How might incorporating balanced literacy activities during my small-group time impact the reading achievement of my 4th grade students?

Seminar Title

How might incorporating balanced literacy activities during my small-group time impact the reading achievement of my 4th grade students?

Balanced literacy

4th Grade

Elementary

Reading

Language Arts

Do you feel like you’re doing the ‘same old thing’ to teach reading? Do you feel like you are not meeting the individual needs of each of your students? Then balanced literacy may be just the thing to help you! By incorporating balanced literacy activities during reading workshop, along with a strong structure, my students’ engagement and achievement has skyrocketed! My research and implementation was geared mainly towards elementary, but could be adapted to fit with older grades. If you believe you (and your students!) could benefit from this discussion about balanced literacy, then this is the session for you!

I began my research with the question: How can I meet all of my students’ individual needs in reading? A review of the literature showed that the main things that impact meeting the individual needs of the students in reading are engagement, motivation, differentiation, and structure. Many of my sources stressed the importance of a balanced literacy approach that incorporated explicit instruction in decoding, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing. All of these components need to be taught and practiced in appropriate proportions. It is essential for the teacher to work with small groups to meet their specific needs. The rest of the students need to be working on meaningful, balanced literacy activities and independent reading. This review of the literature evolved my question to be: How might incorporating balanced literacy activities during my small-group time impact the reading achievement of my 4th grade students? For my action research, I implemented a 60-minute reading workshop time daily that incorporated balanced literacy activities. The students focused on all areas of literacy in small groups with the teacher and also in small groups or independently without the teacher. I analyzed data on the students’ growth in reading fluency, comprehension and strategy usage, and overall reading achievement. Overall, my students have improved in these areas. Creating and maintaining a strong structure has made a big impact on being able to have a smooth-running workshop. I am now interested in how I can use balanced literacy activities to further challenge the students in my class who are very high readers.