1. LITERATE ENVIRONMENT
ANALYSIS
B Y: V I C TO R I A F E I L
WA L D E N U N I V E R S I TY
EDUC 6706: THE BEGINNING READER,
P R E K- 3
INSTRUCTOR: DR. DENISE LOVE

2. WHAT IS A LITERATE ENVIRONMENT?
• A classroom that emphasizes the
importance of reading, writing and
speaking.
• A well organized classroom with a plan
of activities, materials and schedule
that will enrich each student on a
personal level.
• A classroom with a teacher that
promotes literacy with the students’
interests at heart (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2009b).

3. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS
TO CREATE A LITERATE ENVIRONMENT
• Take time to talk to your students. Get to know their
cultural backgrounds, worldly experiences, interests
and motivations.
• Dr. Dorothy Strickland states that learning what
matters to our students and how they feel will help
teachers to see each child as an individual (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2009e).

4. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS
• Reading assessments help teachers to understand their developing
students and provides important information to help make critical
instructional decisions ( Afflerbach, 2007).
• Cognitive assessments measure student growth and ability in literacy.
Examples of Cognitive Assessments
Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA)
The Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI)
Work Samples
Reading Inventories

5. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS
(CONTINUED)
• Successful readers not only need skills and strategies, they need a
positive attitude, good self-image and motivation (Afflerbach, 2007).
• To get insights on student attitudes and motivation toward
reading, non-cognitive assessments are useful.
Examples of Non-cognitive Assessments
Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS)
Individual Interviews
Observations in Educational and Recreational Settings
Motivation to Read Profile ( Gambrell, Palmer, Codling & Mazzoni, 1996)

6. GETTING TO KNOW LITERACY LEARNERS
(CONTINUED)
With each child being unique in their learning, I
performed assessments on a small group of
three different levels of readers to learn about
their interest in reading.
• The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey
(McKenna & Kear, 1990), to the emergent
and beginning readers.
• The Motivation to Read Profile (
Gambrell, Palmer, Codling &
Mazzoni, 1996), to the transitional reader.
• The cognitive assessment; Texas Primary
Reading Inventory (TPRI), gave me
information on the skills needed to be
incorporated into the lesson such as
comprehension and word attack skills.
These assessments helped me design
lessons with a common interest of all three
students.

7. SELECTING TEXTS
• Selecting text for students has become an important part of a teacher’s
role in guiding their students to an enriched and successful literacy
experience.
• Dr. Lesley Morrow states that the reading ability of an eleventh grade
student can be predicted when he or she is in the first grade (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2009d).
• Texts can be analyzed using the Literacy Matrix (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2009a), which is a tool that measures the dimension of
difficulty in books.

8. SELECTING TEXT (CONTINUED)
The Literacy Matrix
Linguistic (with words)
THE Hard Ex. Informational/Linguistic
HOBBIT
Narrative Informational
Easy
Semiotic (with pictures)
When placing a text in the matrix, there are things to consider:
• Readability,
• Text Length,
• Text Structure,
• Size of Print.

9. SELECTING TEXT (CONTINUED)
Following the cognitive and non-cognitive
assessments, texts were chosen according to the
data gathered.
• Different reading levels with different skills to be
addressed.
• A common interest in animals .
• Variety of texts to include:
narratives, informational books and Dogs
magazines, and online texts to expose the
students to new technological literacies that are
becoming available in the 21st century
(Tompkins, 2010).
The students enjoyed the texts and were motivated
to use different skills and strategies for decoding
words which improved their comprehension following
additional readings of their texts.

10. LITERACY LESSON:
INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE
• Dr. Janice Almasi explains that the
interactive perspective of literacy
learning is teaching children how to be
strategic processors and thinkers of all
types of texts (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2009f).
• Designing lessons that teach strategies
and skills to be reflective and self-
regulating, must also be enjoyable by
the student. Enjoyment fosters
motivation and that is necessary in
developing good readers (Laureate
Education, Inc., 2010).

