The document discusses the importance of creating a literate environment for students in pre-K to 3rd grade, emphasizing the need for tailored literacy instruction based on comprehensive assessments of each student's abilities and interests. It details various assessment methods, the selection of appropriate texts, and instructional strategies that foster critical thinking and comprehension skills. The teacher's approach included engaging themes, such as dinosaurs, to motivate students and facilitate their literacy development through both cognitive and non-cognitive assessments.

1. Oluseyi Ngozi-Nwankwo
Waiden University
August 15, 2013
Instructor: Pam Fitzgerald
The Beginning Reader, Pre K-3 (EDUC - 6706R
- 2)

2. Literacy is the competence a student
acquires in both reading and writing
(Tompkins, 2010).

3. A literate environment is an environment
that emphasizes the importance of
speaking, reading, and writing in the
learning of all students. This involves the
selection of materials that will facilitate
language and literacy opportunities;
reflection and thought regarding classroom
design; and intentional instruction and
facilitation by teachers (Access Center,
2007).

4. Creating a Literate
Environment involves
different steps. They are:
Getting to know literacy
learners, Selecting Texts
and planning lessons for
the interactive, response
and critical perspectives
of literacy.

5. To be able to teach literacy accurately, a
teacher must have comprehensive
information about each student in her
class. To have comprehensive information
about each student, a teacher must find
out about the student’s literacy
development, to understand them as
individuals, and to find texts and topics
that engage them in literacy learning.

6. There are different assessment types that
can be used to understand students and
they are classified in two major groups;
Cognitive Assessments and Non Cognitive
Assessments.
Cognitive assessments are assessments to
understand a student’s reading and writing
skills while non-cognitive assessments are
assessments that involve understanding the
other factors that affect a student’s reading
and writing.

7. I used the Elementary Reading Attitude
survey (McKenna & Kear, 1990) to assess my
students’ non cognitive skills and the
Informal Reading Inventory comprising of an
oral reading test and a comprehension test
to assess my students’ cognitive skills. The
Elementary Reading attitude survey is a
survey measures why students read; for
academic purposes or for recreation
purposes.

8. Getting to know my Literacy Learners
enabled me plan literacy Instructions
that met their literacy needs. I was
able to identify areas in which they
struggled like long vowel sounds and
words with the ‘ed’ ending.

9. It also helped me design activities that will
motivate my students based on the
assessment results that one of the students I
worked with lacked motivation. The
research to enable me understand my
students also help choose instructional
themes that were engaging and fun for my
students since from the assessments, they
preferred reading for recreational purposes
than reading for academic purposes. I used
Dinosaurs as the theme for all the
instructional activities so while the students
were deriving fun from learning about
dinosaurs, they were also learning the
needed skills in reading and writing.

10. As the literacy educator, I must
differentiate my literacy lessons to
ensure that all of the literacy needs of
my students are meet.
Generally, with this research, I was able
to understand that I must first learn
about my students, the environment
from which they come from, their prior
knowledge, what they already know
with regards to literacy and other
aspects of their lives to be able to plan
adequately and meet their literacy
needs.

11. Getting to know your literacy
students involves finding out
about the whole child, what
he/she loves (Laureate
Education, n.d).

12. Text used to teach students
literacy skills are not chosen in
isolation, they are based on
assessments to understand
individual students. Selecting
text for students is also based
on selecting text that is
appropriate for the student.
This involves choosing text
according to their types;
linguistic, semiotic, narrative
and informational texts.

13. It also involves placing into
consideration the text length, the
level of difficulty of the text; if it
should be used for independent
reading or for guided reading. In
selecting text, a teacher must also
consider the words in the text; the
number of syllables in the words,
how new vocabularies are being
repeated to make the word easier
for the student to understand.

15. It also involves placing into
consideration the text length, the level
of difficulty of the text; if it should be
used for independent reading or for
guided reading. In selecting text, a
teacher must also consider the words in
the text; the number of syllables in the
words, how new vocabularies are being
repeated to make the word easier for
the student to understand.

16. The research on selecting text based on
the assessments previously carried out
on my students has enabled to
understand that I should be able to
understand the text type I am choosing
for students; semiotic( text with
pictures), narrative(text telling a story),
linguistic (text with lots of words) and
Informational (text giving details about
something).

17. Through this research, I was also able
to see the usefulness of using
informational text for students.
Informational texts are texts whose
primary purpose is to convey
information about the natural or social
world (Duke, 2004). Using informational
text will enable my students have
detailed knowledge of the world around
them and avoid the fourth grade slump
(Laureate Education, n.d).

18. Selecting Texts for my students enabled
me to see the importance of using new
literacies in my literacy instruction. New
Literacies in the 21st century help
students develop literacy skills that are
important for their future participation
in a digital world. Also using computers
increases students’ motivation to read,
write, and learn (Castek, Bevans-
Mangelson, & Goldstone, 2006). The
online text that I used were semiotic
and used as read alouds and games, they
were engaging for my students, the
students were motivated to learn and
they were able to acquire a lot of
information about dinosaurs while
having fun.

19. From this research, I have learned
to always choose the right text for
my students, decide on the types
of text, and ensure that I use a
combination of new literacies and
informational text amongst other
texts.

20. To avoid the fourth grade slump,
students should be taught the skills
needed to understand informational
text (Laureate Education n.d).
Providing opportunities for students
to use the Internet at school helps
them develop literacy skills that are
important for their future
participation in a digital world
(Castek, Bevans-Mangelson, &
Goldstone, 2006).

