LITERATE ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS

2. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS
The design of an effective literacy classroom is one based on
fidelity to the literacy program as well as fidelity to students
(Laureate Education Inc., 2010a).
In order to create a literate environment, teachers must get to
know the children in their classrooms. Children learn in terms
of the culture and language background they come from
(Laureate Education Inc., 2010a). Teachers can begin to
understand more about their students through interacting with
families, talking to students, and interest inventories.

3. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS
(CONTINUED)
“Students in our classrooms possess a complex array of reading
skills and strategies” (Afflerbach, p. 27). Understanding
literacy learners includes the use of cognitive and
noncognitive assessments.
Examples of Cognitive Assessments
 Reading Inventories
 Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills test (DIBELS)
Cognitive assessments provide teachers with the ability to
understand each student’s growth and challenges as a reader
(Afflerbach, 2007).

4. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS
(CONTINUED
Noncognitive assessments focus on the student’s motivation to
read, self-concept, attitudes about reading, and how they feel
about themselves as a reader (Afflerbach, 2007). Motivation is
the force behind almost everything we do. Teachers must get
to know their students better in order to have their best
interests at heart (Laureate Education Inc., 2010b).
Examples of Noncognitive Assessments
 Elementary Reading Attitudes Survey (ERAS; McKenna & Kear,
1990)
 Classroom observations
 Interviews with students

5. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS-
ANALYSIS
Literacy begins during infancy and continues well into adulthood
(Tompkins, 2010). During my time in the classroom, I have worked
with children from all different backgrounds and ability levels. For
many of my students, kindergarten is their first real school
experience. Getting to know my students is an important part of
providing successful literacy experiences for every child. Working
with three beginning readers, I was able to look more closely at
each child’s strengths and weaknesses with reading. The
cognitive assessments I used consisted of DIBELS test scores and
reading inventories that focused on rhyming, segmenting,
blending, letter recognition, and letter sound recognition. Through
the use of these assessments I was able to design lessons that
focused on common challenges among the group. These lessons
reinforced concepts like translating, comprehension, and writing.

6. LITERACY LEARNERS-ANALYSIS (CONTINUED)
Noncognitive aspects of literacy development were measured using
the Elementary Reading Attitudes Survey (ERAS), classroom
observations, and interviews with all three students (McKenna &
Kear, 1990). Using these assessment tools, I was able to gain a
better understanding of what my students thought about reading.
The ERAS demonstrated that each beginning reader enjoyed
receiving books as gifts. Moreover, each student chose reading as
an activity during choice time. Dr. Almasi (2010), states that
teachers need to take the time to get to know who each student is
as a person. One way that this can be done is by simply talking to
students about their lives and what they like to do. Interviewing
my beginning readers provided me with valuable insight into what
they liked to read about. All three students had a love of animals
and were very interested in reading about wildlife. This
information helped me choose texts that were going to be
meaningful and enjoyable for these beginning readers.

7. SELECTING TEXTS
The Literacy Matrix
Dr. Hartman (2010)
The literacy matrix is a useful tool for thoughtfully examining and
selecting texts (Laureate Education Inc., 2010).
From printed books to digital media, all forms of text have a place in
the literacy classroom. Locating books within the literacy matrix can
help students reach their reading goals (Laureate Education Inc.,
2010).
When evaluating text from different dimensions, difficulty must also
be considered (Laureate Education Inc, 2010). Some things to think
about are:
 Length of text
 Size of print
 Number of sentences
 Text structure; is it informational or narrative?

8. SELECTING TEXTS (CONTINUED)
The Literacy Matrix
Narrative Semiotic (Pictures)
Linguistic (Words) Informational

9. SELECTING TEXTS (CONTINUED)
Texts chosen for beginning readers
 Animals Go Home, by Patricia Brennan
 What a Cat Can Do , by Ellen Catala
 Animals in Winter online text from www.kizclub.com
 Humpback Whales , by Susan Watson
 Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, by Bernard Waber
Supplemental Literature
 Bear Snores On , by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman

10. SELECTING TEXT-ANALYSIS
Children who are motivated to read create opportunities to interact with
text and choose to read for a variety of reasons (Gambrell, Palmer,
Codling, & Mazzoni, 1996). After evaluating noncognitive aspects of
literacy, I learned that all three students showed an interest in animals.
They all had pets at home and talked about how they enjoyed learning
about animals during our science unit on living things. Using this
information, I was able to find texts that were interesting to this group
of students and fit into the assigned literacy curriculum as well. All
three beginning readers demonstrated ability with rhyming, phoneme
segmentation, and blending. They also had a solid grasp of letters and
letter sounds. To help aid with comprehension and decoding skills, I
chose simple informational texts to use during guided reading groups.
According to Dr. Morrow (2010) teachers can foresee how well children
will read in high school based on their reading skills in kindergarten.
For this reason, I chose to include both narrative and informational
texts while working with my beginning readers. The difficulty of the
texts was a little higher than what these students were used to. As a
result, it encouraged them to use decoding and comprehension
strategies to understand the text.

