Culturally Responsive Literacy Instruction

1. Culturally Responsive Literacy Instruction Multidimensional Variables: Cultural, Socioeconomic, Environmental

2. Take advantage of students’: • Culture • Language • Values • Symbols • History • Interests • Experiences • Prior Knowledge/Background

3. Six Characteristics: • Teachers set high expectations • Teachers develop positive relationships with families and community • Teachers exhibit cultural sensitivity • Teacher involve students by using active teaching strategies • Teachers act as facilitators • Teachers use cooperative learning groups

4. Review: 5 Critical Reading Areas • Phonemic Awareness • Phonics • Fluency • Vocabulary • Comprehension

5. Improving Phonological Processing in Middle Level Readers • Explicitly model phonological detection using culturally relevant material • Practice phoneme discrimination with media materials • Purposefully arrange task difficulty • Emphasize clapping names, pictures, and words • Use picture guess • Play “Which One”?

6. Improving Phonological Processing in Middle Level Readers • Use splitting rhymes • Use alliteration when reading stories aloud • Create tongue twisters • Use spoonerisms • Use popular music (preview lyrics first) • Compile a class rhyme book

7. Improving Decoding and Structural Analysis Skills in Middle Level Readers • Diagram sound-letter relationships • Play onset and rime games • Use DISSECT (discover the content, isolate the prefix, separate the suffix, say the stem, examine the stem, check with someone, try the dictionary) to decode words • Play counting and syllabication • Use relevant reading selections • Play rhyming games • Use Word Categories

8. Improving Fluency in Middle Level Readers • Responsibility, opportunities, engagement, demonstration, risk taking, instruction, choice, assessment • Read aloud and modeling • Buddy-reading • Choral reading • Vocabulary and multiple meanings • Use poetry to introduce new words • Spelling instruction – especially high frequency words

9. Improving Vocabulary in Middle Level Readers • Need to develop a large repertoire of academic vocabulary • Independent reading • Individual word instruction • Word-learning strategies • Word consciousness • Morphemic and contextual analysis (break words down to facilitate understanding) • Teach use of dictionary • Peer tutoring flash cards

10. Improving Comprehension in Middle Level Readers • Concept maps and graphic organizers (Venn, cause-and-effect, sequencing, main idea and details) • Cooperative learning (Think-pair-share, roundtable, corners, graffiti, learning together, jigsaw, group investigation) • Literature based reading instruction • Multiethnic and multicultural literature • Student team literature

11. In conclusion,culturally responsive literacy instruction connects students’ backgrounds, interests, and experiences to the standards based curriculum.