What Helps Students Be Highly Literate?

Earlier this week my 2-year-old granddaughter handed her mother a rock and asked her mother to read it to her. Clearly literacy is important in our family. 

Literacy is also key in education at all levels, for all learners. Hear Angela Peery, author of What to Look for in Literacy in an interview on Cult of Pedagogy last month: “[Our children] must become lifelong readers, writers, inquirers, critical thinkers, and empathetic souls. Without high levels of literacy, they become prey to misinformation and economic manipulation. They may not fully understand or enact their rights and freedoms. They may not be able to communicate their ideas well. If not highly literate, they will earn lower wages and have a greater risk of being incarcerated (NCES, 1994). They also risk living a life devoid of the beauty and power of literature. There are so many reasons that literacy is perhaps the most pressing cilil rights issue of our time.” 

This week I read Bilingual and Multilingual Learners from the Inside-Out by Alison Schofield and Francesca McGeary. While the book is jam-packed with good information, one thing that really intrigued my was the extent to which good teaching strategies for English language learners are generally good teaching strategies for all learners, and literacy development is paramount. That reinforces other reading I’ve been doing—The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox by Larry Ferlazzo, which my EFL department read and discussed together during the spring term, and “Does Your School Need a Literacy Check-Up?”, an interview with Angela Peery on Jennifer Gonzales’s Cult of Pedagogy (14 June 2021), which my ELA department discussed at the end of the term this month.

All of them agree on the importance of a culture of literacy, of engaged readers, for all children—whatever their mother tongue—to become highly literate. All of them agree that one of the keys to achieving this goal is time to read self-chosen books, supported by instruction in reading strategies and a literacy-rich environment. Here are some quotes:

• “[T]he well-prepared, highly literate high school graduate of today must be…[a] reader who chooses to read independently and who can tackle complex texts in all disciplines” (Angela Peery, interviewed by Jennifer Gonzales, “Does Your School Need a Literacy Check-Up?” Cult of Pedagogy, 14 June 2021)
• “We believe the best way for our ELL students to become more motivated to read and to increase their literacy skills is to give them time to read and to let them read what they like! That being said, we don’t just stand back and watch them read. We do teach reading strategies, conduct read aloud to generate interest, take our classes to the school library, organize and maintain our classroom library, conference with students during reading tie, and encourage our students to read outside the classroom, among other things. All of these activities contribute to a learning community in which literacy is valued and reading interest is high.” (Larry Ferlazzo, The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox, Loc 1082)
• “Administrators and teachers must work together to build in at least 15-20 minutes of daily (silent) reading and writing for all students across the school. There are countless pieces of research to support the value of daily reading, not only for BMLs [bilingual and multilingual learners], but all students.” (Alison Schofield and Francesca McGeary, Bilingual and Multilingual Learners from the Inside-Out, 212-213)
• “One of the most vital parts of a literate classroom environment is a robust classroom library….[T]he research is clear that students who have physical books within reach read more—they read up to 60% more in classrooms with libraries…. If we want children to be highly literate, then they must have access to materials they want to read as they go from room to room during the school day.” (Peery)
• “There should be more training and development for teachers to understand how to teach specific reading comprehension strategies for students.” (Alison Schofield and Francesca McGeary, Bilingual and Multilingual Learners from the Inside-Out, 130)

I’m glad my EFL and ELA departments are discussing this topic of literacy, developing a common language and common practices, like reading strategies and independent reading. I’m glad my school joined an online library to expand the English reading selections available for our students. I’m encouraged to continue providing independent reading time and instruction and practice in reading strategies (more established in some classes than in others). I’m really pleased with how I’ve grown my classroom library in 6/7 ELA, and I want to consider how I can do it more in my other classes. Two really practical new steps for literacy environment from the fall: (1) posters for reading strategies in all my classrooms and (2) signs for each ELA teacher to advertise what they are reading. These will be laminated so they can be re-usable with dry-erase markers. (Idea from Angela Peery—I volunteered to make them and the department agreed to use them in our discussion.)

What about you? What are your literacy goals for your students? How are you helping them attain them?

from Bilingual and Multilingual Learners from the Inside-Out