EDEL 305 Final Notes

● Literacy & Identity

Literacy and identity are deeply connected, as students’ experiences, cultural backgrounds, and
identities influence how they engage with reading and writing. Promoting literacy includes
fostering a sense of belonging, self-expression, and validation of diverse identities in the
classroom.
○ Read-alouds with diverse texts: names of identity children literature
○ I.e. Writing about identity: personal narratives or journals about their family
traditions, cultural heritage, or important life events.
○ I.e. Morning meetings: sharing a story behind their names or discussing a favorite
tradition
● Concept maps
○ Visual tools that represent relationships between ideas or concepts
○ I.e. Before reading: brainstorm what they already know about a topic
○ I.e. During reading: add new information to the map as they read
○ I.e. After reading: use the completed concept map a study guide or discussion tool
to reinforce learning
● Theoretical Foundations
○ Vygotsky’s social constructivist model of learning (social constructivist)
■ Learning occurs through social interactions within a cultural context.
■ I.e. Collaborative learning
■ I.e. Teacher scaffolding
■ I.e. Think-pair-share
■
The Dimensions of Language and Literacy

Expressive Dimensions Receptive Dimensions

(active creation of meaning) (comprehending and interpreting
meaning)

Speaking Listening
(oral communication of ideas; (active reception and interpretation
debates on book themes) of spoken language; read-aloud
sessions)

Writing Reading
(expression of ideas through text; (decoding and comprehending
journal) text)

Representing Viewing
(expressing ideas through visual or (interpreting visual media; picture
symbolic means; graphic novels) books or videos’ analysis)
○ Funds of knowledge
■ The cultural and experiential knowledge students bring to the classroom
■ I.e Cultural interviews: invite families to share their traditions and stories
■ I.e. Real-world connections: topics relevant to students’ lives, like local
events or cultural celebrations.
■
Four resource model

Code breaker
Decoding text.
I.e. Phonics games for younger readers

Text participant
Comprehending meaning.
I.e. Ask students to predict what happens next in a story.

Text user
Understanding purpose and context.
I.e. Explore how news articles are structured for different audiences.

Text analyst
Critical evaluation of text.
I.e. Discuss biases in media reports.

