What is Balanced Literacy?
A Balanced Literacy classroom promotes a literacy-rich environment where students are able to take risks, become curious, use their imaginations, work hands-on, and gain confidence as readers and writers. Teachers are encouraged to use a variety of hands-on materials and diverse teaching strategies since no one method works for all students. Our students’ accomplishments are celebrated as they form a community of young readers and writers. A Balanced Literacy classroom encompasses both Reading and Writing Workshops.

The Reading Workshop

• Read Aloud: Reading aloud to children is the best way we know how to teach children to appreciate books and eventually develop a love for reading. During a read-aloud, the teacher incorporates variations in pitch, tone, pace, volume, pauses, questions, and comments to produce a fluent and enjoyable delivery. The way the teacher models during a read-aloud teaches children what to do when they are ready to read independently.
• Shared Reading: Shared reading is an instructional approach in which the teacher models the strategies and skills of a “good reader”, including fluency and expression. Students join in or share the reading of a big book or poem while having guidance and support from the teacher.
• Guided Reading: During guided reading, teachers work with small groups of students to help them read a text that requires support. Students are encouraged to use the strategies and skills they learned during read-aloud and shared reading to increase their comprehension and fluency. guided reading is practiced in our TK/K classrooms.
• Independent Reading: During independent reading, students have the opportunity to practice and apply strategies already learned by reading books that are “just right” for them.

The Writing Workshop

• Shared Writing: During this time, the teacher models what a “good writer” does. The teacher and students work together to compose a text and the teacher acts as a scribe modeling convention of print, writing strategies, letter-sound correlation, and communication skills.
• Interactive Writing: The teacher and students compose and write a text together that is later available as reading material for the class to read. The teacher “shares the pen” with the students in order to complete the text.
• Independent Writing and Drawing: Students write or draw independently and learn how to generate, develop, and organize text. “Bookmaking” is our primary focus in the TK/K classrooms. Students are able to share their published work during our author celebrations.

Word Work

• Word Work: Word work is incorporated into all areas of Balanced Literacy. The teacher works with small groups of students to focus on sight words, letter formation, and sounds.