Putting the “Structure” into Structured Literacy: Part 3
This is the third piece in a 4-part blog series. You can read part 1, part 2, and part 4 here.
Arguably even more challenging than shifting the foundational skills block is rethinking the other facets of literacy instruction. When I began teaching, writing, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and oral language were all considered separate components of instruction. I actually am not even sure we taught any explicit vocabulary or oral language during my first few years of teaching.
I am going to share with you a lesson from my content literacy block so you can see how these elements of literacy intertwine together to make a cohesive lesson that includes knowledge building, comprehension, writing, syntax, vocabulary, and oral language. The lesson included below is from our Winter Wonderland unit.
| Component | What it entails | Routine |
|---|---|---|
| Launch (3-5 min) | Notice/Wonder | Peer Discussion Teacher Modeling |
| New Vocabulary (3-5 min) | Explicit instruction of new vocabulary linked to the topic and/or text | Pronounce, write it, read it Provide definition Use new words in a sentence. Explain multiple meanings (if applicable). Provide examples and nonexamples. Ask yes or no questions about the word. Have students use the word in their own (oral) sentence. Connect to writing (if applicable). |
| Oral Language/Syntax (10-20 min) | Orally composing sentences about our topic, aligned to vocabulary, or the text | I Do, We Do, You Do |
| Read Aloud (10-20 min) | Read Aloud text | Engage students by stopping and asking questions before, during, and after reading of the text. Have students listen for the vocabulary words we have learned. Provide opportunities for students to discuss with partners. Provide examples of thinking aloud about the text. |
| Reading Response (15-20 min) | Writing/Illustrating in response to the text linking together the read aloud and syntax development | Students write while the teacher provides feedback. Often follows the I Do, We Do, You Do protocol so students can clearly see what the sentence should look like before going off on their own. Can provide scaffolds up or down as necessary. Ideally students write every day during this time. |
| Writing | Larger writing tasks will be embedded throughout the units. Certain days of instruction might be devoted to just writing about the topic in narrative, opinion, or expository formats. | Often the writing tasks will come at the end of a unit or series of lessons after students have built their knowledge of the topic. |
We begin by warming up with a notice and wonder activity to preview our day’s lesson. This allows for me to quickly check in on prior knowledge and give students an opportunity to have discussions with different partners. In today’s lesson we will watch a 30 second video of a blizzard and then discuss with partners and then as a group. This takes about 3-5 minutes.
The next part of the lesson includes oral language development directly linked to syntax. I follow the gradual release model, and our lessons build on each other throughout the unit. In today’s lesson, we will look at three pictures of blizzards and determine the when, who, what, and where in the picture. I will model the first one, then we come up with one together, and lastly students create a sentence orally with their partner. By the middle of the year students are writing more independently so I try to have them also write a sentence at least once a week during this part of the lesson. An example of a sentence a student might orally create is “In winter the man shovels snow in his driveway.” It includes a when, who, what, and where. This part of the lesson can take anywhere from 10-20 minutes.
Today’s lesson will be the first day of a two day close reading of the text “What Makes a Blizzard?” Students have already spent a few days learning how snow is made, what snowflakes can look like, and how snow falls (sleet, flurry, snowstorm, blizzard). We also learned about weather and the four seasons during our first science unit. This lesson will build off of students’ prior knowledge. We will review our vocabulary for the words meteorologist, snowstorm, and blizzard referring to our anchor chart about the differences and similarities of snowstorms and blizzards. Then, I will read the first half of the text, stopping and asking questions, having students discuss certain pages with an elbow partner, or modeling how I think aloud about the text. Today’s lesson focuses on learning the characteristics of a blizzard more in depth. While reading we will stop and add words to our chart labeled have, can, and are at the top. After reading the text we will use our anchor chart to write a complete sentence about blizzards such as “Blizzards have a lot of snow.”, “Blizzards can be dangerous!”, or “Blizzards are windy.” First we do a sentence together and then students write their own sentence in their journal using our anchor chart for support. Some students may be able to produce one solid sentence. Because of the nature of today’s writing activity other students might be able to write 2-3 sentences about blizzards. On the second day of our close read we will review, complete the reading of the text, and write how to stay safe in a blizzard.