○ Critical literacy
■ Analyzing texts to understand power, bias, and perspective.
■ I.e. Text analysis
■ I.e. Role-playing: different perspectives
○ Multiliteracies (Multimodality)
■ Multiple forms of communication beyond traditions such as digital, visual,
and auditory.
■ I.e. Digital storytelling: canva or imovie
■ I.e. Visual literacy: picture books or infographics
■ Situated practice
● Grounding learning in students’ real-world experiences
● I.e. Community-based project
■ Overt instruction
● Explicit teaching of literacy skills
● I.e. model how to write a persuasive paragraph
■ Critical framing
● Analyzing content critically within a broader context
 ● I.e. discuss how historical events shape a narrative’s perspective
■ Transformed practice
● Applying learned skills creatively in new contexts
● I.e. create a podcast series summarizing books students have read
● Language learning & oracy
○ The development of speaking and listening skills as foundational to literacy.
○ I.e. oral presentation
○ I.e. interactive read-alouds: story prediction or retell
○ Language systems: the four cueing systems
■ Pragmatics
● The social use of language, how context and social norms
influence language
● I.e. role-playing scenarios to teach politeness and turn-taking
■ Phonological
● The sound system of language, recognizing and manipulating
sounds in speech
● I.e. rhyming games or clapping syllables
■ Syntactic
● The structure of language, understanding word order and sentence
structure
● I.e. sentence-building activities with word cards
■ Semantic
● The meaning system of language, building vocabulary and
understanding word meanings
● I.e. vocabulary sorting activities by category
○ Literacy activities
■ Michael Halliday (Halliday’s functions of language)
● Instrumental
○ Language to fulfill needs
○ E.g. I want…
○ I.e. writing wish lists or discussing classroom needs
● Regulatory
○ Language to control behaviour
○ E.g. do this…
○ I.e. students create classroom rules collaboratively
● Interactional
○ Language to build relationships
○ E.g. Let's be friends…
○ I.e. use circle time for students to share experiences
● Personal
 ○ Language to express individuality
○ E.g. I like…
○ I.e. have students create “about me” posters
● Heuristic
○ Language to explore and learn
○ E.g. why?
○ I.e. encourage questioning during science experiments
● Imaginative
○ Language to create
○ E.g. storytelling
○ I.e. write and perform plays or puppet shows
● Representational (informative)
○ Language to convey information
○ I.e. students present research projects
■ Oral (listening and talking) language in the classroom
● The development of oral language involves both receptive
(listening) and expressive (speaking) dimensions.
● I.e. interactive read-alouds
● I.e. shared reading
● I.e. collective experience
● Alphabet awareness
○ Recognizing letters and their sounds
○ I.e. alphabet scavenger hunts in books or the classroom
● Phonemic awareness
○ Identifying and manipulating individual sounds
○ I.e. clapping out syllables or blending phonemes
● Sound isolation
○ Identifying the first or last sound in a word
○ I.e. use picture cards for “what sound do you hear at the
start?”
● Sound identification
○ Matching sounds to letters
○ I.e. sorting pictures by initial sounds
● Sound categorization
○ Group words by similar sounds
○ I.e. odd one out games for rhyming or sound matching
● Working with rhymes
○ Recognizing and creating rhyming words
○ I.e. create rhyming word family trees
● Sound segmentation
 ○ Breaking words into phonemes
○ I.e. use counters or blocks to represent each sound in a
word
● Invented spelling
○ Children’s attempts to write words using their phonetic
knowledge
○ I.e. writing journals
○ Word walls
■ Concept about print
● Understanding the conventions of written language
● Directionality
● Spaces between words
● I.e. modeling
● I..e. interactive writing
■ Assessing oracy
● Rubrics
● Anecdotal record (keep tracking)
● The nature & assessment of reading
○ Reading assessment
■ letter/sound identification/knowledge
■ Concept about print
■ Reading vocab
■ Hearing and recording sounds in words
■ Reading of continuous text (fluency & comprehension)
■ Phonemic awareness
■ Anecdotal notes (personal comment)
■ Running record (along-the-way)
■ Conferencing
● Components of reading instruction
○ Supporting reading practices (from higher teacher support to lower teacher
support)
■ Read-aloud & mini-lessons
■ Shared reading (read together)
■ Guided reading (small-group reading instruction tailored to students’
needs)
■ Independent reading & reader response activities
○ Perspectives on reading
■ Bottom-up (focus on decoding and phonics, moving from letters to words
to meaning)
 ■ Top-down (emphasis on meaning and comprehension, where students use
context and prior knowledge to decode)
■ Interactive (combines bottom-up and top-down)
■ Social constructivist (emphasizing collaboration and discussion)
○ Pedagogies supporting the use of graphophonic and structural knowledge
■ Words walls (create a word of the week activity where students use the
word in sentences)
■ Names and other concrete words (highlight the letters in students’
names and identify similar sounds in other words)
■ Making words (provide letter tiles for students to create as many words as
possible from a root word. I.e. act)
■ Word sorting (sort words with similar prefixes or suffixes)
■ Word parts (break down unbelievable)
■ Cloze procedure (use a paragraph with missing words related to a recent
reading)
○ Pedagogies to support comprehension
■ KWL technique (a chart where student list what they know, want to
know, and learned)
■ Questioning the author (Q&A strategy) (students’ question the author’s
intent and message)
■ Question-answer relationship (QAR)
● Right there (explicit answers in text)
● Think and search (answers across the text)
