Oct 10, 20233 min read

Balanced Literacy

Updated: Jan 21

Balanced Literacy is an approach that promotes complete literacy development among students. This balanced approach intends to help students learn to read and become lifelong learners.

This approach aims to strike a balance between whole language and phonics when learning to read. Phonics, as it was discussed last week, is a method of reading that helps beginning readers understand how letters are linked to sounds (phonemes) to form letter-sound correspondences and spelling patterns. Whole language is a method of teaching children to read by recognizing words as whole pieces of language. Proponents of this philosophy believe that language should not be broken down into letters and decoded as in phonics based instruction. Instead, they believe that language is a complete system of making meaning, with words functioning in relation to each other in context. In essence balanced literacy strives to take the best elements of both whole language and phonics and incorporate them into a literacy program.

Fountas and Pinnell (1996), early proponents of balanced literacy, define the method as a “philosophical orientation that assumes that reading and writing achievement are developed through instruction and support in multiple environments using various approaches that differ by level of teacher support and child control.”

Their method involves a combination of whole-group instruction, small-group instruction, and independent learning with a focus on authentic texts. Today a balanced literacy framework consists of five components. These include read aloud, guided reading, shared reading, independent reading, and word study.

In 2019, A national survey found that about 72% of American educators report using balanced literacy to teach reading. One of the reasons for its popularity is its openness to interpretation.

A former preschool teacher from Long Island suggests read alouds are a great tool to get students to think beyond the story and apply it to their everyday life. “During our read alouds we would frequently do things like, sequencing, or get them interacting with the book in terms of finger puppets or felt story boards that they could use to interact as they’re reading through the story. We could sequence things or pull out vocabulary and understand it a little bit more, prediction,how a book goes, beginning, middle end, author, title. Offering open ended questions and things of that nature. “

As a strong proponent of language immersion through print in the classroom to help familiarize students with the written word, it has been suggested by one preschool teacher from New York, with more than 30 years of experience, that

“ We label everything in our classroom. We have labels for kitchen, for bathrooms, for desk, computer, and then their names. Their names are on all their chairs. We have name sticks, that's the way we do attendance. So from the very beginning they're recognizing their name. We start from the very beginning with a lot of letters, a lot of words, and then from there we begin with letters. So we do alphabetical order. Each week there will be a letter we emphasize. From day one we have a story we read that emphasizes all of the sounds.. This is our ‘Q’ book, so everything in it is related to Q."

Guidance for Educators Using a Balanced Literacy Program

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While no one method has been proven to be the only effective method to teach early reading, as an educator, it is in the best interest of students to take the best of every method they encounter.

What Balanced Literacy has taught us:

Importance of a print-rich classroom
Love of reading aloud to children
Procedures to teach students how to behave as readers and writers
Events that bring joy and accountability (author’s chair, publishing parties, partner shares, etc.)
Ways to set up centers so that we can teach in small groups
Methods for introducing and organizing reading and writing materials
Routines to reinforce skills (Morning Message, Shared Reading, Interactive Writing, etc.)
Benefits of participating in a warm and responsive professional learning community

Adapted from:https://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/right-to-read/seeing-good-balanced-literacy-and-moving

Applying the Approach

A balanced literacy approach in the classroom does not only focus on the sounding out of words and other phonics related lessons, but also surrounds the students with the written word throughout their environment for them to explore. Students are using and learning language to discover the world around them. Teachers may conduct read alouds encouraging thinking and comprehension or offer explicit phonics instruction through highly engaging skills lessons. Students in this classroom have the freedom to choose books and texts they want to read. They may choose to read in small groups or individually to discover language on their own.