Balanced Literacy Program provides all necessary components of literacy to develop students’ abilities to read, write, listen and speak effectively. 

 

Integration of skills, concepts, and content should be a common occurrence in the primary classroom.  Balanced literacy encourages and supports this belief.  The balanced reading model combines oral language, written language, and visual language.  Students need to see that these three parts of the model work together and help them to fully understand the concepts they are studying.  (Fitzgerald & Cunningham, 2002).

 

Balanced Literacy stresses the essential dimensions of reading through explicit teaching of phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency and expressiveness, vocabulary, and comprehension. Daily read-alouds, independent reading time, reading workshop, writing workshop, and systematic word study instruction are key features of the approach. Teachers demonstrate the habits and strategies of effective reading and writing through a variety of structures: read-aloud, guided reading, shared reading, interactive writing, and minilessons in reading and writing. By coaching students in individual or small-group conferences, teachers allow students to successfully and independently apply those strategies to their own reading and writing (Shaw & Hurst, 2012).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

Fitzgerald, J. & Cunningham, J.W. (2002, October). Balance in teaching reading: An

instructional approach based on a particular epistemological outlook.  Reading &

Writing Quarterly, 18(4), 353.

Donita Shaw, D., Karen, H.(2012).Education Research International.2012,609271, 9. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/609271