21. Use a variety of informal and formal
assessments to determine areas of strength
and need in literacy development;
determine texts of the appropriate types
and levels of difficulty to meet literacy
goals and objectives for students and, use
instructional methods that address the
cognitive and affective needs of students
and the demands of the particular text and
promote students’ independent use of
reading strategies and skills.

22. The interactive perspective of literacy
learners focuses on literacy instructions
that teach students how to read and
become strategic processors (Laureate
Education, n.d). The interactive
perspective involves teaching students
how to use their prior knowledge to
comprehend text, how to predict what
might happen in a text.

23. With the interactive perspective,
students are taught literacy skills across
the five pillars of literacy such as
phonics, comprehension and writing
skills. Instructional practices that can
be used includes being metacognitive,
using decoding strategies and chunking
for phonics, setting purposes, making
predictions and visualizing to make
sense of text so as to comprehend it
(Laureate education, n.d).

24. For the literacy lesson I conducted,
based on the literacy needs of my
students, I continued on the theme;
Dinosaurs and focused on word
recognition and comprehension for my
students. The literacy practices I used
include using a mixture of text (online,
narrative, semiotic and informational
text) to spark up students’ imagination
and use their prior knowledge to make
predictions and comprehend text.

25. I also used interactive read alouds and
word sorts to teach students how to
read and pronounce words with the ‘ed’
ending in their three different forms. I
used the theme on Dinosaurs because
Dinosaurs were no longer in existence
so it was easy for my students to find
words in their past forms and learn how
to pronounce them accurately.

26. Through this research, I have learned
that the there are many practices
teachers can use to ensure that
students are metacognitive in their
learning, students are able to make text
to text connection and text to self-
connection, students are able to
recognize word forms and pronounce
them correctly. Literacy procedures
such as read alouds from books and
online, online educational games, word
sorts are useful practices to use for
students.

27. Reading comprehension is an
intentional, active, interactive process
that occurs before, during and after a
person reads a particular piece of
writing (Brummitt-Yale, 2014)
When students predict, they wonder
what will happen to the characters in a
book and if they will enjoy it (Tompkins,
2010)
Comprehensions strategies are
important to a reader because they
have the potential to provide access to
knowledge that is removed from
personal experience (Stahl, 2004).

28. Critical and response perspectives
provides students the opportunity to
judge, evaluate, and think critically
about text and read, react, and respond
to text in a variety of meaningful ways.
Find out about ideas, issues, and
problems that matter to students.
Understand the learner as a unique
individual. Select texts that provide
opportunities for students to judge,
evaluate, and think critically. Foster a
critical stance by teaching students how
to judge, evaluate, and think critically
about texts.

29. Find out about students’ interests and
identities. Understand what matters to
students and who they are as
individuals. Select texts that connect to
students’ identities and/or interests
and that have the potential to evoke an
emotional or personal response. Provide
opportunities for students to read,
react, and formulate a personal
response to text.

30. The lesson for my students on the
critical and response perspectives
enabled my students to:
Use their prior knowledge to critically
judge a story and verify the information
in a text.
Using metacognitive skills to judge the
accuracy of information in a text.
Critically judge a writer’s intention and
judge the validity of a text (Laureate
Education, n.d)
Respond to text by making connections
with information in a text.

31. Understand the importance of a book’s
title and author and that the sex of the
Author could affect the contents of a
book.
Understand that the title of a book, the
contents and sequencing of the
information in the book are planned
intentionally by an author.
Respond to text and understand that
people need to show care to other
persons, animals and things around
them.

32. From this research, I have learned that
to create a positive literacy
environment using the critical and
response perspectives, students need to
understand that the author’s
perspective is not the only perspective;
students can also become active
participants of text by developing
independent perspectives towards a
text (Molden, 2007). I have also learned
that the when we use the response
perspective, students should be
affected and changed by a text.

33. The critical perspective enables
students to critically evaluate text
and websites for credibility
(Laureate Education, n.d)
Students can do character
comparison, write character
journals and double entry journals
as they respond to text (Laureate
Education, n.d).

34. Brummitt-Yale, J. (2014). What is
Reading Comprehension? Retrieved
from
http://www.k12reader.com/what-is-
reading-comprehension/
Castek, J., Bevans-Mangelson, J., &
Goldstone, B. (2006). Reading
adventures online: Five ways
to introduce the new literacies
of the Internet through children's
literature. Reading Teacher,
59(7), 714-728.
doi:10.1598/RT.59.7.12

35. Duke, N. K. (2004). The Case for
Informational Text. Educational
Leadership, 61(6), 40-44.
Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.).
Analyzing and selecting text [Video
file]. Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu
Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.).
Critical perspective. [Video file].
Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu

36. Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.).
Getting to know your students. [Video
file]. Retrieved
from https://class.waldenu.edu
Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.).
Interactive perspective: Strategic
processing. [Video
file]. Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu

37. Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.).
Response perspective: Reading-writing
connection.
[Video file]. Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu
Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.).
Virtual field experience™: Strategic
processing
[Video file]. Retrieved from
https://class.waldenu.edu
McKenna, M. C., & Kear, D. J. (1990).
Measuring Attitude toward reading: A new
tool for
teachers. The Reading Teacher, 43(9),
626--639.

38. 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.
Stahl, K. A. D. (2004). Proof, practice,
and promise: Comprehension strategy
instruction in the primary grades.
Reading Teacher, 57(7), 598–608.

39. The Access Center, (2007). Literacy-
Rich Environments. Retrieved February
1, 2008, from The Access Center
website:
http://www.k8accesscenter.org/trainin
g_resources/literacy-
richenvironments.asp
Tompkins, G. (2010). Literacy in the
21st Century: A balanced Approach.
Fifth Edition, Allyn &
Bacon, Boston.