● Author and you (connect text to prior knowledge)
● On your own (answers based on experience)
■ Reciprocal teaching (teacher-like roles to predict, question, clarify, and
summarize)
■ Semantic webs (visual organizers showing relationships between
concepts)
■ Think-alouds (teacher models their thinking process while reading)
● Critical literacy
○ encourages students to analyze and question texts to uncover bias, power
structures, and perspectives. It empowers them to think critically and take action
on social issues.
○ Four dimensions of critical literacy
■ Disrupting the commonplace
● Challenging assumptions and norms in texts and society.
● I.e. Analyze advertisements to identify stereotypes or implicit
messages.
■ Interrogating multiple perspectives
 ● Exploring diverse viewpoints and understanding how experiences
shape perspectives.
● I.e. Compare a historical event in two texts with different
viewpoints (e.g., colonizer vs. Indigenous perspectives).
■ Focusing on social political issues
● Connecting texts to broader social or political contexts.
● I.e. Study news articles about climate change and discuss their
implications.
■ Taking action and promoting social justice
● Encouraging students to act on issues they care about.
● I.e. Write letters to local representatives about environmental
concerns.
○ Critical literacy strategies
■ Posing questions (Encourage inquiry by asking open-ended questions
about texts.)
■ Juxtaposing (Comparing and contrasting different texts or media.)
● Responding to literature
○ Responses to literature
■ Text-to-text (Connecting a text to another text.)
■ Text-to-self (Relating a text to personal experiences.)
■ Text-to-world (Connecting a text to global issues or events.)
○ Response strategies
■ Response groups (Small groups discuss their responses to a text.)
■ Literature response journals (Students write personal reflections on
what they read.)
■ Readers’ workshop (A student-centered framework where students select
books and respond through writing or discussion.)
■ Multimodal response ( Using various forms of expression (e.g., art,
video, drama) to respond to texts.)
■ Novel studies (In-depth exploration of a novel through reading, analysis,
and response.)
■ Visual arts (Using art to explore and respond to texts.)
■ Drama strategies (engage students in role-play or improvisation to
deepen comprehension.)
■ Readers’ theatre (Students perform a text by reading scripts aloud.)
■ Literature circles
● Questioner (Develops thought-provoking questions to guide the
group’s discussion.)
● Literacy luminary (Identifies and shares powerful, interesting, or
confusing passages from the text.)
 ● Research (Gathers background information related to the book
(e.g., historical context, author biography).)
● Summarizer (Provides a concise summary of the assigned reading
section.)
● Illustrator (Creates drawings or visual representations of events,
characters, or themes.)
● Word wizard (Focuses on interesting or challenging words in the
text.)
● Connector (Makes connections between the text and personal
experiences, other texts, or the world.)
● Poetry
○ Read chorally (Whole class reads a poem together, emphasizing rhythm and
fluency.)
○ Soloists and chorus (Alternate between individual lines read by a soloist and
group responses as a chorus.)
○ Unison (Everyone reads the poem simultaneously to build confidence.)
○ increasing/decreasing volume (Adjust volume for dramatic effect.)
○ increasing/decreasing tempo (Alter pace to match mood or meaning.)
○ Echo reading (Teacher reads a line, and students echo it back.)
○ Adding in (Build the poem line by line with each student adding a line.)
● Writing process
○ Modelled writing (teacher)
○ Shared writing (co-construct)
○ Interactive writing (take turns)
○ Guided writing (specific skills)
○ Independent writing
○ Writers’ workshop
○ Prewriting - drafting - revising (content) - editing (grammar) -
publishing/presentation
● The six traits of writing
○ Ideas (Clarity and focus of the content.)
○ Organization (Logical structure and flow.)
○ Voice (Personal tone and style.)
○ Word choice (Precision and effectiveness of language.)
○ Sentence fluency (Smooth flow and varied sentence structures.)
○ Conventions (Grammar, punctuation, and spelling.)
● Writing assessment
○ Holistic
■ Pros: efficiency, overall quality, simplified feedback
 ■ Cons: lack of specific feedback, subjectivity, limited diagnostic use
(what’s good and bad)
○ Analytic
■ Pros: detailed feedback, objective and transparent, formative assessment
■ Cons: time-consuming, more fragmented less general focus, potential
overload for students to be overwhelmed
● Convention of writing (spelling)
○ Principles of English orthography
■ Alphabetic principle (Letters represent sounds.)
■ Pattern principle (Patterns (e.g., “-ing,” “-ed”) govern spelling.)
■ Meaning principle (Morphological meaning affects spelling (e.g., “act”
in “action”).)
○ 5 stages of spelling
■ Emergent spelling (awareness)
■ Semiphonetic spelling (letter-sound correspondences)
■ Phonetic spelling (spelling based on sounds alone)
■ Transitional spelling (common pattern recognition)
■ Standard/conventional spelling (mastery of rules and expectations)
● Literacy across the curriculum
○ Literacy in the content areas (subject-specific)
○ Content area literacy strategies
■ Identity text structure
● Previewing (skim headings and visuals to predict content)
● Skimming & scanning (quickly locate main ideas or specific
details)
■ Build background knowledge
● Anticipation guides (predict and confirm ideas while reading)
● K.W.L chart (know, want to know, learned)
■ Establish a purpose for reading
● Concept ladder (organize ideas step-by-step for deeper
understanding)
● Read,encode,annotate, ponder/reflect (REAP)
● clusters/semantic webs (visualize connections between concepts)
■ Explicitly teach vocabulary (content-specific vocabs)