All About Literacy
reading, writing, viewing, representing, listening, speaking
Alberta Program of Studies
Students’ Funds of Knowledge
Social and Cultural Considerations
Theoretical Beliefs and Knowledge
Your Own Beliefs and Values
What are considerations for planning?
Language that
occurs when there are contextual embedded supports for language delivery
face-to-face (including non-verbal communication)
up to 2 years
What are Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills? BICS
A dimension of critical literacy:
questioning everyday assumptions, routines, and things taken for granted (like typical family structures or gender roles) to see them through new lenses, revealing underlying biases and power structures
What is disrupting the commonplace?
Read aloud, shared reading, guided reading, independent reading
What are the four major reading strategies?
Children
Notice environmental print
Show interest in books
Pretend to read
Use picture cues and predictable pattern books to retell stories
What is emergent reading?
The recognition that words are made up of a variety of sound units and is a key predictor of reading achievement in grade 1
What is phonological awareness?
The ability to understand and create meaning from texts that combine different modes of communication, such as words, images, sound, and movement
What is multimodal literacy?
The part of the lesson plan where you describe how to manage, distribute and collect materials
What is material management?
Language that
context reduced academic situations
linguistic cues and knowledge of language required
5 to 7 years longer beyond BICS
What is Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency?
CALPA dimension of critical literacy:
It involves seeing how the same topic can be viewed differently and how one's own background affects interpretation, making texts richer and challenging the status quo.
Asking whose voices are present or missing and how different perspectives shape a text, moving beyond a single narrative.
What is considering multiple viewpoints?
A collaborative teaching strategy where a teacher and students create a text together, with the teacher guiding the process while strategically inviting students to physically write letters, words, or phrases, sharing the "pen" to teach writing skills, spelling, and conventions in real-time
What is shared writing?
It helps children acquire:
Positive attitudes towards books and reading
The understanding that written language is meaningful
The language of various genres of text
An understanding of what fluid, proficient reading sounds like and looks like
Knowledge of the content of the texts that they might not be able to access on their own if the text is beyond their independent level
What is read aloud?
The stage of invented spelling:
hikt (for hiked)
What is the phonetic stage?
The rich resources from their lives outside of school, such as navigating social systems, practical skills, and cultural practices, that students use to enhance academic learning
What are funds of knowledge?
Modifying content, process , and/or product
What is differentiation?
Views literacy as related to identity – it is a social undertaking learned through social interaction
Literacy is for communication. People negotiate and develop shared meanings within their communication.
Children learn among themselves and with the support of more knowledgeable others
Children are active in their meaning making
Literacy is both cognitive and social
What is the Social Constructivist Model of Learning?
A dimension of critical literacy:
Using critical understanding to question privilege, injustice, and inspire real-world change, transforming understanding into action.
What is Taking Action & Promoting Social Justice?
Engaging tasks (writing, drawing, discussing) that prompt readers to connect personally with a text, exploring their own feelings, experiences, and interpretations, making meaning co-created between reader and text rather than just passively absorbing author intent
What are reader response activities?
Determining what you think will happen in the text. Use the title, text and illustrations to help you.
What is making a prediction?
Putting a name or label on words that are encountered in print; encompasses the use of multiple cues to identify unfamiliar words
What is word identification?
Recent advances in technology and a greater understanding of neurobiology have allowed researchers and practitioners who work with typical and struggling readers to understand how reading develops in the brain and the skills that contribute to proficient reading
What is the science of reading?
The part of the lesson plan where you
- introduce the learning goals and I know, I understand and I can statements.
- Draw out/build on funds of knowledge.
- Set expectations.
-Describe what will happen in this lesson and how long it will take.
What is the lesson introduction?
1) Situated Practice
-immersion, interests, backgrounds and experiences, community, needs
2) Overt Instruction
-scaffolding, funds of knowledge, support
3) Critical Framing
-contextualize, relations of power
4) Transformed Practice
-transfer, critical reflection, assessment
What are the four components of multiliteracies?
A dimension of critical literacy:
Examining power relations, social systems, and how texts represent (or misrepresent) societal structures and inequalities.
What is Focusing on Sociopolitical Issues?
A hands-on, student-centered approach to teaching spelling, phonics, and vocabulary simultaneously
What is word study?
Form, function, audience
What are three requirements for any writing piece?
Most common: ack, ake, all, ale, an, ame, ain, and, ap, ash, at, ate, aw, ay, eat, ell, est, ice, ick, ight, ill, ide, ill, in, ine, ing, ip, ink, it, ock, op, oke, ore, ot, uck, ug, unk and ump
What are phonograms (word families, rimes)?
Term defined by the New London Group in 1996
Looks at literacy in everyday life (vernacular literacy)
Defines literacy as more than just reading and writing at school
Belief that literacy is situational
What is multiliteracies theory?
The part of the lesson plan where you describe how you will track your assessment. Teachers use a variety of methods including checklists, anecdotal notes, Work handed in and comments added to a teacher spreadsheet, photographs or video.
Use the learning goals to create a tracking sheet of student achievement.
What is the assessment tracking and recording section?
The notion that learning happens by connecting new information to existing mental structures (schemata) in our long-term memory, acting like mental frameworks or "slots" that organize knowledge about concepts, events, or situations, helping students understand, interpret, and remember new material more effectively by building on what they already know.
What is schema theory?
Code Breaker (decoding text)
Text Participant/Meaning Maker (making sense through prior knowledge)
Text User (understanding text purpose and structure)
Text Analyst/Critic (interrogating bias, power, and social issues)
What are the four roles of the reader?
It involves students sharing an experience (like a field trip or a story), dictating it to a teacher who writes it down verbatim, and then using that unique text for reading, vocabulary, phonics, and comprehension activities.
What is the language experience approach?
Ideas
Organization
Voice
Word choice
Sentence fluency
Conventions
Presentation
What are traits of writing?
Two letters that are combined to make a single sound (one phoneme)
Can be either consonants or vowels
What are digraphs?