Balanced Literacy
Components of a Well-Balanced
Literacy Program
• Phonological Awareness
• Working With Letters and Words
Presented by:
Natalie Meek and Melissa Vandermeer
Designed and Developed by Belinda Cini and Melissa Vandermeer
for Rockets
Fern Bluff Elementary, Round Rock ISD, 2000
Components of a Balanced
Literacy Program
Students will have the opportunity to:
• Expand their use and appreciation of oral language.
• Expand their use and appreciation of printed
language.
• Hear quality literature read aloud daily.
• Learn about and manipulate the building blocks of
spoken language.
• Learn about and manipulate the building blocks of
written language.
Components continued...
• Learn the relationship between the sounds of spoken
language and the letters of written language.
• Learn decoding strategies for reading.
• Write daily.
• Relate their writing to reading and spelling.
• Practice accurate and fluent reading.
• Read and comprehend a wide assortment of books
and other texts in a variety of genres.
Component continued...
•Develop and comprehend new vocabulary through wide
reading and direct vocabulary instruction.
• Learn and apply comprehension strategies as they reflect
upon and think critically about what they read.
Approaches for Balanced
Literacy Instruction
The development of reading and writing
skills and strategies occurs within the
context of the reading and writing that
children are doing in the classroom.
Teachers utilize a variety of teaching
approaches to effectively encourage and
develop literacy.
Phonological Awareness
The teacher demonstrates and provides activities to
develop understandings of spoken language.
Letter and Word Study
The teacher demonstrates and provides activities that
teach students how letters work together in words and
how words work together in sentences.
Read To’s
The teacher reads aloud daily from quality literature
and models the reading process, as well as focusing on
a particular teaching point emphasizing story elements,
the writing craft, and/or making meaning.
Shared Reading
The teacher works with the whole class or a small group,
reading together from a text which all students can see.
Guided Reading
The teacher works with a small group of students
who read at the same level and demonstrate similar
behaviors and instructional needs.
Independent Reading
Students have daily opportunities to read books at
their independent reading level.
Write To’s
The teacher models the components of the writing
process by writing pieces on a chart in front of the
child, thinking aloud as she writes.
Shared Writing
The teacher and students compose a message
together, with the teacher doing the actual writing on
a chart in front of the children.
Interactive Writing
Similar to shared writing, the students and teacher write a
piece together while “sharing the pen.”
Writing Workshop
This allows for guided and independent writing, as
students engage in the writing process with teacher
conferencing and support.
What is Phonological Awareness?
Phonological awareness refers to the ability to hear and
manipulate the sounds that make up language.
Teachers provide oral language activities that engage
student in working with the sounds of letters and
words. Instruction progresses through:
• Rhyming
• Sound blending
• Syllabication
• Segmentation
• Phoneme isolation
• Sound substitution
What is Letter and Word Study?
Letter and word study refers to direct instruction and
focused activities designed to build alphabetic knowledge
and increase a child’s understanding of how letters and
words work.
Teachers provide multilevel activities which enhance
students’ abilities to identify and use the relationship
between sounds and letters, use spelling patterns, and
relate new words to known high frequency words.