Tara Poole presents on components of a holistic early literacy program. She acknowledges the traditional territories of local First Nations and emphasizes building relationships through trauma-informed practice. Literacy is defined as understanding, analyzing, and communicating through diverse texts for various purposes. A comprehensive literacy program includes building background knowledge, language development, phonological awareness, phonics, reading time, fluency, comprehension, and assessment. Phonological awareness involves hearing sounds in words while phonemic awareness involves hearing individual sounds. Explicit instruction is needed in concepts of print, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, word work, vocabulary, comprehension strategies, fluency, and ensuring access to decodable books. Assessment, goal setting, and

1. Early Literacy Development
Components of a holistic literacy program in
Early elementary classrooms
Tara Poole (She/her)
B.Ed., M.A. in Educational Psychology
PhD in Educational Psychology
(in progress)
tapoole@sd61.bc.ca

2. Territory Acknowledgement
I would like to acknowledge with respect that I am meeting with you on the traditional
territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples, and that I am grateful and privileged to live and to
learn on the lands of Songhees, Esquimalt, and W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations.

3. The Basics: Building Relationships
● Learning requires trust
● Trauma-informed practice
● Meeting students where they are at
● How do you feel and what do you think about your students? What impact does
that have on their learning and how can you improve that?
● Does each student know what they are learning and why?
● Routines
● Safety and well-being

4. Definition of Literacy
● In British Columbia, Literacy is considered contextual and cross-
curricular in nature.
● The BC curriculum defines literacy as the ability to critically analyze and
make meaning from diverse texts and to communicate and express oneself
in a variety of modes and for a variety of purposes in relevant contexts.
● Specifically, literacy is the ability to understand, critically analyze and
create a variety of forms of communication, including oral, written, visual,
digital, and multimedia in order to accomplish one’s goals.

5. Components of Comprehensive Literacy Programs:
⋄ Building and connecting to background knowledge and experiences
⋄ Language development/vocabulary
⋄ Phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, word work
⋄ Purposeful time on text (reading in context)
⋄ Fluency
⋄ Comprehension

6. Comprehensive Literacy Elements
● Students need opportunities to engage meaningfully in all of these components
of literacy. Break into groups of 4 or 5 and record the most exciting projects or
activities you’ve done in your class this year within these elements:

7. (Duke & Cartwright, 2021)

8. Teaching Concepts of Print
● Must be explicitly taught
● Orthography — the conventional spellings of a language
● Left to right progression
● Sound symbol association
● Children MUST be taught to look at print
● Meaning and structure (self-monitor, self-correct and ensure
understanding)

9. Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness
⋄ Phonological Awareness - oral
⋄ Phonics - Applying concepts to print

10. Comparison Using “Clock”
Phonological Awareness Phonemic Awareness Phonics
Hearing that:
● Clock is one word
● Clock rhymes with rock
● Clock starts with the C sound,
etc
Hearing the individual sounds
(phonemes) in clock
● c/l/o/ck
● Blending/segmenting sounds
● Seeing the written word
● Identifying each
letter/phoneme
● Blending sounds together to
say clock
In total, 20-25 minutes a day on explicit instruction of these skills. This includes 10-12 minutes
on phonemic awareness and 10-15 minutes of word work/phonics.
What are your favourite phonological/phonemic activities?

11. Word Work and Vocabulary
⋄ Functional Vocabulary
⋄ Related to cross-curricular learning
⋄ Teaching Word Families
⋄ Beginning/middle/ending sounds
⋄ High Frequency Words
⋄ words you just need to know. However, parts of these words can be
identified through a sound/symbol correspondence
What are your favourite word work activities?
Strategies for differentiation?

12. Reading Comprehension
⋄ The Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986).
⋄ Reading comprehension is the product of decoding and language
comprehension
⋄ Decoding
⋄ convert graphemes into phonemes
⋄ phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, and word recognition
⋄ Language Comprehension
⋄ process and comprehend orally presented information
⋄ draws on vocabulary, listening comprehension, grammar, verbal
working memory, and inference making skills

13. Evidence-Based Reading Comprehension Strategies
⋄ Accessing prior knowledge
⋄ Summarizing
⋄ Visualization
⋄ Thinking aloud
⋄ Question Generation
⋄ Generating who, what, where, why, when questions
(Allington, 2005)

