The document outlines the creation of a literate environment in classrooms by emphasizing the importance of understanding students' cognitive and noncognitive characteristics to select appropriate texts and instructional practices. It discusses frameworks for literacy that guide educators in assessing students and implementing effective strategies across interactive, critical, and response perspectives. By balancing diverse literary genres and engaging students in meaningful discourse, teachers can cultivate literacy skills crucial for ongoing academic success.

1. Literate Environment
Analysis
Padmaja Naidu
Walden University
Instructor: Dr. Davenna Williams
The Beginning Reader (Pre K-3 EDUC – 6706G -9)
February 19th, 2012

2. Creating a Literate
Environment
 A rich classroom environment has print rich walls and a well-stocked library and a
variety of other classroom materials to support children’s literacy growth.
However, to translate a physically rich classroom environment into a truly literate
environment, I need to understand my learners, select appropriate and engaging
texts and use research-based instructional practices.
 The following presentation examines the ‘Framework for Literacy’, as outlined by
Dr. Douglas Hartman (Laureate Education Inc., 2009). The framework enables
teachers to understand the cognitive and noncognitive aspects of learners that
influence their literacy growth. It also assists teachers to select texts and choose
appropriate literacy strategies across the three literacy perspectives:
interactive, critical, and response.

3. Getting to Know Literacy
Learners
Understanding students as unique individuals who come with their share of life and literacy
experiences enables us to become effective teachers of literacy. Formal and informal
assessments whether in the form of observations, conferences, student work samples or
published reading inventories give us valuable insights into a learner’s profile.
The use of cognitive and noncognitive assessments help teachers to understand the learners
better so that teachers can make correct instructional choices. By linking assessment and
instruction, teacher’s improve student’s learning and their teaching (Tompkins, 2010).
Cognitive assessments focuses on the skills and strategies used by students as they develop as
readers ( Afflerbach, 2007).They help us understand and appreciate the challenges and growth
that students experience as literacy learners.
Noncognitive assessments help us understand the ‘other’ factors that contribute to a reader’s
successful literacy growth beyond the mastery of skills and strategies of reading. They include
reader’s motivation, self-concepts, interests, attitudes etc (Afflerbach, 2007).

4. Getting to Know Literacy
Learners
Examples of Cognitive Assessments:
 Running records (Clay, 2006)
 Writing Samples
 Dynamic Indicators of Basic early Literacy Skills (DIEBELS; Good & Kaminski, 2005)
 The Observation Survey of early Literacy Achievement (OSELA; Clay, 2002)
Examples of Noncognitive Assessments:
 Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS; McKenna &Kear 1990)
 Motivation to Read Profile
 Me-Stew (an informal assessment activity)

5. Getting to Know Literacy
Learners
Analysis
By taking running records and examining the students’ writing samples I was able to
assess my students’ reading and writing levels, their strengths and weaknesses.
Running records helped me determine instructional reading level so I could plan
guided reading lessons for them. The writing samples showed their ability to use
invented spellings and their knowledge of high-frequency words so I could plan
further activities to promote their writing skills.
Administering the Elementary Reading Attitude survey and interviewing students to
understand their personal interests and collecting their family’s background
information helped me understand the noncognitive factors that were affecting their
literacy learning.

6. Selecting Texts
 Once we get to know our students, the
next important step is to select texts
that not only engage them but provide Linguistic
them with a balance in the type of
texts. Dr. Douglas Hartman provides
us with a handy tool for analyzing and
evaluating texts as falling into one of
the quadrants based on certain
dimensions (Laureate Education
Inc., 2011a). Narrative
Literacy Informat-
Matrix ional
 Texts can also be analyzed based on
text difficulty. We could analyze the
text for difficulty considerations based
on readability, length of text and text
structure, size of print, presence of
singletons etc (Laureate Education Semiotic
Inc., 2011a).

7. Selecting Texts
Evaluating and analyzing texts so students get to engage with a wide variety of texts like
narrative, informational, linguistic and semiotic types is very important. As students
move to upper elementary grades (grade 3-4), the shift from ‘learning to read’ to
‘reading to learn’ takes place.
Engaging students in informational texts early on may prevent ‘fourth grade slump’
(Chall, 2003) that some seemingly promising readers experience apart from most
struggling readers.
With the increasing use of digital texts that are electronic and interactive that contain
still and moving images, students may also benefit from experiences on this
alternative interface. So, it is important for me choose a variety of texts in terms of
genre, text structures as well as media.

8. Selecting Texts
 Analysis:
For our unit of study on ‘solar system’ with grade 2 children, I chose books from the
narrative, semiotic quadrant as well as books with informational, semiotic content.
Further, children were also given access to reliable websites that contained valuable
information with rich still and moving images. Providing students with a variety of texts
not only actively engaged them but exposed them to a variety of text factors. The
knowledge about text factors served as a scaffold, making comprehension easier
(Meyer &Poon, 2004; Sweet & Snow, 2003).
The writing activities involved synthesizing information from various texts and
summarizing it in few lines which was a very valuable lesson in literacy.
This activity involved not only choosing a variety of texts but integrating reading and
writing with content areas and hence was very valuable and meaningful to my
students.

