This document summarizes key aspects of literacy instruction and assessment. It discusses the importance of understanding students' backgrounds and selecting appropriate texts. Teachers should assess students to determine their literacy levels and address the interactive, critical, and response perspectives. The interactive perspective involves teaching reading and writing skills strategically and metacognitively. The critical perspective helps students evaluate texts, and the response perspective supports responding meaningfully to what they read. A variety of instructional strategies are recommended.

1. Literate Environment Analysis
Allison Knutson
EDUC 6706-R-6
February 2014

2. Getting to Know Literacy Learners
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All people have experiences that have shaped
who they are as literate beings.
Think about your literacy autobiography. How
has your past shaped the literate being you are
today?

3. Getting to Know Literacy Learners
(Cont.)
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In order to implement successful instructional strategies
and select appropriate texts for students, teachers must
first understand their students' unique interests,
backgrounds, and skills.
Dr. Janice Almasi argues that the better we know our
students, the better able we are to select texts that fit
their individual needs (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011).
Almasi also states that teachers need to be aware of
students' identities, cultures, context, and what they are
bringing to the classroom in order to successfully implement
teaching strategies and texts that fit each students'
needs. (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011).

4. Assessment
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Assessing students' literacy skills allows teachers to have a
better understanding of where each student stands in
relation to academic skills and motivation.
A variety of cognitive and non-cognitive assessment
methods can be used including: running records, reading
inventories, DRA's, DIBELS, and informal observations.
Dr. Peter Afflerbach describes reading inventories as a
method to provide teachers with the means to assess and
evaluate many diverse aspects of students' reading
performance and growth (Afflerbach, 2012).

5. Analysis
It is essential for teachers to
understand the literacy needs
of their students. As a
kindergarten teacher, I like to
assess my students regularly
to determine their literacy
development in order to
better understand them as
individuals, and to be able to
find texts and topics that will
engage and motivate them in
literacy learning.
●
Assessments that I use
in my classroom include:
- DRA
- DIBELS
- Running Records
- Reading Inventories
- Informal evaluations
and observations of
reading and writing skills

6. Selecting Texts
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Selecting appropriate texts for children is an important part of
literacy development.
Texts should be selected that positively influence the reading
and writing goals we set for our students (Laureate Education,
Inc., 2011).
Dr. Janice Almasi defines the dimensions of difficulty that
teachers need to be aware of when selecting texts for students:
- Size of print/visual support
- Text structure
- Text length
- Concepts/word choice/
sentence structure (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011)

7. Selecting Texts (Cont.)
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Dr. Douglas Hartman uses
the literacy matrix
continuum to support
teachers in making text
decisions.
The matrix allows teachers
to be aware of the balance
between the texts they are
selecting for their
students (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2011).

8. Selecting Texts Analysis
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●
Tompkins writes that children need to be exposed
to a variety of texts including narrative,
informative, realistic, and other various genres
(Tompkins, 2010). After evaluating my classroom
library, I have found that I need to add more of a
variety of texts for my students to read.
I use Hartman's matrix when designing and
implementing my literacy instruction to make sure
that I have a balance of narrative and
informational texts that use linguistic and
semiotic strategies.

9. The Three Perspectives
●
The Framework for Literacy Instruction describes the need
for teachers to address the three perspectives in their
literacy instruction:
–
Interactive Perspective-teaches children to
accurately read and write with fluency and
comprehension. It also creates students that are
strategic and meta-cognitive readers and writers.
–
Critical Perspective-teaches children to judge,
evaluate, and think critically about text.
–
Response Perspective-teaches children to read,
react, and respond to text in a variety of
meaningful ways.

10. Interactive Perspective
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The interactive perspective focuses on teaching
students how to read and write accurately,
fluently, and with comprehension. Many of these
instructional strategies include students' success
in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency,
comprehension, vocabulary, and writing.
Dr. Janice Almasi states that in addition to
teaching our students to read, we must also teach
them to be strategic thinkers and to be metacognitive about their reading strategy use
(Laureate Education, Inc., 2011).

11. Interactive Perspective (Cont.)
●
Katherine Stahl (2004) describes a variety of
comprehension strategies for the primary grades that
address the interactive perspective:
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Guided/instructed retellings
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Story maps
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Teacher-generated questions
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Targeted activation of prior knowledge
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Literature webbing
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Picture walks
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KWL charts

12. Analysis of the Interactive Perspective
●
Using the interactive
perspective has helped
me to create a literate
environment by
allowing me to use a
variety of instructional
strategies to help my
students understand
text.
●
Strategies that address
the interactive
perspective that I have
incorporated into my
classroom include:
–
Read-alouds
–
Picture walks
–
Phonics activities
–
Word walls

13. The Critical and Response Perspectives
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The critical and response perspectives focus on
judging, evaluating, and responding to text in
meaningful ways.
Dr. Janice Almasi describes the critical perspective as
a way to help students learn to critically respond,
examine text from multiple perspectives, and make
judgments about text (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011).
Students can critically evaluate text when they look at
the authors' purpose, characters, perspectives, and
issues that are present within the text.

14. Critical and Response Perspectives
(Cont.)
Dr. Richard Vacca describes the importance of
using response journals after reading a text.
These journals allow students to respond freely to
text with their thoughts and reactions. Their
responses may be prompted or free written, and
should be encouraged to relate the text to their
own experiences. He also states that “reading
strengthens writing and writing strengthens
reading” (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011).

15. Analysis of the Critical and Response
Perspectives
●
Using the interactive
and response
perspectives has
helpedl me to create a
literate environment
by allowing me to use a
variety of instructional
strategies that help
my students critically
evaluate and respond
to texts.
●
Some strategies I use in
my classroom include:
- Response/Character
journals
- Authors' chair
- Character portraits
- Dramatization of text
scenarios/perspectives
(Clyde, 2003)
- Identification of authors'
purpose

16. Feedback
1. What insights did you gain about literacy and
literacy instruction from viewing this presentation?
2. How might the information presented change your
literacy practices and/or your literacy interactions
with students?
3. In what ways can I support you in the literacy
development of your students or children? How might
you support me in my work with students or your
children?
4. What questions do you have?

17. References
Afflerbach, P. (2012). Understanding and using reading assessment, K–12
(2nd ed). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
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. (Executive Producer) (2011). Analyzing and
Selecting Texts [webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3.
Baltimore: author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer) (2011). Critical
Perspective [webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3. Baltimore:
author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer) (2011). Getting to Know
Your Students [webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3.
Baltimore: author.

18. References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer) (2011). Response
Perspective: Reading-Writing Connection. [webcast]. The
beginning reader, prek-3 . Baltimore: author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer) (2011). Strategic
Processing. [webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3. Baltimore:
author.
Stahl, K. A. D. (2004). Proof, practice, and promise: Comprehension
strategy instruction in the primary grades. Reading Teacher,
57(7), 598–608.
Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced
approach (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.