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Six issues per year filled with practical, fun,
teacher-tested ideas for your classroom. Keep up with classroom trends,
get expert teaching tips, and find dozens of resources in every issue.

Balanced Literacy:

Teaching the Skills AND Thrills of Reading

By Dorothy Strickland

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In a truly balanced literacy program, how
you teach is as important as what you teach. That's one of the
conclusions my network of teachers, administrators, and curriculum supervisors
has reached. Like most educators today, we've been changing our practices to
reflect new knowledge about learning and teaching. Our students are reading
more, writing more, and learning through themes. Yet we share a mixed bag of
excitement and uneasiness — excitement about the learning taking place in our
classrooms every day, and uneasiness about the public perception that schools
are not as good as they used to be, especially when it comes to teaching
reading. We wonder: How can we maintain the good practices of the past without
ignoring current evidence about how children learn? Have we gone too far in one
direction? What we're searching for, then, is balance, and in that search,
concerns common to all teachers have surfaced. In this article, I focus on some
of them — and how we have found middle ground.

Teaching Basic Skills
"Teaching phonics with
literature seems so hit or miss. What about a correct sequence of skills?"

Apply the thinking behind good textbooks to trade books. It's true that some
sound-letter patterns are more consistent than others and, therefore, are better
to teach early. For example, we know consonants are more consistent than vowels.
We also know that certain consonants (such as j, m, r, and v) are more
consistent than others. Most teachers and developers of core programs start with
those more reliable sound-letter patterns, and you can do the same using
literature. As a result, you move students from easy to hard, from the known to
the unknown.

"I'd like to teach phonics using trade books, but I worry about abusing
the literature."

Include some literature that naturally lends itself to language study —
specifically, stories that contain repetitious language or language patterns,
such as Bill Martin Jr.'s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Start by sharing the literature for its content
and overall language qualities, with the intention of going back to look at some
aspect of the words more carefully. You might ask, "Have you noticed that there
are a number of words in this story that begin the same way? Let's take a look."
After a while the children will initiate the process independently. Consider
other types of whole texts as well, such as brief notes, shopping lists, and
even traffic signs. These offer opportunites to anchor phonics in something
real.

"Many parents want grammar taught 'the old-fashioned way.' What can I tell
them?"

Use a whole-part-whole approach. Studies indicate that teaching grammar in
isolation has little effect on students' oral and written language. Start by
immersing students in real examples of whatever it is you want to teach. Talk
about those passages, guiding students toward recognizing the aspects of
language under study. Notice, for example, how the poet uses adjectival phrases
to create pictures, or how the novelist conveys action through verbs. Introduce
grammar terms and rules during the discussion. Also, encourage students to
relate terms and rules to their own writing.

"My administrators want me to return to traditional spelling lists."

Develop lists inspired by other components of your language arts program. For
example, you might select a particular aspect of language to study, such as
vowel generalization, inflectional endings, root words, or word families, and
choose examples for spelling lists. Words connected to a thematic unit are
another option, but choose ones that are appropriate and useful. You can also
use misspelled words from the children's writing. After all, teachers who look
for patterns in errors across the work of individuals and groups, and respond
with beneficial instruction, are more likely to make an impact on children's
spelling development.

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top

Effective Grouping and Planning

"Flexible grouping is still my biggest challenge."

Establish a routine and stick to it. Effective flexible grouping takes time,
so don't get frustrated if things don't work immediately. Keep in mind, however,
that careful planning, good organization, and an established routine are
essential. Your day should include a regular sequence of whole-class,
small-group, and one-on-one instruction. You may want to start the language arts
block with whole-class instruction. After that, call a planning meeting with
students to clarify who will come to you for small-group or one-on-one work, who
will work at centers, and who will work independently or in pairs. Be sure to
explain how they will rotate. Also, find time for small-group work with
struggling readers — I recommend at least three times a week for about 20
minutes.

Strive to make activities multilevel. Multilevel instruction acknowledges
that children come to the classroom with different backgrounds and abilities.
Teachers typically assign one activity that invites a variety of responses, such
as writing a biography of a family member. As a result, all students are engaged
in the same literacy processes, yet the teacher assesses them individually in
terms of past performance. The point, of course, is to maintain high but
realistic standards for all children.

"I plan each day so carefully, yet I never have enough time to accomplish
what I want to do."

Do your planning weekly, around thematic units. Before you begin a unit,
determine teaching and learning goals for each week. If your curriculum guide
has objectives that you must cover, try to link your goals to those objectives.
You might want to start each day with shared reading, emphasizing important
skills. You could then assign a series of independent follow-up activities that
allow children to practice those skills, allowing time for sharing responses.
Once you begin planning the week around themes, you will find yourself covering
more territory in greater depth.

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top

Covering Content
"As an upper-grade teacher, I have to
teach facts. I don't have time for reading instruction during science."

Choose interesting activities that promote literacy skills and content
knowledge. When you teach literacy and content together, you expand students'
chances to learn both. Having students create their own information books, for
example, is a collaborative activity that can be used in any content area. Not
only does it build reading and writing skills, but it requires students to learn
facts well enough to convey them to others. It also invites various kinds of
inquiry, such as using the card catalog or the Internet. Remember, everything we
do to facilitate process helps students gain access to content.

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top

Dealing with Assessment
"With all the news reports
about test scores, how can I convey to parents how their child is really
doing?"

Tell them that standardized tests don't reveal as much about an individual
learner as daily informal assessments do. In conferences, explain to parents
that news reports give an overall picture of how a school is doing in relation
to other schools. If they want to know what their child has learned, they need
to look at the evidence. Work samples, anecdotal notes, and checklists
demonstrate their child's progress. As you begin to discuss a child's work with
his or her parents, they get a better idea of what a standardized test score
really is — a snapshot of student performance on a particular day. A collection
of the child's work gives a more comprehensive picture of progress over time.

"Portfolios are fine, but I have trouble gathering all that information
for a conference."

Collect information on an ongoing basis. Portfolios are meant to be
operational documentation of work over time — work that should be collected
naturally, as part of daily instruction.

When observations of reading behaviors are assembled continuously, in
addition to work samples, the resulting portfolio provides a vivid profile for
parents, teachers, and the student. Most important, it forms a basis for
instructional decisions.

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top

Five Rules of Thumb for Maintaining Balance

Teach skills as a way to gain meaning. Skills are not
ends in themselves.

Each day, include time for both guided instruction and independent
work. Otherwise, students will never internalize skills and make them
their own.

Avoid teaching children as if they were empty receptacles for
knowledge. Instead, allow them to build knowledge in a
process-oriented way.

Integrate print and electronic materials effectively.
That way, your classroom will reflect the multimedia world in which students
live.

Always consider standardized test scores in light of informal
assessment data. Encourage parents to do the same.

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