11. LITERACY LESSON: INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE
 The goal of the interactive perspective is to help students
become strategic readers and writers (Laureate Education Inc.,
2010i).
 As educators, it is important to teach students how to use the
appropriate strategies for different literacy goals. For example,
narrative and informational texts are approached differently.
The text structure is different and informational texts do not
have characters, settings, or plots. Even though teaching
concepts of print and phonemic awareness is crucial for
success with reading, students must also have opportunities to
navigate different texts (Laureate Education Inc., 2010i).

12. LITERACY LESSON: INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE
(CONTINUED)
Activities to support the interactive perspective:
 Word Walls
 Word Sorts
 K-W-L Charts
 Grand Conversations
The lesson I created for the interactive perspective focused on
comprehension of informational text. In this lesson, students
read a book about Humpback whales. Working together, my
beginning readers and I created a K-W-L chart of everything we
already knew about whales. This chart was useful because it
provided students with a reference as they read the text. They
were also able to determine if certain information needed to be
excluded from or added to the K-W-L chart. Moreover, this lesson
focused on the use of context clues. As students read the text,
they applied this strategy by looking at surrounding words and
illustrations that helped them decipher unfamiliar text.

13. LITERACY LESSON: CRITICAL AND RESPONSE
PERSPECTIVES
According to Dr. Almasi (2010c), looking at text and examining it
from different perspectives can allow students to look at the
believability of what they read. When students use the critical
perspective, they are required to think about who wrote the text
and what the author’s background is like. They may also think
about why characters are important to a story. Most of all, the
critical perspective encourages students to think about their own
backgrounds and how the text influences their own perspectives.
The “Transaction Theory” describes the reader and the text as
balls of clay. When the reader and the text come in contact, their
path changes, but there is always a dent left where the two
collided (Laureate Education Inc., 2010g). Providing opportunities
for students to respond to text and interact with texts in
meaningful ways is vital to creating a literate environment.

14. LITERACY LESSON: CRITICAL AND RESPONSE
PERSPECTIVES (CONTINUED)
Activities to reinforce the critical and response perspectives:
 Open-mind portraits
 Question-Answer-Relationships (QAR)
 Questioning the Author
 Response Journals
The critical and response perspective lesson plan reinforced the
concept of text-to-self and text-to-text connections as well as
asking questions about events in the text. For this lesson, I chose
to use the story Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, by Bernard Waber. During
guided reading groups, I worked on the question-answer-
relationship (QAR) strategy with my three beginning readers. In
the story, Lyle the Crocodile is sent to a zoo by Mr. Grumps. After
escaping from the zoo, Lyle the Crocodile saved Mr. Grumps from
a house fire. This activity required students to record their
thoughts and feelings about these two major events in the story.
Students were encouraged to write at least one sentence and a
corresponding illustration as a response to the questions.
Reading and writing help people understand what they do not
know (Laureate Education Inc., 2010h). Reading response
journals helped make this story more meaningful to these
students.

15. FEEDBACK FROM COLLEAGUES AND FAMILY
MEMBERS OF STUDENTS
 What insights did you gain about literacy instruction
from viewing this presentation?
 How might the information presented change your
literacy practices and/or your literacy interactions with
students?
 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?
 What questions do you have?

16. REFERENCES
 Afflerbach, P. (2007). Understanding and using reading assessment, K–
12. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, Inc.
 Gambrell, L. B., Palmer, B. M., Codling, R. M., & Mazzoni, S. A. (1996).
Assessing motivation to read. The Reading Teacher, 49 (7), 518–533.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010a). Analyzing and Selecting
Text [Webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Changes in
Literacy Education. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3. Baltimore,
MD: Author.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010c). Critical
Perspective. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3. Baltimore, MD:
Author.
 Laureate Education Inc. (2010d). Getting to know your students.
[Webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3 . Baltimore, MD: Author.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010e). Informational Text in the
Early Years [Webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3. Baltimore, MD:
Author.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010f). Perspectives on
Literacy. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3. Baltimore, MD: Author.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010g). Response
Perspective. [Webcast] The beginning reader, prek-3 . Baltimore, MD:
Author.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010h). Response Perspective:
Reading-Writing Connection. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3 .
Baltimore, MD: Author.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010i). Strategic
Processing. [Webcast]. The beginning reader, prek-3 . Baltimore, MD:
Author.
 McKenna, M. C., & Kear, D. J. (1990). Measuring attitude toward reading:
A new tool for teachers. The Reading Teacher, 43 (9), 626–639.
 Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced
approach (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.