instruction, application, integrated reading/writing, trade books, differentiated instruction, and technology. Selecting texts requires considering various factors like word frequency, length, structure and connection to students' knowledge. Developing literacy lessons should address interactive, critical and response perspectives using the Framework for Literacy Instruction and examples like teaching the story of The Three Little Pigs over multiple lessons.

3. A BALANCED APPROACH
• Creating a literate learning environment takes a thoughtful, balanced
approach.
• 21st century classrooms/communities
• Students share in the responsibly for their learning
• Roles of the teacher
• A balanced literacy environment would include
• “explicit instruction with authentic application
• integrated reading and writing
• teaching with trade books as well as textbooks
• combining instructional approaches,
• incorporating new technologies into literacy instruction
• differentiating instruction so every student can succeed
• linking assessment and instruction.” (Tompkins 2010 p. 1)

4. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS P-3
• Assessing literacy skills can be a valuable way to collect data on a student’s
progress.
• Evaluating data from each assessment and using it to craft future instruction
is an important part of creating a balanced and meaningful literacy program
(Afflerbach 2012).
• Yopp-Sing Assessment
• designed for Kindergarteners but can also be used in 1 st grade
• evaluates a student’s understanding of 22 common words
• shows valuable data about each student’s current literacy level
• provides insight into what instruction should be provided to help each student
improve

5. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS P-3
• Seoul Foreign School
• international school in South Korea
• English-speaking day school that serves the needs of students from 56
different countries
• students that speak more than one language

6. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS P-3
Jim
• Good reader
• Native speaker
• One wrong question
• Areas for growth

7. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS P-3
Sayaka
• English is her second language
• Hard working
• Common problems with students learning English who have a native
language that is unrelated to English like Japanese
• had trouble with “sh”, “/th/ /r/”, and “v.”
• areas for growth

8. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS P-3
Tomas
• Speaks Italian and Korean as native languages
• can easily recall sounds and has a bank of sounds in his head that are the
same in both English and Italian
• has trouble with the sound “th”
• areas for growth

9. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS P-3
• Analysis and Reflection
• Implementing the Yopp-sing assessment
• Making informed conclusions from the assessment data
• Using the data to make instructional decision in the future
• Overall a value experience and valuable tool
• K-12 Assessment
• CURRV model

10. SELECTING TEXTS
• Selecting texts is another important part of developing a balanced
literacy environment.
• Texts and digital media both have a place in a literacy curriculum
(Laureate 2010).
• Using the four quadrants
• Narrative
• Informative
• Linguistic
• Semiotic

11. SELECTING TEXTS
• Some questions to consider include:
• How often do singleton words occur?
• How long is the text?
• What is the structure of the text?
• Does the text have connection to prior knowledge?
• What is the purpose of the text?
• What is the size of print?
• What kinds of visual aids are provided in the text
(Laureate 2010b)

12. SELECTING TEXTS
• Use based assessment data
• Good online resources
• www.childrenslibrary.org
• www.mainlesson.com

13. SELECTING TEXTS
• Select a variety of texts
• Examples
• “Beautiful Warrior: The Legend of the Nun’s Kung Fu” by Emily
Arnold McCully.
• “Bee-bim Bop!” by Linda Sue Park
• “C is for China (World Alphabets)” by Sungwan So
• “The Three Little Pigs” from the English Fairy Tales
by Joseph Jacobs.

14. SELECTING TEXTS
• Conclusions
• The select texts offer a variety of difficulty levels but are all appropriate for
kindergarten students.
• The select texts have variety of difficulty levels
• The select texts represent all areas of the literacy matrix
including narrative-informational and linguistic-semiotic
(Laureate 2010).

15. DEVELOPING LITERACY LESSONS
• The Framework for Literacy Instruction can be a valuable tool for
assisting the selections of quality texts (Laureate 2010c).
• Three perspectives
• interactive
• critical
• response

16. DEVELOPING LITERACY LESSONS
• Using “The Three Little Pigs” to build balance literacy lessons
• Addressing the interactive perspective
• Addressing the response perspective
• Addressing the critical perspective

17. DEVELOPING LITERACY LESSONS
• “The Three Little Pigs” Lesson 1
• Procedures
• whole class sits on the floor
• series of leading questions to engage their metacognition and prior
knowledge
• What do you think this book is about?
• Have any of you heard the story of the Three Little Pigs?
• Have any of you seen a pig in real life?
• Read the book out loud to the students
• Ask the students to recall the story

18. DEVELOPING LITERACY LESSONS
• “The Three Little Pigs” Lesson 1
• Procedures
• Break the class up into four groups
• hand each group scripts of the story
• Students are given time to practice reading the story as they act out their part
• The next day students perform the story for the whole class in a reader’s
theater style performance
• The teacher assesses their performance

19. DEVELOPING LITERACY LESSONS
• “The Three Little Pigs” Lesson 2
• Procedures
• Guided discussion about the story
• Students are asked to answer questions out loud
• Which characters were important to the story?
• Why were these characters important?
• What lessons can you learn from the characters?
 Students are then asked to write down which character they thought was the
most important and why

20. CONCLUSION
• Creating a literate environment is done best through a balanced
approach
• Getting to know learners, selecting texts, and building quality units of
instruction are part of building a literate environment

21. REFERENCES
Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston:
Allyn & Bacon.
Afflerbach, P. (2012). Understanding and Using Reading Assessment, K-12 (2nd e.) Newark, DE: International Reading
Association.
Common Core Standards (2012) from http://www.corestandards.org/
Marshall, J. (1989). The Three Pigs. New York, NY: Dial.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010a). Critical perspective. [Video webcast]. In The Beginning Reader, Pre K-3.
Laureate Education, Inc. [Executive Producer]. (2010b). Analyzing and Selecting Texts [Video webcast]. In The Beginning
Reader, Pre K-3.
Laureate Education, Inc. [Executive Producer]. Perspectives on Literacy Learners (2010c). [Video webcast]. In The
Beginning Reader, Pre K-3.