• Involves students listening to a text read aloud by the teacher

• The teacher models skilled reading behavior, enjoyment and interest in a range of different styles of writing and types of text.

• Provides an opportunity for teachers to demonstrate.

The teacher selects culturally relevant, engaging texts, scripts higher order thinking questions about the text (before the lesson) and reads the text aloud to students, pausing to ask questions. Includes extensive discussion of the text and may include drawing and writing about it. They can see the print and join in on subsequent readings.

• The teacher reinforces skill or strategy.

• The teacher selects and introduces a text to a small group of readers who are similar in their level of reading development.

• The teacher supports students’ reading of the text in a way that helps them learn and expand a range of effective strategic actions.

Partner Reading:

• Two-person student teams alternate reading aloud to each other, switching each time there’s a new paragraph. Or they can choral read each section at the same time.

• Echo reading: students echo back what the teacher reads.

• Older students may read scripts or poetry aloud individually or in unison.

• Writing is a complex cognitive activity. Research has demonstrated that students improve their writing ability when cognitive strategies are demonstrated for them in clear and explicit ways.

• Teachers use a "think aloud" strategy to share their thinking as they compose a piece of writing in front of students, helping make the writing process visible and concrete.

• Whole-class instruction involves students in the writing process from drafting to publishing.

In a shared writing, teacher and students compose a writing piece together. Both teachers and students contribute to the writing piece as the teacher acts as a scribe. This enables the teacher to make the writing process concrete and visible to students. The teacher explicitly models and teaches writing strategies as well as supporting students’ home language as they translate into Standard American English. The purpose of shared writing is to model thought processes involved in writing and allow students to participate and focus on the practice. (Teacher Vision, June 8, 2019)

During Guided Writing, teachers meet with small groups of students to discuss aspects of writing, learn about author's craft and teach explicit strategies and skills. These groups consist of students with similar needs at a particular time. The groups are short term and reformed, based on what you are learning. (Fountas and Pinnell, 2001) It engages students in a brief, shared experience that is of interest to students, including both linguistically and informationally rich activities with accompanying conversation, and expansion of students' ability to talk about content of interest. (Gibson, 2008)

Collaborative writing is a collaborative literacy event in which students actively compose together considering appropriate words, phrases, organization of text and layout (McCarrier, Pinnell & Fountas, 2000 p. xv) It is an instructional time when teacher and students share a pen while working together to compose and construct a text, based on a common experience. Interactive writing provides a scaffold of support for students. (Scharer, 2016)