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Ideally, the content literacy or language arts portion of the literacy block is spent learning about a specific topic for at least 2-3 weeks. The units should contain a mix of fiction and nonfiction texts and writing opportunities. The units should build on each other throughout the year or from grade to grade when possible. It is also important to remember that although the grade level science and social studies standards should be taken into consideration during this block of time it is not a replacement for those subjects. This lesson on blizzards matches the grade level science standard about safety in severe weather, but it doesn’t replace our science unit about wild weather. We cannot expect one language arts curriculum to cover all science, social studies, health, and language arts standards.
The Winter Wonderland unit lasts four weeks. During the first week of the unit students learn characteristics of winter such as weather, snow, and winter storms in nonfiction text to build background knowledge. Students will write an opinion piece about what makes winter beautiful. The second week of the unit will include fiction texts about characters in winter in books such as “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats. Students are better equipped to make predictions, understand the text, and make connections and inferences about the text after reading the nonfiction texts. Students will write a narrative story about their own snow day during week two. The third week of the unit focuses on how animals stay safe in the winter such as hibernating, migrating, or storing up food and then write an informative piece about an animal surviving the winter. During the fourth week students will engage in fictional texts about animals surviving the winter such as “The Snowy Nap” by Jan Brett. Once again this allows for students to use their background knowledge learned from the nonfiction texts to better understand the fiction texts.
My content literacy recommendations would be to find a curriculum that teaches units of knowledge that include comprehension, writing, vocabulary, and language development. Current curricula that do this include EL Education, Wit and Wisdom, Core Knowledge Language Arts, and Fish Tank ELA. Three out of four curricula mentioned are openly resourced (some materials may need to be purchased such as trade books), and the lesson plans are free. I have personally used units from EL, CKLA, and Fish Tank. None of the curricula is perfect, but they serve as a wonderful foundation for teachers to add in their expertise while maintaining the integrity of the program. You can explore more about these content literacy curricula on the The Knowledge Matters Campaign website.
In the past, when implementing the EL Language Arts curriculum, my team always maintained the lesson target, topic, task, and text. After our initial year of implementation we realized which lessons could be condensed or needed to be expanded over multiple days. We realized which lessons we could add a supplemental text or writing task to. During our Sun, Moon, and Stars first grade unit, the students wrote a narrative poem as part of the curriculum. This was an excellent writing task for students, but as a grade level team we also decided to add in an informative writing about sun, moon, and stars. By doing this, we did not take anything away but added something in, based on needs we saw in our grade level. During our birds unit, we used grade level texts from Reading A-Z for our students to read independently, in addition to the texts provided by EL.
When using units from Fish Tank ELA, I always maintain the topic, task, and text provided but occasionally find it useful to add in additional texts about the topic. This program has wonderful daily writing but the addition of daily oral language and syntax development has made the lessons even stronger. We do not have to give up teacher autonomy when adopting a new curriculum.
Many teachers liked the idea of the reading and writing workshop. Many will argue that they allow for differentiation and meeting all students in different places. I believe this type of instruction is ineffective, as it leaves students with very little direct instruction and with a lot of autonomy. This does not mean I don’t ever want students self selecting their reading materials or writing about a topic of their choice…but that should not be the main method of your core instruction. It can be challenging for students to write about their favorite vacation when they have never been on a vacation. It can be difficult to complete an informative writing about alligators when you have very little background knowledge about alligators. I remember as a first year teacher having a student who wrote “I love my mom.” every day during the writing workshop. I was frustrated that I couldn’t get him to write anything else. In hindsight, he did not know what else to write about. During the reading workshop students might struggle to read the words in the text they have chosen and the text they choose might not align with the skill or strategy they are supposedly practicing. I remember once when I was teaching first grade we were learning about characters and setting. I then conferred with students 1-1 to ask them about the characters and setting in their book. One student was reading a book about shapes with the pattern “I see a triangle. I see a circle.” It was quite a stretch to ask the student about the characters and setting in that text.