Introduction
Literacy is a fundamental aspect of communication that is based on comprehending or communicating thoughts, ideas, and intentions between individuals. The educator’s role implies assisting students in developing linguistic and non-linguistic patterns of communication. The literacy instruction covers both receptive and expressive skills and aims at encouraging independent thinkers, readers, and writers represented by the students.
Summary of Observations
Whole Group Instruction
The whole group instruction requires the overall engagement of students to promote literacy skills and knowledge. The majority of educational videos concerning literacy instruction are focused on creating independent learners among the students. One of the most useful techniques is the storytelling that is commonly supported by visual aids. The inner and outer circle activity promotes children’s understanding and explanation of the images. The role-play of problem solutions is another approach to facilitate students’ imagination, dialogue skills, and foster the ability to think. Some of the videos emphasize the educators’ role as life-long learners who specifically learn from their students.
The interactive learning in a whole group requires students to be engaged in the discussions of highly controversial issues. This method is targeted at teaching them to communicate with one another in the classroom, especially with people who have different views. It is crucial to create an environment of empowered and passionate students for high-quality discussions. Therefore, educators should always direct and encourage students to express themselves. This also facilitates the overall interest and involvement in the school process and education. Considering that every student has a voice and every voice matters, it is vital to provide the opportunity to engage in a meaningful way concerning various ideas and situations.
There are three ways of evaluating the content and language include encouraging informal writing, talking about it, and taking notes. The teachers apply the whiteboards to engage the students to express their ideas, draw pictures, and identify the keywords in the text or spelling. Some of the educators use a parallel line that physically arranges students in order to listen to their discussions easily. Such an approach is based on the inner and outer circle method, where students are separated into two circles and face each other to listen and share their works. Hence, the teacher can control the conversations and assist in case of any misconceptions. The core goals that students should pursue is contributing to the idea, offer evidence, and ask appropriate elaborative or clarifying questions.
Small-Group. Individual Instruction
The efficiency of the small group instruction indicates differentiated and data-informed educational opportunities. The smalls-groups activities might emerge within a whole class to focus on the specific tasks and better engage every student. One of the challenges that teachers might face when managing such groups is to work in a focused, uninterrupted way with a small group of students. One of the videos demonstrated the methods to implement a close reading session within a small group. Firstly, the teacher encourages children to make predictions about the text, which was followed by reading and annotating it. The students were focused on investigating the critical details of the text. They further work on their vocabulary development with the aid of text-dependent questions. The final stage implies examining and synthesizing the information that children learned by establishing the connections with the text.
Critique of Observations
Evaluation
The interactive reading is recommended to explore the benefits of reading, increase academic vocabulary, and, thus, strengthen thinking, talking, and writing skills when learning various texts. According to Dickey (2019), an interactive read-aloud for a whole group instruction is developed to maintain student’s ability to “construct meaning in a talk-rich context” (p. 16). Furthermore, it enhances comprehension and promotes making connections within different texts. The shared reading strategy aims at orienting students at the understanding of the meaning in a supported context to make students enjoy the reading and learn about critical concepts. The general teaching method of literacy instruction should be focused on social-emotional learning.
Strengths
The whole group writing educational applications are inherently connected with the reading strategies. Dickey (2019) identifies them as the “mutually supportive language processes,” which broaden and strengthen children’s capacity to engage with complex texts independently and fully comprehend the writing skills (p. 18). The writing skills can be developed in a distinct manner, including communicating, questioning, persuading, synthesizing, and discovering personal thoughts, ideas, and means to express them. Duke and Martin (2018) consider both whole group and small group activities within three approaches to the discussion of informational text. These approaches include “collaborative strategic reading (CSR), questioning the author (QtA), and reciprocal teaching (RT)” (p. 261). The educators implement the CSR method in the whole group lessons, which entails modeling and thinking aloud, as well as students’ role-play. As such, students learn to stimulate their foreknowledge and make predictions, discover unknown or confusing words and ideas, summarize and frame questions about the information learned in the text. The RT, in turn, is conducted in the small-group discussions, where students add to summaries, ask supplementary questions, examine complex sections, and respond to the thoughts of other participants.
Limitations
Within a rapid growth of the Internet and other emerging ICTs (information and communication technologies), there is a need for new literacies to efficiently benefit from their potential. The Internet is commonly becoming a central point of personal and professional lives. Leu et al. (2017) suggest that new literacies should be integrated into classrooms to prepare the students for the “literacy futures they deserve” (p. 10). Furthermore, the continually changing environment determines the new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs. Such rapid development results in misalignments in evaluation and instruction in the context of the irregular nature of modern literacy. This leads to crucial problems within every educational system that lacks the capacity to address these changes.
Recommendations
Considering the online environment, modern literacy instruction demands the valid, credible, and practical evaluations of new literacies. The improvement strategies should be focused on informing instruction and assisting students in becoming better prepared for the age of information and communication. Walpole, Strong, and Riches (2018) suggest the PL (professional learning) strategy as an improving facet that “impacts the classroom practice” (p. 430). The PL might enhance the teachers’ knowledge and skills, as well as their beliefs and behaviors. Thus, educators might be empowered to change their instructions to address the needs of modern students. Most importantly, the PL facilitates a growth mindset in students and is essential for their literacy achievements.
Conclusion
The efficient implementation of literacy instruction ensures successful outcomes demonstrated in students’ performance. Based on the following analysis of the educational videos, the fluency is enhanced by the set of various interactive activities both in whole-group and small-group classrooms. The ultimate aim of literacy instruction is to establish students’ comprehension, reading and writing skills, as well as general skills in communication. However, the most critical aspect of literacy instruction implies transforming students into independent thinkers who can express their thoughts, ideas, and individual perceptions regarding examined information.
References
Dickey, D. (2019). A unique approach to comprehensive literacy: Grades K-6. Scholastic Literacy.
Duke, N. K., & Martin, N. M. (2018). Best practices in informational text comprehension instruction. In L. M. Morrow and L. B. Gambrell (Eds.), Best practices in literacy instruction (6th ed., pp. 250–270). Guilford Publications.
Leu, D. J., Kinzer, C. K., Coiro, J., Castek, J., & Henry, L. A. (2017). New literacies: A dual-level theory of the changing nature of literacy, instruction, and assessment. Journal of Education, 197(2), pp. 1–18.
Walpole, S., Strong, J. Z., & Riches, C. B. (2018). Best practices in professional learning for improving literacy instruction in schools. In L. M. Morrow and L. B. Gambrell (Eds.), Best practices in literacy instruction (6th ed., pp. 429–446). Guilford Publications.