This document summarizes a presentation about creating a literate environment for students. It discusses 4 steps: 1) Get to know literacy learners through cognitive and non-cognitive assessments. 2) Select appropriate texts considering factors like readability and interest. 3) Use interactive instructional practices to teach reading skills and strategies. 4) Develop a critical perspective and allow personal responses to texts. The goal is to stimulate independent, lifelong reading and create motivated readers.

1. Students must be able to
navigate a print rich world in a
more analytical manner than
Literate Environment Analysis ever before. For this reason,
Presentation we, as educators, have the
Angela Flores responsibility to create a space
The Beginning Reader PreK-3 EDUC- for students to engage in
6706G-6 reading, writing, and thinking
April 5, 2012
activities that stimulate self-
motivated, life long learning.
Now I bring you…
FOUR STEPS TO
CREATING A
LITERATE
ENVIRONMENT

2. 4 STEPS

3. 1 GET TO KNOW
YOUR LITERACY
LEARNERS

4. reads
text
Using cognitive and non-cognitive assessment allows us to
understand each child as a reader, writer, and thinker.

5. Step 1: Cognitive Assessments
Use cognitive assessment to gather information about each student’s reading
development among the five pillars: phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency,
comprehension, and vocabulary. This allows me to “understand the strengths and
needs of each student” (Afllerbach, 2007, p. 4) and then plan whole group, small
group, or individualized instruction to meet those needs.
Cognitive assessments I used for my students: (Tompkins, 2010)
*Dibels Oral Reading Fluency Measures (Good & Kaminski, 2002)
*Spelling inventory
*Vocabulary inventory (Good and Kaminski, 2002)
*Diagnostic Decoding Survey (Really Great Reading, 2008),
*Phonological awarenes survey (Really Great Reading, 2008)

6. Step 2: Non-Cognitivie Assessments
Use non-cognitive assessment to understand each learner on a personal level:
what motivates them to read; what they like to read; what interests they have in life; etc.
This information gives you insights into the identity of the reader so that you can
begin choosing text and forming instruction that stimulates literate experiences for each
student and motivates them to read and write on their own.(Laureate Education
Inc., 2010a)
Non-Cognitive Assessments I used to get to know my learners: the information I
gathered from these assessments helped me know how students and their family perceived themselves as
readers and writers, and allowed me to choose motivating and engaging text and instruction
* Reading interest survey (Afflerbach, 2007)
* Reading attitude survey (Afflerbach, 2007
* Literacy inventory – to understand literacy development in the home

7. Selecting
2
There are many factors to consider when choosing a group of content and concept
supportive texts that will motivate and engage students in the reading and writing
process, and that will enhance language and literacy development for all students.

8. Teachers must take into account the
impact that text factors such as
genres, text structures, and text features
have on the readability of a text and on
the students’ comprehension of a text
(Tompkins, 2010).
Then, teachers must also bear in mind elements
such as text length, size of the print, visual
support, sentence length, the variety of irregular
and regular vocabulary words, and
motivational/interest levels for students when
choosing the range of books to offer them
(Laureate Education, 2010b)

9. Hartman (Laureate Education Inc., 202b) suggests using a
literacy matrix to evaluate and select a range of texts to
enhance learning.
Linguistic
Informational
Narrative
Semiotic
Laureate Education Inc., 2010b
Selecting a wide range of text according to genre, readibility, and interest will
enhance learning and ensure that students are motivated and excited to
read, write, and think.

10. My Texts
Tara (1st Grade Emergent Reader) John (2nd Grade Beginning Reader)
needed narrative and needed narrative and informational
informational text that support text that develop listening
listening comprehension, language comprehension, imagery, and may
and phonological awareness even spark further wonderings.
development in visual and auditory Some books had varied sentence
ways. These books were either length and vocabulary and support
used as read alouds or as the readers interests and literacy
independent reading choices: needs.
The Tiny Seed, Carle (1987); Fawn in the Grass, Ryder (2001);
A Seed is Sleepy, Hutts Aston Winter Whale, Ryder (1994);
(2007); Jaguar in the Rain Forest, Ryder
Parts of a Plant, Blevins (2003); (1996);
One Child, One Seed: A South Look Who Lives in the Desert!
African Counting Book, Cave Bouncing and Pouncing,
(2003); Hiding and Gliding, Sleeping
Jack’s Garden, Cole (1997) and Creeping, Bessesen (2004)

11. Plant Explorer
(www.naturegrid.org.uk/plang/index.html)
includes pages that are interactive, text
that is short and contains script that is
simple and large, and text features such as
headings, pictures, and captions
(www.k12science.org/curriculum/bucketpr
oj). Students discover and research a pond
habitat near them and share their research
with other students. The text is
informational and is written so that
ONLINE students in any range can interact with it
on some level .
TEXTS

12. 3 Interactive
OF READING
(Laureate Education,
Inc.,2010).

