A Secondary Balanced Literacy Program, Strategic Instruction, and Best Practices

Teachers in multicultural and multilingual classrooms must recognize the importance of student diversity in order to build successful literacy environment. Effective reading and writing teachers understand learning theory, create a community of learners, scaffold student’s reading & writing experiences, and connect instruction to assessment while planning for instruction and assessment by considering their classroom environment and the diverse needs of their learners.

Throughout TEACH-NOW program and my school years, I have spent working on my lesson planning and preparing the needed materials, presentations for my lesson and digging in trying to find the best resources and activities for students to have them more engaged and enjoy the learning process. Actually I have learned a lot from TEACH-NOW modules -Module 8- specifically by applying all the skills that I have learned, even my videos editing/annotations, collaborating with my colleagues and my cohort peers; brainstorming ideas and strategies that I could implement in my lessons for my future science classroom.

This is my third year working as a shadow teacher for Grade 11 student in the American International School of Jeddah (AISJ) which established in 1952, it is a U.S. accredited Pre-­‐K-­‐12 college preparatory institution. It offers a rigorous American-­based curriculum serving a diverse student body through a holistic approach.

As part of AISJ team, we want each learner to be actively engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, demonstrates the active pursuit of dreams, and develops skills of a global citizen while actively contributing to the community by respecting diversity and showing empathy towards people of differing cultures and backgrounds, identifying needs and engaging independently or collaboratively in service for the best of self and community, reflecting on personal actions, taking responsibility, and applying critical thinking habits effectively to complex problems and situations to aspire toward continual self-improvement and life-long learning. 
I believe that to conduct that practical and effective approach, we must systematically review and appropriately modify and/or adapt our curriculum alignment, instructional practices, and assessments in order to achieve our school mission and create a balanced-literacy environment for learners.   

Nowadays, there are numerous ways to integrate reading and writing skills into a content area classroom. The strategies we will choose will depend on a variety of factors, including the subject matter, the lesson’s objective, and our student’s reading and writing abilities and weaknesses. As educators, we should consider an environment where students’ literacy skills are consequently improving along with their mastery of the content area by implementing appropriate strategies that will not have much of an impact unless we use them as part of a routine of best practice and keep in mind some general principles how to best meet the literacy.

A balanced approach to literacy development is essential for equipping students with strategic reading, writing, and analytical thinking skills. As I have mentioned before; providing daily opportunities to engage students in various reading, writing, speaking, and listening activities will help them become more literate and communicate more effectively. The integration of reading and writing skills would provide any classroom environment for students to enjoy reading and writing, explore new learning, deepen their thinking, ask and answer questions, and more importantly, develop lifelong learning.

In order to charge our own secondary classroom with appropriate literacy instructions, a balance should be attained through a combination of instructional strategies. A balanced literacy approach develops proficiencies of all students using a variety of tools, materials, resources, and strategies to meet individual literacy and learning needs that would release responsibility for learning from teachers to the student by having multiple ways to acquire knowledge, develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

Literacy instruction at the secondary level should support students to continue developing reading fluency, improving vocabulary knowledge; developing higher-level reasoning and thinking skills; improving reading comprehension strategies, and increasing student motivation and engagement with reading and writing (Torgerson et al., 2007).

It is evident that integrating literacy strategies into the science instructions program, modeling strategies that demonstrate how reading, writing, and discussion promote science literacy through using a collaborative group for reading, vocabulary development activities, and other practices will support literacy needs of science students. Let’s think about what reading and writing instruction looks like at the secondary level in a science classroom.

As we know that huge factor in literacy is learning to make connections between what we already know and the new information we are learning. Looking at the connection between science and literacy; language is essential for effective science learning:

• Supports clarity of thought, description, discussion, and argument.
• Students make meaning by writing, talking, and reading about science, especially when accompanied by a direct investigation of scientific phenomena.
• The ability to use language to form ideas, theorize, reflect, share, debate, and clearly communicate student’s acquisition of science concept and processes.
• The ability to use language to form ideas, theorize, reflect, share, debate, and clearly communicate the basic structure of student acquisition of science concepts and processes.

Some classroom practices that I have used during TEACH-NOW Clinical Practice were to make predictions to engage students by directing students to look at titles, subtitles, captions, make a prediction about what the text will be about, turn these pieces of text into questions, telling a partner what they think this is going to be about or what do they want to know, and then direct students to look at a picture or a graphic text and discuss with them the meaning of the picture or the graphic text -what is happening in it- to use this to build background knowledge for future learning because it helps students learn more about the world around them.

Using I do/we do/you do to scaffold reading and writing instructions. Students need to be taught to be a strategic thinker and effective readers who actively choose which reading/writing strategies to apply to which contexts. So I always start with direct teaching, thinking aloud, and modeling before moving to guided and/or shared reading & writing as discussion and small-group support that are necessary before asking students to independently complete reading/writing tasks or lab experiments. In science, lab experiences provide an opportunity for students to make the reading/writing connection through the recording of observations, predictions, and developing hypotheses. 

An example of what I was doing prior to doing a lab, students were taught useful vocabulary for discussing the concept or topic, keeping a journal of writing on topics related to the lab, writing exit slip and identifying questions they have about the topic, listen to think-aloud modeled by me doing a similar lab, and produce an independent lab report. So generally, students write books and reports in all of the content areas, as well as writing in student journals and notebooks. When needing a resource for more information, students use books/articles, computers, online resources and word walls, as well as teachers and peers for assistance.

