Teachers provide guidance with book choice, where necessary, to ensure appropriate practice and continuous challenge, with a broad range of texts which encourage student success. Teachers confer with individual readers to discuss, relate, and observe what each child already knows and can do. Quality literature in each classroom is defined by appropriate levels of difficulty, a range of interest levels, and multiple copies of many titles in a variety of genres. Buddy reading with peers, siblings, older students, and adults supports this practice. Discussions purposefully connect story reading and writing, often using student experiences as a starting point for discourse.
Teachers model a broad range of text experiences, as well as natural book talk.
Students reflect on their own behaviors as readers and writers, setting high standards for their learning, and observing and evaluating their growth over time. Writing Across the Curriculum Writing for authentic purposes for sustained periods of time on a daily basis enables students to experience the pleasures of authorship and enhances their literacy development. Students draft, revise, and publish their writing, supported by teachers who model effective strategies, confer with individual students and small groups, encourage collaboration and shared learning experiences which provide opportunities to write across the curriculum. Teachers help students demonstrate their strategies for learning, for reflecting on the learning process, and for self-assessing their development as readers. Students make decisions about topic choice, appropriate genre, purpose, and audience.