Effective Literacy Instruction

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) notes that literacy is beyond reading, writing, and counting skills. It is a method of determination, comprehension, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich, and fast-changing world (UNESCO, n.d). This can be inferred that literacy is the fundamental of knowledge, hereupon, this is critical for instructors to be excelled in literacy instruction.

Despite that, students perhaps benefitted from effective instruction in reading and learning informational texts in upper elementary schools, reading from different sorts of text is complex and arduous for them (Pressley, Wharton-McDonald, Hampson, & Echevarria, 1998 as cited in Ogle & Lang, 2014). They argue, that to raise the reading ability of students, teachers are encouraged to concentrate on the content area by teaching various types of readings. Moreover, instructors need to be more committed and responsible for the content teaching. By and large, teachers, students, context, and curriculum are the basis of literacy instruction.


A structured literacy consists of parts below:

  • Phonemic awareness

  • Phonics

  • Vocabulary development

  • Fluency

  • Comprehension

Five Essential Components of Reading. (Developmental Reading: Five Essential Components of Reading, 2020).

Ogle and Lang (2014), in their article “Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction” define five key components of reading instruction:

1- All instructors need to make knowledge base strategies about the complicated and challenging texts.

2- Teachers can build frameworks that help them to identify effective teaching strategies or activities that lead to student independence in strategy use.

3- A third key is involving students in understanding the active nature of reading and evaluating their reading progress. This metacognitive control and monitoring are a hallmark of mature readers.

4- For students to succeed, it is also important that they have texts available that are within their instructional range as readers. Providing a range of texts with varied text features is essential in helping students engage with content.

5- Utilizing the energy and motivation that come from students learning together, with and from their peers, is important.


Building Common Understanding of the Reading Process

Ogle and Lang (2014) illustrate that as a first step, teachers need to know what good reading entails. This should be taken place in the primary and secondary grades to make a strong foundation for reading abilities in students. To identify the support needed to help students and develop thoughtful reading in difficult materials, teachers can think about their reading processes. Pressley and Afflerbach (1995) indicate that mature readers use a variety of flexible processes when they read, including

  • Being aware of their purpose

  • Reviewing the material

  • Reading selectively

  • Connecting ideas to their prior knowledge

  • Revisiting and revising ideas

  • Interpreting and evaluating the text

  • Thinking about how to apply ideas and information.

Reading process of a news article:

Readers need to take into consideration the below steps while reading a new article.

  • Name & Title of the article

  • Date of publications

  • Identifying what is the purpose of the reading? What do you want to learn from this article?

  • As you read, think about the important facts and determine, is there are any vague points for you?

  • Pay attention to the signal words, particularly cause and effect. Like: because; as a result, the reason for; outcome, leading to; effect, etc. (Ogle & Lang, 2014).

Important points in literacy instruction from Ogle and Langs’ (2014) point of view:

  • If teachers allow students to see how multiple authors have represented the same content, it will help students to read with a critical eye.

  • Students need to be familiar with the concept of strategic readers. The term strategy refers to a specific process of strategies, such as prediction and visualization. Everyone will use different strategies, considering the text and purpose of reading.

  • The aim of teaching needs to be that students know diverse strategies they can use when they face challenging texts. This encompasses metacognitive control—knowing what the task involves, considering possible ways of approaching it, and then selecting and implementing a method and monitoring its success. This knowledge about one’s strategy use constitutes what is called the reader’s executive function, or metacognition. (Engaging students meta-cognitively)

  • Make sure that students have materials available that they can read

  • Creating contexts for students to learn together, like group discussions.

  • Attention to academic vocabulary

  • Comprehension at the center


Tips need to be considered in developing a strong instructional program:

    • Identify the needs (need assessment)

    • Establish team goals and a team structure that respects the school culture

    • Get the right people on board

    • Give the participants the opportunity to shape the team’s work

    • Offer training in reading research and strategies for interested teachers and administrators



Afghanistan, Herat, Community Based Education Classes, Grade 02