This program has been designed to demonstrate a range of teaching strategies that can be used to support literacy development. These explicit instructional strategies can be used with individual children or with small groups of children. Teachers will find these strategies particularly useful for planning Individual Education Plans for groups of children who have been identified as facing difficulties with literacy. These strategies can be used to...

When children begin to read and write they are as interested in information as they are in fiction. But information is not conveyed only with print; the wealth of visual texts are often the clearest communicators of information. Charts, diagrams, cross sections, and maps are a few of the elements that are as critical as the words they supplement. In many cases, the visual text is the clearest way to present information. In this video, Steve Moline...

Small groups are a crucial element of every teacher's reading program, and their importance only grows as teachers work with more diverse learners. Spotlight on small groups gives viewers an in-depth look at two reading groups led by master teacher and author Debbie Diller. Debbie leads the groups through a structured routine (introduction, guided practice, conferring, check-in, and more practice), demonstrating how to balance whole-group and differentiated...

Aunt Chip saves the town of Triple Creek, where everyone has forgotten how to read because of the invasion of television.

Literacy work stations are being embraced in many elementary schools as a way to ensure students of all ages are completing thoughtful, challenging tasks while their teachers meet with small groups of students. Debbie Diller, author of the book Literacy Work Stations, takes you into two primary classrooms to demonstrate how to create a thriving stations program. Patty Terry's first grade students and Vicky Georgas' second graders work in stations...

A wolf learns to read in order to impress a group of farmyard animals he has met.

While literacy development begins long before children are of school age, the kindergarten classroom marks an important moment as students embark on their lifelong journey as writers. This enlightening video program offers a close up view of a master teacher's writing workshop as she focuses on critical topics associated with young children. She addresses conferring with young writers, teaching skills in context, tools for record-keeping, publishing...

It's a common dilemma: teachers need time to work in one-on-one conferences and in small groups with students during literacy workshop. And yet assigning 'busy work' to the rest of the class won't help all students to develop the essential reading and writing skills they need. Can we really expect young readers and writers to tackle challenging work on their own without constant support and intervention from teachers? This question led Gail Boushey...

Learning about literacy is a social act. Young children develop the necessary skills they will need to be competent and confident readers and writers from the people around them and their environment. Children need to know about their language(s) and the sounds and all about print and its uses. They need to develop a love of books and storytelling and have the confidence to express themselves, use their imagination and be creative. It is young children's...

The ability to select just-right books is a key element in developing confident, successful, independent readers. Gail starts this mini-lesson with Joan's K-2 multiage students by modeling how she picks a pair of shoes that are a good fit for her. Having engaged the class, Boushey and Moser show how to use a similar five-step process to select appropriate books: look at the book, consider the purpose and decide, am I interested in it? Do I comprehend...