14. Reading Fluency
Fluency is reading orally with appropriate
a) expression
b) volume
c) speed
d) phrasing,
e) smoothness.
To support phrased, fluent reading:
a) modelling
b) audiobooks/read alouds
c) rereading familiar texts
d) choral reading
e) improving sight word recognition
f) self-monitoring and reflection
g) readers theatre
(Hiskes, 2007)

15. Cueing Systems

16. Prompts to Support Decoding
When a child is stuck, prompt them to “look”.
Say “Look for something that will help you.”
“Stretch out those letter sounds.”
“Chunk those sounds together.”
“Look for small words.”
“Do you know a word that looks like that?”
“Look at the first letter and work your way through the word.”
Provide prompts to search for all sources of information: MSV

17. Reflection Contributes to Learning
● After success in word solving, ask the student:
“How did you figure out that word?”
● We want students to become independent and proficient with these
skills and develop an awareness of how they attempt unknown
words
● Give specific feedback and praise: “I saw how you sounded that word
out all by yourself”

18. Volume of Reading
● Success comes when at-risk students have ENOUGH time to read and when
they read books at their JUST-RIGHT instructional level.
Here are some common challenges, in groups, brainstorm solutions:
● Group A: Work avoidance
● Group B: Not enough teacher/EA time
● Group C: Dysregulation of students
● Group D: Non-compliance
One of the largest ever international study of reading found that the single most
important predictor of academic success is the amount of time children spend reading
books; even more important than economic or social status (Atwell, 2007).

19. Purposeful Goal Setting and Reflection
● Bring students into the learning
● Share what they do well
● Provide immediate feedback
● Allow opportunities to set personalized goals
● Regular assessment and feedback

20. What Does a Comprehensive Reading Program Look Like?
● Consider increasing reading blocks up to 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week
● Maximize the reading time in your classroom
● Inclusive classroom setting (push-in)
● Small groups within the classroom
● Students independent at desks
● A separate setting (pull-out)
● Peer tutoring
● Multi-grade learning
● Performance-based learning cohorts
● Utilize helpers: Classroom teacher, Inclusive learning teacher, Teacher librarian, English
language learner teacher, Educational assistant, Principle, Parent volunteers, Student buddies
Remember:
Be Responsive
DO WHAT WORKS

21. Access to Quality Decodable Books
● A pattern?
● Sight words?
● Picture clues?
● Culturally responsive (vocabulary/images/characters)?
● Will learners see themselves?
● Gender bias?
● Does the story line make sense?
● Is the story engaging?
● Decodable books should include:
○ Target decodable words
○ Target decodable parts of sight words
○ Pictures to support non-decodable words

22. Building on Student Strengths
Group Brainstorming Activity
○ Group A: You are working with a student who is a very reluctant reader. What do
you do?
○ Group B: A student is making minimal reading progress. What do you do?
○ Group C: A student is not receiving home reading opportunities and is falling
behind their peers. What do you do?
○ Group D: You suspect a potential learning disability in a student. How do you keep
reading positive when it’s perceived as very challenging?

23. Assessment
● Every time a child reads orally, we are assessing and thinking about our next
teaching moves
● Do daily check-ins with vulnerable readers to ensure reading is happening and
progressing
What are your go-to assessment strategies?

24. Literacy Activities
● Shared reading, shared writing, interactive writing, read aloud, literature circles,
word work, reading responses, reading/writing connection, Reader’s Theatre, sound
wall, word wall, phonemic skills, Elkonin boxes, partner talk, side-by-side reading,
choice reading, buddy reading, instructional reading, variety of texts, goal setting
and reflection, play-based activities, singing songs, chants, rhyming, syllables, demo
in role, spelling etc.
What is one activity or idea that you can
incorporate into your literacy program
going forward?

25. References
Allington, R. L. (2005). A Special Section on Reading Research--Ideology Is Still Trumping
Evidence. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(6), 462–462.
Atwell, N. (2007). The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate,
Habitual, Critical Readers. New York: Scholastic
Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The Science of Reading Progresses: Communicating
Advances Beyond the Simple View of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25–S44.
https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411
Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and
Special Education, 7(1), 6-10. doi:10.1177/074193258600700104
Hiskes, D. G. (2007). Reading pathways : simple exercises to improve reading fluency (5th
ed.). Jossey-Bass.

26. Thank You