What is Literacy?
What is Literacy and Why is it Important?
What Is Literacy?
Literacy is the ability to read, write, speak and listen effectively. These skills enable students to express themselves clearly, listen to others, gain knowledge and build an understanding of the world around us. While each school selects its own literacy curriculum, there are common features in every New York Public School classroom. These include books that help students apply new reading skills in context and units of study that teachers use for reading and writing instruction.
Schools have a focused, intentional sequence of lessons for both reading and writing for the school year so that the instruction is planned thoughtfully. Lessons include:
listening
speaking
reading and writing
opportunities for thinking
rich discussion with peers in pairs or in small groups
Teachers model good questioning and encourage students to ask questions about what they read and learn. Students receive instruction on specific strategies to help them read difficult text, and practice using those strategies on a variety of reading passages, both fiction and nonfiction. These texts are selected to meaningfully reflect the rich cultural and ethnic diversity in our schools. There are also opportunities for daily independent reading and writing guided by the classroom teacher, and school libraries offer opportunities for further inquiry and research projects. Finally, examples of student work applying what they have learned to their research, analysis, and writing are displayed in classrooms and hallways so everyone can learn from each other's efforts.
Some of the additional features you can expect to see in your child’s school are the following:
In Elementary Grades
A strong early reading and writing program in kindergarten, first, and second grade that includes instruction in the five fundamentals of reading:
Phonics: relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language.
Phonemic awareness: the ability to understand that spoken words are made up of individual sounds.
Vocabulary: the meaning or definition of words.
Fluency: the ability to read accurately with reasonable speed and expression.
Comprehension: the ability to understand and interpret what is read.
A literacy program that has a predictable format so that students understand the goal of each lesson
Teachers leading daily read-alouds using high-quality, culturally diverse, age-appropriate books
Writing instruction that includes daily opportunities to practice skills such as handwriting, word choice, sentence structure, and punctuation in varied genres
Classrooms with libraries offering a wide range of grade-appropriate books across many topics and reading levels
A reading teacher who supports early reading acquisition in kindergarten, first, and second grade students who are identified as needing supplemental instruction
Extra support and enrichment in focused, small group settings for students.
We know that being literate is much more than just being able to sound out the letters on the page. Skilled readers need to be able to master both what the words are and what they mean. To do this successfully, they bring together various skills like vocabulary, language structure, and verbal reasoning. The Scarborough’s Reading Rope model can help educators better understand what it truly takes to create skilled readers.
What Literacy Looks Like in Primary Classrooms
Our young learners need planned, extensive and developmentally appropriate literacy instruction to become readers and writers. This is coupled with opportunities to use these skills through play during the school day.
CONCEPTS OF PRINT
Using read-alouds is a great way to discuss the different concepts of print. For example, every time teachers read a book, they talk about the cover, spine, author, illustrator, the importance of reading left to right, etc.Using real-life examples in action like this will help students visualize each concept. It’s also a great way to make sure they see their importance being highlighted throughout the year with read-alouds.
PHONICS
Learning about letter sounds is critically important for students – without phonics skills, your learner will not be able to decode and read words.
Teachers use Fundations and talk about:
the letter,
what it looks like (letter formation),
the sound it makes,
a motion that we can attach to it
other words that start with that letter or have it in it.
Once we go through each letter, we review them as needed. Then, we move on to reviewing vowels, digraphs and CVC words.
SOUND WALL
Phonics alphabet posters are in classrooms to help your children as they learn to read and write.They not only include the letter and a real-life picture, but the sound as well.
PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS
Teaching phonological awareness is probably the most important part of teaching students how to read. However, there are so many different skills embedded into it – from blending to segmenting. Our classrooms use Heggerty phonemic awareness to help develop these skills.
VOCABULARY
Vocabulary is another area that can be taught through picture books, mentor texts and shared reading. Picking texts that have rich vocabulary is imperative for our students to grow their own vocabulary.
HIGH FREQUENCY WORDS or SIGHT WORDS
Another important aspect to teaching literacy in kindergarten students how to read is looking at sight words. These can be words that students cannot decode on their own using their phonics skills. Teachers explicitly teach sight words to students, and then t students are using them and spelling them in classroom activities throughout the day.
COMPREHENSION
Strong readers think actively as they read. They use their experiences and knowledge of the world, morphology, vocabulary, language structure, and reading strategies to make sense of the text and know how to get the most out of it. They think about the text structure as they read. They know when they have problems with understanding and what thinking strategies to use to resolve these problems when they pop up. These elements enable a skilled reader to create a mental model of the text as they read.
Research shows that students who consistently miss school are at risk of lower academic achievement, failure and even dropping out of school altogether. Here are some facts:
Chronic absenteeism begins as early as pre-kindergarten
Compared to children with average attendance, chronically absent students gained 14% fewer literacy skills in kindergarten and 15% fewer literacy skills in 1st grade
By 6th grade, chronic absence is one of three early warning signs that a student is more likely to dropout of school
By 9th grade, student attendance is a better predictor of graduation than 8th grade test scores