This document discusses research-based literacy practices for teaching students to read including getting to know learners, selecting texts, teaching with an interactive perspective, and teaching with critical and response perspectives. It provides details on strategies for each practice, such as using observations, conferences and assessments to understand students and balancing narrative and informational texts at appropriate reading levels. The goal is to strengthen literacy and build independent readers who can evaluate texts and respond critically.

2. LITERATE ENVIRONMENT PRACTICES
Teaching a student how to read, become literate, and contribute to society
has many challenges and rewards. There are many practices to
consider when planning literacy instruction. All of the following
practices are research-based and have been implemented within my
classroom.
• Getting to Know Literacy Learners
• Selecting Texts
• Teaching with an Interactive Perspective
• Teaching with Critical and Response Perspectives

3. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS
Building a literate environment includes getting to know one’s students,
understanding their skills and needs, and preparing instructional plans
to facilitate learning. To do this, teachers must understand the
developmental stages of young readers, including Emergent,
Beginning, Transitional, Intermediate and Advanced (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2010). Strategies I used to get to know my literacy
learners include:
• Observation
• One on one conferences
• Data of reading performances and skill level
• Assessment of motivation (Measuring Attitude Toward Reading by
McKenna and Kear, 1990).

4. SELECTING TEXTS
Evaluating and analyzing appropriate texts for our students includes many
considerations. I often base text selections off of units, subjects, areas
of study, and grade level content. In choosing texts that cover content
and are adaptable for reading stages, the Literacy Matrix is a helpful
tool.
• Narrative vs. Informational and Linguistic vs. Semiotic (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2010).
• Select texts based upon reading level, interests, skills, and background
knowledge.
• Ensure students are exposed to a balanced representation of narrative
and nonfiction texts.
• Consider the dimension of difficulty.

5. INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE LESSON
This lesson was focused on creating strategic and metacognitive readers
with a focus on reading and writing accurately and fluently to a specific
topic and a particular text.
• Data was retrieved and used to select texts and plan reading groups
• Students practiced asking questions for comprehensions while I
monitored fluency.
• I facilitated the discussion and modeled my own thinking with a higher-
level text.

6. CRITICAL AND RESPONSE PERSPECTIVES
This lesson was focused on thinking critically about a text (Critical
Perspective) and reading and responding to text (Response
Perspective).
• The objective was for students to use their reading journal to track their
thinking and make meaningful connections to the text.
• Emergent and beginning readers were given extra support with a
teacher facilitating their reading and dialogue.
• Transitional readers worked independently and conferred with a teacher
about their thinking with the reading.
• Students used a balance of narrative and informational text to respond
to and evaluated why the author wrote the book he/ or she did.

7. BUILDING AND STRENGTHENING LITERACY
The practices reviewed in this presentation are meant to strengthen literacy
instruction. These practices are proven and research-based. These
instructional procedures have helped in building the literate
environment within my classroom. These procedures have helped
students in the following ways:
• Students are reading and writing to texts independently.
• Students are evaluating and judging texts and author’s intent.
• Students are making meaningful connections and responding to the
text they read.
• Students are reading texts that are developmentally appropriate for
their current stage of reading.