Advanced Literacy Instruction Among Linguistically Diverse Learners

The introduction to the ELA standards states “today’s students need to develop an

increasingly complex set of literacy skills and competencies… To be academically and

personally successful in today’s literacy- and knowledge-based society and economy, every

student needs to develop advanced literacies.” So what specifically are advanced literacies, and

what does the corresponding instructional practice look like?

The Next Generation Learning Standards have a renewed focus on text complexity,

lifelong reading and writing skills and habits, academic language, and the use of diverse types

of literature and texts, collectively geared toward the 21

century language competencies that

students will need. These advanced literacies are “the skills and competencies that enable

communication in increasingly diverse ways and promote the understanding and use of text for

a variety of purposes.” A great challenge of the day is teaching advanced literacy in classrooms

to a variety of student skills and understanding. Through a focus on individual student needs,

and a series of recommendations for the use of contemporary research-based methods tailored

to meet new demands, this set of briefs serves as a guide toward meeting that challenge.

Briefs 1 & 2: Advanced Literacies and Reading Comprehension

Brief 1: Advanced Literacies for Academic Success

• Why they’re important

• Instruction across years

• Expected Outcomes

Brief 2: Reading Comprehension

• Code based + Meaning based = Reading

Briefs 3 through 6: The Hallmarks of Advanced Literacy Instruction

Brief 3: Engaging texts with big ideas and rich content

• Text complexity guidelines

Brief 4: Talk and discussion to build conversational and academic language knowledge

• Shifting perceptions of classroom talk

Brief 5: Write to build language and knowledge

• Writing types to fuel content mastery

Brief 6: Small sets of high-utility vocabulary words to build breadth and depth of

knowledge

• Five principals of effective vocabulary instruction

Briefs 7-8: Instructional Spotlights

Brief 7: Instructional Units of Study

• Depth of Learning

• Learning as a Process

• Interactive Learning

Brief 8: Language Production Projects

• Organize unit around a compelling topic

• Build on Context knowledge from unit

• Built in opportunities to use targeted vocabulary