11. LITERACY LESSON:
INTERACTIVE PERSPECTIVE (CONTINUED)
By providing appropriate informational texts of interests to my students, I
designed a lesson to address the needs of word recognition and
comprehension. The emergent and beginning reader:
• Worked together to find unfamiliar words in their books and write them on
white boards.
• Used previously learned strategies of looking at pictures and word attack
skills to decode the new words they found.
• Discussed the meaning of each word
• Added them to our classroom word wall, increased their vocabulary
(Tompkins, 2010).
• Wrote and illustrated three sentences telling new facts about the animals
in their books.

12. LITERACY LESSON: CRITICAL AND
RESPONSIVE PERSPECTIVES
• Dr. Almasi explains the critical perspective of learning as teaching children
how to examine text. The responsive perspective is the personal and
emotional reaction a reader gets from a text and the way the reader
expresses those feelings (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009e).
• Students should learn how to look at text in
different ways, not just read and report facts.
Teachers need to teach students how to
connect and feel what is written and why it
was written a certain way.

13. LITERACY LESSON: CRITICAL AND
RESPONSIVE PERSPECTIVE (CONTINUED)
• Continuing with texts on animals, I enjoyed a lesson on sharks with my small
group of students. We used a KWL chart to list the prior knowledge we all had
on sharks, then the students made a list of what they wanted to learn about
sharks. We also talked about personal experiences we have had seeing sharks.
• Following the reading of each text, the students discussed the similarities and
differences in information contained in their books on the same subject. Each
student chose new information to share with other students in the class. They
wrote some facts on cards and moved around the room discussing sharks.
• The transitional reader became interested in a comment she read in her book
that was brief and not fully explained. She wondered why the author did not
expand on the statement. This showed evidence of her new critical approach to
reading (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009c).

14. LITERACY LESSON: CRITICAL AND
RESPONSIVE PERSPECTIVE (CONTINUED)
• At the conclusion of the lesson on sharks, the students responded by
filling out the KWL chart on the new information they learned about
sharks.
• Other ways the students could have responded to the informational
text is to write and draw in their journals about sharks. A creative
project of making a shark would be perfect for the artistic student. A
poster with new knowledge or a three dimensional diorama illustrating
an interesting fact about sharks would all be fun way for students to
respond to the information learned in the texts they read.
• Dr. Louise Rosenblatt stated that readers should be transformed by
the texts they encounter (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009g). Like clay
balls bumping into each other leaving a mark, teachers must teach
and encourage students to read aesthetically so the text they read will
leave a mark on them forever.

15. FEEDBACK FROM COLLEAGUES AND
FAMILY MEMBERS OF STUDENTS
• What insights did you gain about literacy and literacy instruction from
viewing this presentation?
• How might the information presented change your literacy practices and/or
your literacy interactions with students?
• In what ways can I support you in the literacy development of your
students or children? How might you support me in my work with students
or your children?
• What questions do you have?

16. REFERENCES
Afflerbach, P. (2007). Understanding and using reading assessment, k-12. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Beaver, J. (2006). Developmental reading assessment (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Celebration Press/Pearson.
Gambrell, L. B., Palmer, B. M., Codling, R. M., & Mazzoni, S. A. (1996). Assessing motivation to read. The Reading Teacher, 49(7), 518–
533.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009a). Analyzing and selecting text. [DVD]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3.
Baltimore, MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009b). Changes in literacy education. [DVD]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3.
Baltimore, MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009c). Critical perspective. [DVD]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009d). Informational text in the early years. [DVD]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3.
Baltimore, MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Motivation. [DVD]. Foundations of Reading and Literacy. Baltimore, MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009e). Perspectives on early literacy. [DVD]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3.
Baltimore, MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009f). Perspectives on literacy learning. [DVD]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3.
Baltimore, MD.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009g). Responsive Perspective. [DVD]. The Beginning Reader, PreK-3. Baltimore, MD.
McKenna, M. C., & Kear, D. J. (1990). Measuring attitude toward reading: A new tool for teachers. The Reading Teacher, 43(9), 626–
639.