13. Teachers work to teach students to be strategic in the way they decode words and choose
strategies to comprehend text, and to help them become metacognitive thinkers as they read.
We want them to be “self-regulated readers that can navigate through text on their own
without prompting from the teacher” (Laureate Education Inc., 2010c).
Visualization, inference,
cause/effect
Comprehension
Sequencing, predicting, main
idea
Vocabulary
Effective Instructional
Practices for the
Reading skills Interactive Perspective
Fluency
and Reader’s Theatre, repeated
reading
• Read Aloud
strategies • Modeled - Think Aloud
Phonics
Word families, making words • Whole Group/Small
group/one-on-one
Blending, segmenting,
Phonemic Awareness
rhyming
(Tompkins, 2010)

14. 4 CRITICAL AND
PERSPECTIVE OF

16. PURPOSE
Strategies
Teach students
to think • Open Mind
critically, view Portraits
text from • QAR
multiple • Hot Seat
perspectives, • Book Talks
examine and (Tompkins,
analyze who 2010)
wrote the text
and why, and to
judge the
validity and
believability of
text (Laureate
Education Inc.,
2010d)

17. PURPOSE
Strategies Provide students with
literacy experiences
that affect them on a
• Response
personal/emotional
Journal level (Laureate
• Double-entry Education Inc., 2010f).
journal
• Learning logs We want students to
(Tompkins, 2010) interact with text in a
way that changes
• Artistic leaves an impression
Response for the rest of their
• Multisensory lives (Probst, 1987)
experiences
Create a safe
• Dramatic environment that is
Response conducive to risk
(Laureate taking and responding
Education to text (Laureate
Inc., 2010e) Education Inc., 2010f)

18. FEEDBACK FROM
5

19. Please respond to the following
questions on your response card:
• 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?

20. References
• Afflerbach, P. (2007). Understanding and using reading assessment, K–12. Newark, DE: International
Reading Association.
• Bessesen, B. (2004). Look who lives in the desert! Bouncing and pouncing, hiding and gliding, sleeping
and creeping. Arizona: Arizona Highways Books
• Blevins, W. (2003). Parts of a plant. Mankato, MN: Coughlan Publishing.
• Castek, J., Bevans-Mangelson, J., & Goldstone, B. (2006). Reading adventures online: Five ways to
introduce the new literacies of the Internet through children’s literature. Reading Teacher, 59(7), 714–
728.
• Carle, E. (1987). The tiny seed. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division.
• Cave, K. (2003). One child, one seed: a south African counting book. New York, NY: Henry Holt &
Company.
• Cole, H. (1997) Jack’s garden. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books.
• Good, R. H., & Kaminski, R. A. (2002). Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (6th ed.).
Eugene, OR: Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement.
• Hutts Aston, D. (2007). A seed is sleepy. San Fransisco, CA: Chronicle Books

21. References
• Honig, B. (2008). Assessing Reading Multiple Measures (2nd ed.). Novato, CA: Academic Therapy Publications, Incorporated
• Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Getting to know your students. [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader,
PreK-3, Baltimore: Author
• Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Analyzing and selecting texts. [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-
3, Baltimore: Author
• Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010c). Interactive perspectives: Strategic processing [Webcast]. The
Beginning Reader, PreK-3, Baltimore: Author
• Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010d). Critical perspective [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3,
Baltimore: Author
• Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010e)Perspective on literacy learning [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader,
PreK-3, Baltimore: Author
• Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010f)Response perspective [Webcast]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3,
Baltimore: Author

22. References
• Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). [Course Document]. Frameworks for Literacy Instruction. The beginning
reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, Md.: Author
• Probst, R. E. (1987). Transactional theory in the teaching of literature. Resources in Education, 22(12).
• Really Great Reading (2008). Decoding Surveys. Retrieved from http://www.reallygreatreading.com
• Ryder, J. (1994). Winter Whale. New York, NY: Harper Collins
• Ryder, J. (1996). Jaguar in the rain forest. New York, NY: Harper Collins
• Ryder, J. (2001). Fawn in the grass. New York, NY: Harper Collins
• Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.