This document discusses strategies for getting to know literacy learners and selecting appropriate texts. It emphasizes the importance of learning about students' backgrounds, interests, and literacy experiences. Teachers should use reading inventories and activities like "Me Stews" to understand their students as individuals. When selecting texts, factors like readability, length, structure, print size, and visual support should be considered to match texts to students' abilities. The document also outlines perspectives like interactive, critical, and responsive that teachers can adopt to strengthen students' reading, writing, analysis, and connection-making skills through strategies such as decoding practice, author studies, and response journals.

1. B E T H A N I H A E R I N G
W A L D E N U N I V E R S I T Y
T H E B E G I N N I N G R E A D E R - E D U C 6 7 0 6 - R 3
Literate Environment Analysis

2. Analysis Research
 Everyone has a ―Literacy
Autobiography‖
 ―All people have experiences that shape
how they view themselves as literate
people‖ (Laureate Education Inc., 2010a)
 To get students invested in
learning, you have to get to know
their interests.
 Teachers need to find out about
students‘:
 Background
 Culture
 Interests
 Who they are as a person (Laureate
Education Inc., 2010b)
 Reading inventories can
determine students‘
cognitive and non-
cognitive
achievements/feelings in
reading.
 There are two types of
inventories:
 One used by the teacher in the
classroom
 Less formal
 Published inventories
 More formal
Getting to Know Literacy Learners

3. Getting to Know Literacy Learners
 How to…
 Talk to your students about their literacy autobiographies
 How they feel about reading, what experiences they have
had, what they like to read about?
 ―Me Stew‖
 Have students bring ―ingredients‖ that represent them as people
and make a recipe for themselves.
 Have Classroom Experts
 Identify students in the class that have a lot of knowledge about
certain topics and let those students teach the class.

4. Analysis Research
 Selecting text for students goes
further than just picking out an
informational or narrative book.
 The choosing the correct text for
students and for the purpose of
reading is vital for successful
reading experiences.
 Teachers need to expose students
more informational text.
 Students need to know how to navigate
through informational text.
 Informational text is increasingly used
year after year in education.
 Students need to know informational
text for real life learning, therefore
early exposure is crucial.
 The ―Literacy Matrix‖ (Laureate
Education Inc., 2010c) separates
texts by narrative and
informational text, then by
linguistic and semiotic, and
finally by text difficulty
 Text difficulty is categorized by:
 Readability
 Length of text
 Text structure
 Size of print
 Visual support
(Laureate Education Inc., 2010c)
Selecting Text

5. Analysis Research
 Students learn by doing
 The interactive
perspective in relation to
reading and writing is
the actual act of reading
and writing.
 Students need to practice
strategies constantly to
strengthen their reading
and writing abilities.
 Teachers must teach
strategies such as
decoding and fluency
 Students must be
metacognitive
 ―thinking about how one
attacks the text‖ (Laureate
Education Inc., 2010d).
Interactive Perspective

6. Interactive Perspective
 Strategies…
 Phonics
 Reading with fluency
 Decoding
 Deciding which decoding strategy works best for a word
 ―chunking‖
 ―sounding out letters‖
 Comprehension of text

7. Analysis Research
 Teachers need to use student interest
to gain student involvement in
becoming strategic evalutaters
 Students need to be able to think
about the author and purpose for
writing to fully extend their thinking
of a text.
 Students need to use their
background knowledge to identify if
the information they are reading is
valid or not.
 Teacher modeling is essential for
students to gain the confidence and
knowledge needed to judge and
analyze works.
 When analytical skills
are employed, there is
a thorough
investigation so that all
components are taken
into account‖
(Molden, 2007, pp.
50).
Critical Perspective

8. Critical Perspectives
 Discuss author‘s purpose
 Study the same topics
 Complete author studies to identify writing style
 Think about multiple perspectives
 Have the students put themselves in characters‘ point of views
to see if they are necessary for the text and what there purpose
in the text is.

9. Analysis Research
 Students need a chance to
make connections to text.
 They need a chance to
think about their feelings
and experiences as they
relate to text they are
reading.
 Teachers should provide
opportunities for students
to respond to text in an
assortment of ways.
 ―Many researchers identify
‗making connections‘ as a
strategy necessary for
meaning constructivism‖
(Clyde, 2003, pp.158).
 ―For students to become
engaged lifelong readers
they must be affected on
personal and emotional
levels‖ (Laureate Education
Inc., 2010d).
Responsive Perspective

10. Responsive Perspective
 Strategies…
 Character Comparison Chart
 Have different students think about two assigned characters and
how their interactions affect the story
 Response Journals
 Can use prompts for writing
or
 Allows students to freely write about the story
 Double Entry Journal
 Explore different books that students are reading
 Helps strengthen comprehension

11. References
 Clyde, J. A. (2003). Stepping inside the story world: The subtext strategy—a tool for connecting
and comprehending. The Reading Teacher, 57(2), 150–160.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010a). Literacy autobiographies [Video webcast]. Retrieved from :
https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fbla
ckboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2823070_1%26url%3D
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010b). Getting to know your students [Video webcast]. Retrieved from :
https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fbla
ckboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2823070_1%26url%3D
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010c). Analyzing and selecting text[Video webcast]. Retrieved from :
https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fbla
ckboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2823070_1%26url%3D
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010d). Response perspective [Video webcast]. Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2F
webapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2823
070_1%26url%3D
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010e). Reading and writing connection[Video webcast]. Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2F
webapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_2823
070_1%26url%3D
 Molden, K. (2007). Critical literacy, the right answer for the reading classroom: Strategies to move beyond
comprehension for reading improvement. Reading Improvement, 44(1), 50–56