Creating Your Literate Environment

Dr. Denise Love
The Beginning Reader
Pre K-3 EDUC - 6706R – 4
December 13, 2011

A. Getting To Know Literacy Learners

B. Selection Of Texts

C. Literacy Lesson: Interactive Perspective

D. Literacy Lesson: Critical and Response
Perspectives

 “Students in our classrooms possess a complex array of reading skills and
strategies. They vary in their ability to recognize words, unlock word
meanings, read fluently, comprehend text, and monitor the construction
of meaning. Each of these reader characteristics is important for us to
know, for every student.” (Afflerbach, 2007, p. 27)

When I set out to get to know
my literacy learners, I used an
informal reading inventory, with a focus
on vocabulary in context. This assessment
was only five questions in length. I chose this assessment
because I had three struggling second grade readers in my
group, who I did not want to overwhelm with excessive text
or questions. Because I knew that I would have a limited
amount of time to work with the students, I kept in mind
what Dr. Bear said in the Assessing Word Knowledge video,
“assessment in the classroom is important to consider
because this is something that you will need to do when you
have children right there in front of you” (Laureate, 2010b).

The contextual vocabulary inventory helped me to think
about the home lives of my students and what their
exposure to different types of usage for words might be. I
was able to surmise that one of the students was struggling
more than the others in terms of his exposure and ability
to use vocabulary. The inventory also gave me evidence to
support my thoughts that one student possessed a number
of reading skills such as using context clues. I also was able
to figure out which student was a concrete thinker from
which one was more abstract in thought. The contextual
vocabulary inventory that I used is available through
Project Central through the Florida Department of
Education’s website. There are other inventories that are
available through that website that are helpful diagnostic
tools for teachers (Project Central, 2003).

When I thought about selecting texts for my group, I
turned to the advice that I found in the article,
Hooking Struggling Readers: Using Books They Can
And Want To Read, which was simply, to feature texts
that use realistic characters which readers find
compelling, to use texts that the readers can make
personal and/or emotional connections with, and to
be careful to select texts that used illustrations
appropriately especially when combining text with
illustrations, making sure that hyphens are not a part
of the text, as they often times are problematic for
struggling readers. Also the size of the font was a
consideration. Font should not be too small, so as not
to overwhelm the readers with an abundance of text
(Rog & Kropp, 2011).

With all of these criteria in mind, I made my first text
selection: Ready, Freddy! A Very Crazy Christmas by
Abby Klein (2011). The story was a great length to use
for lessons that would be taught over the course of two
tutoring sessions at 82 pages. The book presented my
group of three students and myself eight chapters which
we all took turns reading one chapter each per tutoring
session followed by a short related reading and
vocabulary building Activity. I think that the group really
related to Freddy’s description of “things getting a little
crazy” when his cousins Kelly and Kasey were in town
(Klein, 2011).

I also used the literacy matrix that Dr. Heartman
spoke about the literacy matrix in the video,
Analyzing and Selecting Texts. I was able to
squarely place Ready, Freddy! A Very Crazy
Christmas by Abby Klein (2011) in the linguistic –
narrative quadrant. This was due to the use of
about twenty well placed illustrations throughout
the text. Above is an illustration of the literacy
Matrix as it was explained by Dr. Heartman and
illustrated in Analyzing and Selecting Texts
(Laureate Education, 2010a).

When I began to plan for this lesson I reflected
back to what I had read in Literacy for the 21st
Century A Balanced Approach, which was that
the different schemas that each reader brings
into the reading experience will have an effect
on how that text is perceived by each individual
schema(Tompkins 2010, p. 261).

I was sure to point out to the group that they should always
try to think of themselves actually taking part in or witnessing
the events of the text first hand when they read. In that way
they were never just blindly reading for the sake of reading or
to only build their AR score, but rather they were making
important text to self, text to world and text to text
connections. All of these things are points that are critical to
creating what I call “thirsty learners”. I think that my students
really understood and took to heart this lesson because one of
the students jotted down the note “think of me when I read”.

When I began planning this lesson I thought about
how I could further my student’s vocabulary building
lessons, in doing so I decided that I could expand
their vocabulary and usage by using the Making
Words exercise (Tompkins, 2010 p.p. 447-9) located
in the Compendium of Instructional Procedure
(Tompkins, 2010).

I used the title of the book for this
lesson, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats (1993)
for the letters that the students used to form their
word lists. I was quite pleased to learn after
conducting a Bing search that there were quite a
few websites that were dedicated to forming
words from other words, one of the most user
friendly ones that I came across was wordles.com.

After searching the words the snowy day, I was pleased
To learn that there were 24 pages of words that could
be formed from the title The Snowy Day (Keats, 1993).
After the word lists were formed, the students were
given about five minutes to brainstorm and come up
with a short oral story about what how they and a
friend of their choice would choose to spend a snowy
day. This activity was based upon the Quickwriting
(Tompkins,2010 p.p. 454-6) procedure mentioned in
Compendium of Instructional Procedure
(Tompkins,2010).

 What insights did you gain about literacy and
literacy instruction from viewing this
presentation?
 How might the information presented change
your literacy practices and/or your literacy
interactions with students?
 In what ways can I support you in the literacy
development of your students or children? How
might you support me in my work with students
or your children?
 What questions do you have?
From: Literate Environment Analysis Presentation
Outline (Laureate Education, 2011).

 Afflerbach, P. (2007). Understanding and using
reading assessment k-12. (p. 27). Newark, DE:
International Reading Association
 Keats, E. J. (1993). The snowy day.
New York, NY: Scholastic Inc.
 Klein, A. (2011). Ready, freddy! a very crazy
christmas. (p. 93). New York, NY: Scholastic Inc.
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer).
(2010a). Analyzing and selecting texts.
[Webcast]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3.
Baltimore: Author
 Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer).
(2010b). Assessing Word Knowledge . [Webcast].
The Beginning Reader, PreK3. Baltimore:
Author.

 Project Central (2003). Cool tool informal reading
assessments. Retrieved from Florida Department
of Education website:
http://www.paec.org/itrk3files/pdfs/readingPd
fs/coolToolsAll.pdf
 Rog, L. & Kropp, P. (2011, November). Hooking
struggling readers: using books they can and
want to read. Retrieved from
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/374/
 Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st
century a balanced approach. (custom ed.,
Vol. edition, pp. 261; 447-449; 454-456). New
York, NY: Pearson Custom Publishing.
 Words in words machine. (2011, December).
Retrieved from
http://www.wordles.com/getWordsInWords.aspx

Creating Your Literate Environment

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