Characteristics of Effective Literacy Instruction
- Teachers provide the necessary conditions for optimum learning and engagement including creating a safe and supportive environment in which students learn in a meaningful, authentic context.
- Teachers establish and communicate clear, specific teaching points.
- Lessons are organized around “Big Ideas” and explicit connections are made between present and past lessons, students’ lives, other texts or subjects and the real world.
- Teachers prepare students for learning by teaching relevant background knowledge, skills, and academic language and literacies.
- The teacher uses ongoing assessment throughout all lessons and uses the data to measure progress, provide feedback, refine instruction and prepare students for future learning.
- The teacher includes opportunities for students to reflect and assess their own performance and progress.
- Students are taught strategies for learning, remembering, and doing.
- Teachers model, provide examples and give clear directions as they prepare students to take responsibility for their own learning.
- Teachers use different instructional methods, modes, and media in clear, coherent ways.
- Students are asked to generate a range of ideas, interpretations, solutions, questions, and connections.
- Teachers provide meaningful opportunities to practice, perfect, and perform.
- Students interact and communicate with peers and the teacher as they play an active role in their own learning.