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What is Balanced Literacy?
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Parents: Throughout the year, our classroom will be using the Balanced Literacy approach. In otherwords, students will be participating in shared, guided, and independent reading as well as shared, guided and independent writing. The two go hand in hand and will make for successful readers and writers! Please read more below. |
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First Days: Some students come into first grade already reading a bit and others are not. As with writing, I like to get all first graders reading as soon as possible. The first weeks will consist of a great deal of read alouds as well as shared reading. I will use shared reading to build student confidence. Often, I will share a new big book with the students and we will discuss the title and what it might possibly be about. I will generally choose a book that has predictable text or text that repeats itself on each page. This will quickly get the children to chime in after the first couple of pages. Often, we will reread the story a second time so that the participation of the students is increased even more and then the book will be left out for students to read independently if they feel they are ready.
Shared Reading through Poems: We love to read poems so this is another great way to incorporate shared reading. Fortunately, children's poems have a great deal of high frequency words on them. Rereading these words daily is great for building reading vocabulary in young students. I have typed up large copies of the book, Chicken Soup with Rice, A Book of Months by Maurice Sendak. I put a new one up in the meeting area every month and the students also make a small one in their poetry book. My students love the Chicken Soup poems. I use other poems as well, usually seasonal or one that goes along with a social studies theme. Often, I put the poems on sentence strips and we read them daily as a group as well as independently during center time with a pointer stick. |
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Guided Reading: Guided reading will begin as soon as possible. I will spend the first few weeks assessing the children and determining what their reading needs are. The students will be placed into reading groups for guided reading only. During this time, students will receive a book that is at their instructional reading level. Students will be able to reread these books independently and will receive new books routinely that increase in levels. |
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Phonics, Phonemic Awareness, and High Frequency Words: In addition to the strategies involved in shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading, the students will also receive instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness. This will be incorporated throughout our day each and every day. It will be important for them to be able to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken words as well as relate the sounds to specific letters and write them down. For more on phonics and phonemic awareness instruction, please click here.
The High Frequency Word List Link: In addition to their phonological instruction, students will also work on learning the high frequency words for their grade level and/or beyond. this will greatly determine their success as a reader as these words require memorization on their part. They will not sound-out these words to read them. They must know them instantly when they see them. These words will be presented early in the year. In our classroom, I have broken the words down into laminated lists. The students are all aware of what list they are working on. At almost any time during the day, they can grab a list and study their words. When they feel that they have mastered a list, they can ask a friend to test them on the words. If they have passed, they are then ready for me to test them on the list. If they don't pass, the friend kindly informs them to study a bit more. Once I test them, they mark the list off on their tracking sheet. This has greatly helped the students to take charge of their own reading progress. The students are very motivated to continue marking off lists as they progress through them. They are also aware of when they get to the 2nd grade lists as well as the 3rd grade lists and it encourages them to go as far as they can. |
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Reading at Home: Your child will be reading as much as possible in class. In fact, we will attempt to utilize every spare moment to increase our ability to read. Reading at home, however, will be crucial to your child's success this year. As already mentioned, each child will have a reading list attached to their homework weekly. Some children may have two. In addition, each child will take home a weekly leveled reading book. This book should be read at home each night and mastered by Friday. Please make sure that your child is reading both the list and the book every night. Together, we can get your child on the track to a lifetime of educational success. |
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