Strategies, Practices and Tools
Decades of research provides a clear understanding of how skilled reading develops and how to most effectively support children in learning to read proficiently. Evidence-based, structured literacy instruction develops all the foundational language and literacy skills that must be woven together so that children can make meaning from the words they read.
The information presented here is intended to complement evidence-based core reading curricula and intervention programs already in place and help educators fill in gaps or modify their approaches with effective strategies, instructional practices, and tools and activities to implement them.
Early childhood educators can focus their practices to help children build language and emergent literacy skills. Pre-K and K-3 educators can find evidence-based ways to provide explicit, implicit, and incidental instruction across the essential components of literacy. And English Language Arts teachers across grades 4-12 will find effective practices to help students meet the increasing need for skilled reading.
Instructional Strategy
Provide students with explicit instruction and opportunities to practice critical thinking, syntax, text structure, writing craft, and transcription.
In addition to the five components identified by the National Reading Panel, research supports that writing is also an important component to develop students’ literacy skills.
Effective Practices
- Provide daily time for students to write.
- Teach students to use the writing process for a variety of purposes.
- Teach students to become fluent with handwriting, spelling, sentence construction, typing, and word processing.
- Create an engaged community of writers.
- Kindergarten
-
- Provide opportunities for students to practice pre-alphabetic skills such as scribbling, mock letters, and random letter strings.
- Provide students opportunities to develop the following semi-phonetic skills:
- Represent the initial sound with a letter in the words they write.
- Represent the final sound with a letter in the words they write.
- Represent medial sounds with a letter in the words they write.
- Grade 1
-
- Provide students opportunities to develop the following semi-phonetic skills:
- Represent the initial sound with a letter in the words they write.
- Represent the final sound with a letter in the words they write.
- Represent medial sounds with a letter in the words they write.
- Provide students opportunities to develop the following phonetic skills:
- Represent every sound in most words depending on the complexity of the words.
- Understanding of sounds that may not be represented with correct orthographic patterns dependent upon the patterns students have been taught.
- Provide students opportunities to develop the following semi-phonetic skills:
- Grade 2
-
- Provide students opportunities to develop the following phonetic skills:
- Represent every sound in most words depending on the complexity of the words.
- Understanding of sounds that may not be represented with correct orthographic patterns dependent upon the patterns students have been taught.
- Provide students opportunities to develop the following conventional skill:
- Writing that is closely aligned to correct orthographic patterns and marks the transition to using writing as a tool for learning.
- Provide students opportunities to develop the following phonetic skills:
- Grade 3
-
- Provide students opportunities to develop the following conventional skill:
- Writing that is closely aligned to correct orthographic patterns and marks the transition to using writing as a tool for learning.
- Provide students opportunities to develop the following conventional skill:
Tools and Activities
7 Teaching Principles for Effective Writing Instruction
Seven teaching principles that should be incorporated when assigning writing tasks and teaching writing skills.
Learn More from Brookes/Joan Sedita
Teaching Elementary Schools Students to be Effective Writers
This practice guide provides four recommendations for improving elementary students’ writing, with implementation steps and solutions for common roadblocks.
Learn More from Reading Rockets
Paragraph Hamburger (Writing Organizer)
The “paragraph hamburger” visually outlines the key components of a paragraph and helps students organize their ideas into a cohesive paragraph.
Learn More from Reading Rockets
Related
Developmental benchmarks and literacy behaviors that most children display at a particular age/grade.
Evidence-based reading interventions support students who are identified as struggling with specific foundational literacy skills.
Evidence-based core curricula, interventions, and supplemental programs play a critical role in supporting students’ reading success.
While seemingly effortless, good reading is made up of a set of complex skills and strategies.