Regarding effective writing instructional strategies that could be identified as best practice in science learning where every science student that includes:

• teaching composing processes (brainstorming, planning, drafting, conferencing, revising and editing) which reflect on many science processes (posing a question or making a claim, doing research, drafting a position, conferencing with others, revising and publishing results)
• summarization - identifying what is relevant and important to a topic/issue
• collaborative writing - using social interaction to frame thinking
• using technology in communicating findings
• inquiry activities - analyzing data to help develop ideas and content

Inquiry-based science encourages students to use higher order thinking skills and conduct investigations. Students need support with selecting tools, such as graphic organizers to collect information from text or experiments as they search for answers. Organizing their findings and thoughts through writing helps students summarize, synthesize, and reflect on what they have read or discovered during their investigative methods and cite their work using the proper citation methods.

I have created this Mindmap so you would find a detailed overview of instructional reading, writing, and communication strategies with best practices to help students to learn.

As it was shown in Mindmap and the image I have posted the components of Balanced Literacy, strategies, and practices with an overview of each instructional reading and writing strategies. We should keep in mind to use the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy while we are working with assessments and instructions in order to support the various components of balanced literacy. It focuses on the tasks that students need to complete in order to deepen their understanding.

Most of the practices have been applied during my clinical practice, students were given regular opportunities to work collaboratively and talk about their learning with others, thinking, communicating that would create a foster learning process.   

In Reading

I believe that reading growth does not stop at specific grade level or age, it continues to build our skills and background knowledge over our lifetimes. When the reader has limited background knowledge, comprehension remains limited. In order to achieve successful comprehension and effective reading experience, here are some practices to be used in class:

• Read Aloud/Modeled Reading that demonstrates proficient reading, expand access to text beyond student’s ability and exposes students to a variety of genres. And I believe that we should teach our students' comprehension strategies through “think aloud”, and gives them opportunities to practice using them. During my clinical practice, I used a variety of texts, not just the textbook, to teach the concepts of the content area.
• Shared Reading in which teacher and student choose text, they share reading and the teacher encourages the student to read when able.
• Interactive Read Aloud in which teacher models reading strategies, teaches reading strategies and extends understanding of the reading process and the teacher reads.
• Guided Reading in which teacher reinforces skills, engages students in questioning and discussion. The teacher acts as a guide and students read, practice strategies so they build independence and engage in meaningful conversations about what they are reading through the small group.
• Independent Reading where students choose the text, practice at their independent level by having time to practice demonstrates the value of reading.

Students should be taught appropriate comprehension strategies based on the text they are reading. We want the student to read like a scientist and we would get this by having a successful comprehension before, during and after reading. According to Think Literacy, “Effective readers use strategies to understand what they read before, during, and after reading”.

Before Reading

• Activating background knowledge, predicting text content and preview the text by skimming and scanning to get a sense of the overall meaning.

During Reading

• Understanding by questioning, thinking about and reflecting on the ideas and information in the text. It is more about student self-monitoring, summarizing, and clarifying key ideas.

After Reading

• Students would reflect upon the ideas and information in the text, clarify their understanding of the text and relate what they have read to their own experiences, knowledge and extend their understanding in critical and creative ways.

In Writing

Students in science must record observations, organize knowledge, link evidence to claims, draw conclusions, and make connections to what was learned. In order to achieve that, here are some practices to be used in class:

• Write Aloud/Modeled Writing by demonstrating proficient writing and expand access to writing beyond student’s ability while exposing them to a variety of genres.
• Shared Writing in which teacher and student choose a topic and students learn about the writing process through structured conversations.
• Interactive Writing where teacher and students compose writing together.
• Guided Writing where teacher reinforces skills and engages the student in questioning and discussion so the teacher would act as a guide and students do the writing and practice strategies while building independence.
• Independent Writing where students choose the topic and practice at their independent level to demonstrate the value of writing.

There are different resources that would be beneficial while implementing the balanced literacy approach in a secondary classroom such as "Teaching Science Literacy" article from Educational Leadership (ASCD), Reading Rockets, and I highly recommend reading this book "Literacy Strategies for Grade 4-12" by Karen Tankersley.

As educators, we should consider making parents part of the process, parents need to feel confident that what is going on in classrooms is right for their children, parents may need new knowledge and skills to work effectively with their children, and we need to support parents by consistently communicating in a variety of ways to provide them with strategies to increase of home reading/writing by using some websites or involved in a reading/writing project or workshops. Thinking about some non-English-speaking parents, we could share some translation sites on the internet that would be helpful in communicating with them.

In the end, I would say that we can no longer leave literacy development to language arts teachers, we must learn to model students’ thinking processes and assure learning to synthesize, evaluate, and process information in new ways using reading, writing, and critical thinking strategies to prepare them for the world outside. 

References

1. A Balanced Literacy Approach (2015). Supporting student success in reading, writing, listening and speaking. Retrieved from http://www.education.gov.yk.ca/pdf/publications/BalancedLiteracyBooklet.pdf on October 20, 2017.

2. Literacy strategies for Grade 4-12: Reinforcing the Threads of Reading (2003) by Karen Tankersley. Retrieved on October 20, 2017.

3. NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform. (April 2006). Retrieved from chrome-extension://cbnaodkpfinfiipjblikofhlhlcickei/src/pdfviewer/web/viewer.html?file=http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Positions/Adol-Lit-Brief.pdf on October 20, 2017.

4. Think Big, Teach Smart by Regie Routman (2014). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Retrieved on October 19, 2017.