A description of an effective literacy environment for the beginning reader.

1. An Effective Literacy Environment for
the Beginning Reader
By: Angela Hannigan
Walden University

2. An Effective Literacy Environment
Includes:
THE INSTRUCTION:
THE STUDENT THE TEXT INTERACTIVE, CRITICAL,
AND RESPONSIVE
(Laureate Education, Inc., 2009c)

3. THE STUDENT
• We teach students. We do not teach subjects.
Therefore, students must be at the heart of what we do.
• Really get to know your students.
• Find out about their academic capabilities.
• Find out about their interests.
• Find out who they are as a person and what they can
bring to the classroom.
(Laureate Education, Inc., 2009d)

4. THE STUDENT CONTINUED…
• Knowing that my students are quite young, I had to find an assessment that would
accurately assess both their cognitive and affective development as emergent readers
(Laureate Education, Inc., 2009g).
• When getting to know my students, I considered and assessed the following:
• Their cognitive development:
I chose to use parts of the “Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening Test” for
Pre-K students to assess my students’ abilities to write their names, to recognize
the letters of the alphabet, and to complete nursery rhymes (University of
Virginia, 2004).
• Their affective development:
I then chose to use the “Effective Teaching Solutions Reading Survey” to assess
my students’ feelings about literacy (Effective Teaching Solutions, 2008). I was
able to find out if they like to read, with whom they like to read, and what they
like to read.

5. As I now knew a lot
about my students’
Students cognitive and affective
development, I could
consider their needs
when choosing my texts.
Texts

6. Choosing Appropriate Texts:
When choosing appropriate texts for my students, I
considered:
• If the text was narrative or informational.
• If the text was linguistic or semiotic (language or picture
based).
• If the text was of appropriate difficulty.
(Laureate Education, Inc., 2009a)

7. Choosing Appropriate Texts
Continued…
Throughout this unit on the letter “B” and bears, I chose the
following text:
Baby Bears (National Geographic Society, 2012)
I chose this text because:
• We must include informational texts to help teach our
students how to read to learn.
• My young students need to have texts that allow the
pictures to help tell the story.
• This text was short online text that used a large font
size, included practice with the letter “B,” and was of
interest to my students.

8. Choosing Appropriate Texts
Continued…
I also chose:
The Berenstain Bears Go to the Doctor (Berenstain, S. &
Berenstain, J., 1981)
I chose this text because:
•It was from a favorite book series of one of my
students.
•It helped me teach my students the difference
between fiction and nonfiction.
•It is a good book to read aloud to young
students(Meller, Richardson, & Hatch, 2009).

9. Now that I know my
students and have
chosen my texts, I need
to consider how to teach
them.
Students &
Texts
Instruction

10. Instruction:
The Interactive Perspective
The Interactive Perspective focuses on how our students must
be strategic in their learning of literacy. Students must be
taught how to think strategically in all of these areas:
• Phonics (sound of letters)
• Phonemic Awareness (blending sounds into words)
• Vocabulary
• Fluency
• Comprehension
• Writing skills
(Laureate Education, Inc., 2009d)

11. Instruction:
The Interactive Perspective
…continued
In this unit, I guided my students in these literacy skills and
strategies:
• Recognizing the sound of the letter “B”
• Being aware of which words do and do not start with the
/B/ sound
• Writing both the capital and lower-case letter “B”
• Organizing information from our “Baby Bears” text into a
word map (National Geographic Society, 2012)

12. Instruction:
The Critical Perspective
The Critical Perspective is the idea of being able to examine
the text from multiple perspectives, to critically evaluate the
text, and to make judgments about its validity (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2009b).
It may include the following questions (Molden, 2007):
• Who is this text about?
• Why did the author write the text?
• What do the images or words suggest?
• Why have the characters been represented this way?
• Which positions, voices, and interests are at play in the
text?

13. Instruction:
The Critical Perspective
…continued
In this unit, I incorporated the Critical Perspective by:
•Working with them to create a web map of the things they
learned from our nonfiction text about bears (National
Geographic Society, 2012)
•Encouraging them to think like Sister Bear (Berenstain, S &
Berenstain, J., 1981)
•Encouraging them to consider why the authors wrote about
going to the doctor
•Helping them compare how going to the doctor was similar
to or different from those of the Berenstain Bears

14. Instruction:
The Response Perspective
The Response Perspective includes the ways in which we help
our students to react to the text on a personal and emotional
level (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009f).
To help our students respond to the text, we must:
• Help them think deeply about the characters’ motives and
emotions (Clyde, 2003)
• Help our students empathize with the characters
• Help our students experience life from someone else’s
perspective

15. Instruction:
The Response Perspective
…continued
In this unit, I helped my students respond to the texts by:
•Choosing topics that were of interest to them (i.e. bears)
•Helping them connect how they are similar to baby bears
(National Geographic Society, 2012)
•Helping them connect how going to the doctor might be
similar to or different from that of the Berenstain Bears
(Berenstain, S & Berenstain, J., 1981)
•Encouraging them to develop a sense of peace about going
to the doctor.

16. Student
Text Instruction
One Final Note: While the student should always be at the
center of our choices for text and instruction, they all work
together. When we learn more about our students, we
change how we teach. It is a never-ending cycle.

17. References
Berenstain, S & Berenstain, J. (1981). The Berenstain bears go to the doctor. New York: Random
House, Inc.
Clyde, J. A. (2003). Stepping inside the story world: The subtext strategy—a tool for connecting
and comprehending. The Reading Teacher, 57(2), 150–160.
Effective Teaching Solutions. (2008). Effective teaching solutions reading survey. Retrieved from
www.effectiveteachingsolutions.com/readingsurveys.pdf
Laureate Education, Inc. (2009a). Analyzing and selecting text [DVD]. The beginning reader.
Baltimore, MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2009b). Critical perspective [DVD]. The beginning reader. Baltimore,
MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2009c). Framework for Literacy Instruction [course document]. The
beginning reader. Baltimore, MD.

18. References continued
Laureate Education, Inc. (2009d). Getting to know your students [DVD]. The beginning reader.
Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2009e). Interactive perspective [DVD]. The beginning reader.
Baltimore, MD: Author.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2009f). Response perspective. [DVD] The beginning reader. Baltimore,
MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2009g). The beginning reader. [DVD] The beginning reader. Baltimore,
MD.
Meller, W. B., Richardson, D., & Hatch, J. (2009). Using Read-Alouds with Critical Literacy
Literature in K-3 Classrooms. YC: Young Children, 64(6), 76-78.

19. References continued
Molden, K. (2007). Critical literacy, the right answer for the reading classroom: Strategies to
move beyond comprehension for reading improvement. Reading Improvement, 44(1), 50–
56.
National Geographic Society. (2012). Baby-bears [Online non-fiction text]. Retrieved from
http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/littlekids/baby-bears.html
University of Virginia. (2004). PALS-PreK assessment. Retrieved from
https://pals.virginia.edu/tools-prek.html