9. Interactive Perspective
 The ultimate goal of the interactive perspective is to teach children how to be literate
learners who can navigate the textual world independently (Laureate Education
Inc., 2009) which not only means teaching children to become independent readers
but also teach them comprehension strategies. After all, comprehension is the goal of
reading; it’s the reason why people read (Tompkins,2010).
 Children can be taught to become independent readers by teaching them strategic
processing and thinking. Strategic processing means being metacognitive about
strategy use. The use of metacognitive strategies help readers to think about the best
and most efficient strategy before, during and after reading. It teaches them to use
different strategies for narrative and informational texts(Laureate Education
Inc., 2009).
 Strategic processing must be threaded through all the five pillars of literacy
development : phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and
comprehension (Laureate Education Inc., 2009).

10. Interactive Perspective
Analysis:
How did Interactive perspective help me in creating literate environment ?
Teaching metacognitive strategies like activating background knowledge and taking
note of gaps in their knowledge helped my students to actively engage with the text
seeking answers for the unknown. Students displayed metacognitive awareness by
monitoring what they were listening to and actively seeking answers along the way.
I also learned several other ways to promote metacognition and strategic thinking
among my students. Students use these strategies while reading, listening to books
read aloud and when they are writing. I discovered that preparing a KWL chart is one
of the powerful ways to promote interactive perspective in my classroom. This
procedure helps students activate background knowledge, combine new information
with prior knowledge, and learn technical vocabulary related to a thematic unit
(Tompkins, 2010).

11. Critical & Response
Perspectives
With a wide range of information that we encounter in a variety of forms like print,
electronic and digital media, it is becoming an essential skill to be able to evaluate the
texts for their quality, credibility and accuracy. Further, critical literacy allows the
students to look at and evaluate texts from multiple perspectives and be able to judge
the validity and veracity of texts (laureate Education Inc., 2009a). Critical perspective
provides students with a lens to look at text critically, to understand the purpose and
intent of the text and author, and to get a deeper meaning of the text.
Response perspective enables readers to actively negotiate meaning much after reading
so they can connect to the text in significant and powerful ways (Tompkins, 2010). The
Response perspective allows teachers to provide literacy experiences that affect
students at personal and emotional level (Laureate Education Inc., 2009b).
The onus is on the teachers to provide a safe and supportive environment that allows
students to respond personally to a text. Response perspective encourages students
to respect and examine their responses- emotions, associations, memories, images
and ideas (Probst, 1987).

12. Critical & Response
Perspectives
Analysis:
How did Critical and Response perspectives help me in creating a literate environment ?
Exposing children to multiple versions of a classic story like ‘The three pigs and the
wolf’ narrated from the perspective of both the pigs and the wolf enabled them to
understand multiple perspectives. Also, discussing the author’s intent and purpose
especially while reading persuasive texts helped my students to learn to evaluate the
texts from the author’s perspective.
Response perspective is a very powerful way to connect with the text and negotiate its
meaning. Classic children’s literature like ‘The boy who cried wolf’, ‘Jack and the
beanstalk’ served as springboards for rich discussions that enabled children to
respond personally to the texts in a safe and supportive environment. In future, I
would like to use grand conversations and reader’s theatre to explore response
perspective in my classroom.

13. Summary
 To create a literate environment in my classroom, I need to understand and assess
my learners. Cognitive and noncognitive assessments help me understand my
students’ needs, strengths , challenges, interests and motivations.
 By selecting a variety of texts from genres like narrative, informational, linguistic and
semiotic teachers will be providing students with a balance in the texts. This gives
students skills to handle a variety of texts, especially informational texts which is
essential as they move up the grades.
 To be effective teachers, we need to balance the literacy instruction in our
classrooms with interactive, critical and response perspectives. While the interactive
perspective focuses on teaching children how to read and comprehend texts, the
critical and response perspectives lend a new meaning to the text by teaching
students essential skills to examine and evaluate texts in multiple perspectives and
by allowing children to respond personally to the text in a safe and supportive
environment.

14. References
Afflerbach, P. (2007). Understanding and using reading assessment, K–12. Newark, DE: International
Reading Association.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011a). Analyzing and selecting text [Videocast]. In
The beginning reader, PreK–3. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011b). Informational text in the early years
[Videocast]. In The beginning reader, PreK–3. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009c). 13: Interactive perspective: Strategic
processing [DVD]. The beginning reader, PreK–3. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011a). Critical perspective. [Videocast]. In The
beginning reader, PreK–3. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011b). Perspective on literacy learning. [Videocast].
In The beginning reader, PreK–3. Baltimore, MD: Author.

15. References
McKenna, M. C., &Kear, D. J. (1990). Measuring attitude toward reading: A new tool for
teachers. The Reading Teacher, 43(9)
Probst, R. E. (1987). Transactional theory in the teaching of literature. Resources in
Education, 22(12).
Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston:
Allyn& Bacon.