To create a literate environment for learners, teachers should: 1) Get to know their students' cognitive and affective literacy abilities through assessments. 2) Select texts that vary in genre, presentation, difficulty, and format using a literacy matrix. 3) Encourage students to think about texts from interactive, critical, and response perspectives using strategies like ranking story events and cross-checking unknown words.

1. How do I create
a literate
environment for
my learners?

2. Getting to Know
Literacy
Learners

3. Getting to Know
Literacy Learners
• Teachers can learn about the cognitive and
affective aspects of students’ learning.
Cognitive Aspects:
• reading level
• fluency (correct words
per minute)
• comprehension abilities
• high-frequency word
knowledge
• spelling and writing
abilities
Affective Aspects:
• interests
• learning styles
• values
• self-concept
• attitudes

4. Getting to Know
Literacy Learners
• Teachers must get to know their
learners as individuals.
• Teachers can assess students formally
and informally to measure cognitive and
affective aspects of students’ literacyrelated abilities, skills, and interests.
• Some assessments: running records,
reading inventories, portfolios,
observations, anecdotal notes,
tconferences (Tompkins, 2010).

5. Getting to Know
Literacy Learners
Analysis of this Practice:
I worked closely with a focus
group of three 2nd grade
transitional readers.

6. Getting to Know
Literacy Learners
Analysis of this Practice:
After analyzing my students’ miscues from
a reading inventory (cognitive assessment),
I found that many of them rely on visual
cues when decoding. This informed me that
I should teach my students strategies to
encourage them to use structural and
meaning-based cues as well. My students’
decoding abilities (and in turn,
comprehension) have since improved.

7. Getting to Know
Literacy Learners
Analysis of this Practice:
Using the Motivation to Read Profile (Gambrell,
Palmer, Codling, & Mazzoni, 1996), I assessed
some affective aspects of my students’
literacy learning. Measuring how my students
value reading and how they view themselves as
readers (self-concept) allowed me to
understand them more wholly. I have worked to
increase my students’ reading motivation,
which can lead to increased reading
performance.

8. Selecting Texts

9. Selecting Texts
• Texts exist on several continuums.
• narrative-informational
• linguistic-semiotic
• difficulty level, including
• readability
• length of text and text size
• text structure (descriptive,
compare/contrast, cause/effect,
poetic, etc.
(Laureate Education, 2011)

10. Selecting Texts
• We can view these in a Literacy Matrix.
hard
linguistic
informational
narrative
semiotic
easy
• Teachers should vary text type to
provide balanced literacy experiences.
Texts can be used in different ways.
• (Laureate Education, 2011a)

11. Selecting Texts
Analysis of this Practice:
• I selected a variety of texts that varied in
genre (informational and narrative),
presentation of story or information
(linguistic/semiotic), level of difficulty, and
format (print or online).

12. Selecting Texts
Analysis of this Practice:
• I presented the text in different settings
(independent reading, guided reading, read
aloud) according to students’ readiness and
abilities.
• Using varied texts that spanned the Literacy
Matrix helped ensure students were exposed to
different types of text.
• Considering different aspects of text allowed
my students to interact with, think critically
about, and respond to a variety of texts.

13. Literacy Lesson:
Interactive
Perspective

14. Literacy Lesson:
Interactive Perspective
• When working with text from the interactive
perspective, students focus on reading and
understanding text.
• Instruction is centered around what are
generally referred to as the five pillars:
phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency,
comprehension, and vocabulary. (Laureate
Education 2008).

15. Literacy Lesson:
Interactive Perspective
• Students must be taught to think strategically.
They should be taught and given guided
opportunities to use strategies across the five
pillars. Students should be taught to think
metacognitively as they read.
• Teachers should teach students to be able to
choose appropriate strategies as they read; we
want students to be able to decode and
understand texts independently.
(Laureate Education, 2011c)

16. Literacy Lesson:
Interactive Perspective
Analysis of this Practice:
• Assessments indicated that my students
relied primarily on visual cues to decode
text.
• I wanted my students to use visual,
structural, and meaning-based cues to
decode unknown words.
• I introduced Boushey and Moser’s (2009)
cross checking strategy.

17. Literacy Lesson:
Interactive Perspective
Analysis of this Practice:
• With this strategy, students learn to think
metacognitively by recognizing when they
struggle to read a word and identifying
when they need to use the strategy.
• Students use the different cues to
attempt to read the unknown word. They
ask themselves “Does it look right? Does it
sound right? Does it make sense?”

18. Literacy Lesson:
Interactive Perspective
Analysis of this Practice:
• This strategy has encouraged my students
to use a variety of cues to decode words.
• My data indicates that this has led to
increased accuracy, which has led to
increased comprehension.
• Teaching students to think metacognitively
and select appropriate strategies allows
students to become strong independent
readers.

19. Literacy Lesson:
Critical and
Response
Perspectives

20. Literacy Lesson:
Critical and Response
Perspectives
• When students think about text from the
critical perspective, they think critically about,
evaluate, and judge parts of texts and/or
whole texts. (Laureate Education, 2011b).
• Students often think from the response
perspective as they learn from texts and
connect with texts on a personal and/or
emotional level. (Laureate Education, 2011d)

21. Literacy Lesson:
Critical and Response
Perspectives
Analysis of this Practice:
• I guided my students to recall important
events from a story and rank those events
from most to least exciting (10 to 1).
• The events were placed on a graph
horizontally. Each event was moved
vertically based on how exciting it was.

22. Literacy Lesson:
Critical and Response
Perspectives
Analysis of this Practice:
• This allowed students to visually
understand a narrative story arc with
rising action, a climax, and falling action.
• This allowed me to see which students
were able to participate actively, evaluate
events, and explain their thinking.

23. Literacy Lesson:
Critical and Response
Perspectives
Analysis of this Practice:
• I planned later instruction and practice
with critical thinking based on my
observations during this lesson.
• The critical thinking skills students use to
evaluate text extend to critical thinking in
other subject areas and in life. This helps
students become productive thinkers.

24. Summary
To create a literate environment,
consider the following:
• your literacy learners
• the texts you select
• the perspectives from which you encourage
students to think, including
• interactive
• critical
• response

25. Feedback
• What insights did you gain about literacy and
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?

26. References
•
Boushey, G., & Moser, J. (2009). The CAFÉ book. Portland,
ME: Stenhouse.
•
Gambrell, L. B., Palmer, B. M., Codling, R. M., & Mazzoni, S. A.
(1996). Assessing motivation to read. The Reading Teacher,
49(7), 518--533. Retrieved from http://
web.ebscohost.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/ehost/
pdfviewer/pdfviewer?
sid=1195f82c-4a9f-4336-9b9d-7232909f93c7%40sessionmgr1
11&vid=2&hid=118
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2008) The
stages of reading development. Baltimore: Author. Retrieved
from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/
frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps
%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse
%26id%3D_3467476_1%26url%3D
•

27. References
•
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011a)
Analyzing and selecting text. Baltimore: Author. Retrieved
from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/
frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps
%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse
%26id%3D_4199147_1%26url%3D
•
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011b) Critical
perspective. Baltimore: Author. Retrieved from https://
class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?
tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard
%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id
%3D_4199147_1%26url%3D

28. References
•
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011c)
Strategic processing. Baltimore: Author. Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?
tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard
%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id
%3D_4199147_1%26url%3D
•
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011d)
Response perspective. Baltimore: Author. Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?
tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard
%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id
%3D_4199147_1%26url%3D
Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A
balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
•