Core Understandings and Common Practices for Literacy Instruction

 Introduction

To ensure that all students develop literacy skills necessary for success in school and beyond, education must be purposeful, and pursued with diligence and insight. To this end, it is important that clear standards for teaching and learning exist and are understood by educators, students, parents and the community. The following exemplary practices set a common standard for Literacy instruction in the Bellingham School District. It is expected that these practices will be implemented in all classrooms where reading and writing is taught. All practices are supported by current research in reading and writing instruction and are predicated on a set of core understandings that apply the research to teaching and learning.

    1) Sufficient daily time must be allocated for reading and writing instruction to ensure that all students become successful readers and writers.

 Teacher Understandings: Students in our schools come from widely diverse backgrounds, and with varied opportunities to learn. Each student must be provided with rich opportunities to acquire sophisticated and diverse literacy through consistent interaction with text.

    2) Continuous assessment is used to measure and evaluate student progress as well as to identify appropriate instructional objectives and approaches.

Teacher Understandings: Instructional decisions should be based on teacher knowledge of individual student strengths and learning needs. Information gained through continuous assessment and evaluation of results provides the foundation for instructional decision making. In addition, teachers must be careful observers of reading behaviors and scaffold new learning for their students.

    3) Reading and writing instruction are linked and taught as complementary processes.

Teacher Understandings: Reading and writing are similar processes that involve construction of meaning. Writing leads to improvement in reading achievement and reading improves writing achievement. Combined reading and writing instruction increases the level student engagement in critical thinking.

    4) Reading and writing instruction is planned to engage and motivate students.

Teacher Understandings: Reading and writing meaningful text for an authentic purpose is motivational. Teachers and students must be able to identify challenges and opportunities for success in the text. Active engagement increases when students are involved in self-selection of reading materials and perceive personal value in what they read.

    5) Reading instruction must include explicitly taught strategies for interacting with and problem solving text, and for maintaining rate and phrasing. The flexible use of all sources of information in text, including semantic (word meaning), syntactic (structure of the language) and grapho-phonic (sound-symbol) cues, must be explicitly taught. Writing instruction must explicitly teach the writing process.

Teacher Understandings: Reading and writing are cognitive processes that involve complex thinking. Readers and writers simultaneously use a variety of strategies to gather textual information, make decisions, problem solve and construct meaning and read fluently. Readers and writers must learn print carries a message and must make sense. Experiences with oral language provide an important foundation for development of knowledge and skills in reading and writing. Knowledge of reading and writing strategies and skills are best developed through modeling and demonstration followed by guided and independent practice. A wide variety of experiences with text are essential to development of skilled readers and writers.

    6) Phonemic awareness and knowledge of phonics is explicitly taught through a variety of literacy opportunities within the context of authentic reading and writing experiences.

Teacher Understandings: Phonemic awareness and phonics should be taught as part of a balanced program of early reading instruction. Phonemic awareness and phonics instruction is most effective when embedded in the total reading/language arts program and taught using books that provide patterns and structures to promote understanding. Excessive emphasis on isolated phonemic awareness and phonics awareness instruction can limit construction of meaning from text. Phonemic awareness and knowledge of phonics are best developed through modeling and demonstration, followed by guided and independent practice.

    7) Reading instruction must include explicitly taught comprehension strategies using a variety of genres. Writing instruction must include explicitly taught forms and features of a variety of genres.

Teacher Understandings: Reading is construction of meaning from text. This requires the reader to interact with the text and understand the strategies used to read different genres. Writing requires an understanding of the writing process and strategies used to write in a variety of genres. Reading and writing text actively engage the student in cognitive and affective processes. Background knowledge and experience are essential to the reading and writing processes.

    8) Readers and writers must be provided with many opportunities for social interaction focused on the construction of meaning from text. The classroom environment must be print-rich and support a wide variety of literacy experiences.

Teacher Understandings: Children benefit from interaction with print in authentic and meaningful ways. Reading and writing are both individual and social processes. Environments that promote social interaction and provide opportunity for students to apply and practice their learning with a variety of text are highly effective in developing successful readers and writers.

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