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Literacy is the basic foundation of a successful education.

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Literacy is the basic foundation of a successful education.

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Students need literacy skills to access all areas of curriculum including math, science, and social studies.

Literacy skills include reading, writing, speaking and listening.

For a lot of children, the development of language and reading skills begins at home but not for all. Therefore, schools have the responsibility to ensure children develop the foundational skills necessary to succeed later in life.

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Literacy instruction must include all types of learners including...

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Literacy instruction must include all types of learners including...

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Learners who speak English at home but whose life circumstances mean that they have been at a disavantage in terms of language development.

Learners from diverse cultural and language backgrounds including refugees and immigrants.

Learners who are differently abled.

Learners who struggle to read for no particular reason.

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Kindergarten: teaching phonics, sight words and develop a love of reading.

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Kindergarten: teaching phonics, sight words and develop a love of reading.

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At kindergarten level, learners should develop phonemic awareness; be able to identify, segment, and blend different letter sounds; and practice handwriting those first letters and words. Sight words should be introduced alongside phonics.

Using a multisensory approach, where young children are encouraged to use all their senses, is highly recommended. I personally really enjoy Jolly Phonics as their methodology includes songs and motions for each of the sounds: https://jollylearning.com/

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Lower elementary should continue to develop their decoding skills and slowly begin to memorize the spelling of words.

Students are introduced to grammar. Grammar and vocabulary are the building blocks of writing skills.

Learners should be encouraged to write and be exposed to a wide variety of texts.

Students can also practice short oral presentations.

Higher elementary can continue to develop the same skills but read and write more complex texts.

Higher elementary students can also design more advanced presentations.

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The importance of understanding content and/or prior knowledge

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The importance of understanding content and/or prior knowledge

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Readers need not only decode to understand a text, but they also need to understand the context of the story that they read.

Students from all ages should be encouraged to read historical fictions, science comic books, biographies, non-fiction books, etc. Students need to be exposed to a wide variety of texts to increase their background knowledge ( (Lemov et al., 2016, p. 50).

Note that reading is the cheapest and most accessible way to experience and learn about other cultures, geography, history etc.

Allowing students to continue learning their mother tongue in an academic setting will allow them to establish connections between languages. They will be able to tap into their prior knowledge of a concept before they can understand it in English.

Also teachers should remember that non-native speakers and/or learners from different backgrounds may not have the prior knowledge that is expected to understand a story. For example, one of my Korean students did not understand the concept of "nursery" in the short story "Veldt" by Ray Bradbury because Korean parents sleep in the same room as their babies.

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Literacy instructions in middle and high school

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Literacy instructions in middle and high school

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Teachers should collaborate to ensure students are exposed to a variety of non-fiction texts; pre-teach vocabulary; encourage students to reflect in writing rather than through mutliple-choices quizzes etc.

ELA teachers are encouraged to scaffold close-reading and choose the right texts that will help them to teach the right skills (Lemov et al., 2016, p. 15).

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Teaching new vocabulary is everybody's job...

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Teaching new vocabulary is everybody's job...

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The teaching of new vocabulary should not be confined to the ELA classroom, teachers of all subjects should pre-teach vocabulary and make sure students understand the terminology of a particular discipline.

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Reading aloud and audiobooks: not just for little kids!

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Reading aloud and audiobooks: not just for little kids!

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Teachers of all grades are encouraged to read aloud to their students and/or encourage them to listen to audiobooks.

Reading aloud follows in the tradition of oral story telling and has shown not only to encourage a love of reading but also to improve reading comprehension; develop vocabulary and fluency; as well as enhance listening and concentration skills. Reading aloud also helps young children develop vizualizing skills and a great imagination (Meghan Cox Gurdon, 2020).

Audiobooks help struggling readers to enjoy a story without the stress usually associated to decoding. This also means that students can enjoy listening to a story that is above their reading level.

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Standing on the shoulders of giants: retelling, summarizing and paraphrazing.

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Standing on the shoulders of giants: retelling, summarizing and paraphrazing.

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The ability to read, write and develop new ideas result from being able to first retell, summarize and paraphrase somebody's else ideas. Starting in kindergarten, students are encouraged to retell their understanding of a story first orally, then in writing.

Elementary and secondary students must develop summarizing skills that come together with the ability to distinguish a main idea from supporting details.

Finally, paraphrazing a source, whilst respecting the integrity of that source, is an academic skill that should be practised more especially at high school level.

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If I had a magic wand... How would my 9th grade students benefit from literacy instructions?

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If I had a magic wand... How would my 9th grade students benefit from literacy instructions?

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In their book, Reading Reconsidered, the authors argue that high-schoolers are not prepared for university as most of the reading they do during their secondary years is works of literature and mostly non-fiction (Lemov et al., 2016, p.8). On the other hand, at university, students spend most of their time reading academic and/or nonfiction material. This echoes the complain of one of my colleagues, who teaches 12th grade social studies, that students cannot cannot analyze nonfiction texts.

To better prepare 9th graders for future success, the close-reading of nonfiction texts is strongly encouraged. Teachers of all subjects can be engaged in the process.

Teachers can also encourage their students to read more and more widely. At high-school level, students don't read or only read a preferred genre so quantity and diversity might be the answer here.

Another point made by the authors is that we often read to get the 'gist' of a story and it is assumed that students will have understood a text simply because they can summarize it. The authors argue that, in fact, students should be able to paraphrase a passage to show that they also understand the details of the story (Lemov et al., 2016, p. 80). That is something that I would like to apply in my classroom.

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Helping struggling readers at my grade level...

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Helping struggling readers at my grade level...

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Signs that a students needs further literacy instructions:

Firstly, they don't read. They don't enjoy it and they try to avoid reading it if they can.

Secondly, they do poorly on reading comprehension assessments and, generally, language arts will be the hardest subject for them.

First plan of action would be to double check with the TESOL department and the education support department that the student does not require additional assistance. Should the student be diagnozed-- late-- with a condition that makes it harder for them to read and process information then accomodations can be made to support their journey.

Once it has been established that the student does not need additional support, the role of the teacher becomes essential in ensuring that the student (re)discovers a joy for reading. Allowing the student to select books to read for pleasure and scaffolding the process as they read harder texts in the classroom may help a struggling reader.

To develop fluency, we could set up a reading buddy program whereby students read aloud to younger children in the school.

At last but not least, a teacher who does not read will not be able to instill good reading habits in students. Therefore, teachers should model the behavior that they want to see in students.

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Lemov, D., Driggs, C., & Woolway, E. (2016). Reading reconsidered: A practical guide to rigorous literacy instruction. Jossey-Bass & Pfeiffer Imprints, Wiley.

Meghan Cox Gurdon. (2020). The enchanted hour : the miraculous power of reading aloud in the age of distraction. Piatkus, An Imprint Of Little, Brown Book Group.

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Link to my original padlet presentation: https://padlet.com/mshin24/the-importance-of-literacy-instruction-across-all-grades-fbuu6cxemtf85o9w