Balanced Literacy: The 3 Balancing Acts

What do we mean by Balanced Literacy? Before you declare that you teach in this way, check out the Lucy Calkin's Teacher College version of BL. As with any educational buzz words, not everyone is in total agreement on the components of Balanced Literacy, but everyone seems to agree on the below three balancing acts:

1. Balance between part and whole (The part is the code of reading, comprehension, & fluency, and the whole is the whole text and integrating the parts.)

2. Balance between reading to, with, and by students

3. Balance in group size (There is a bit of whole group, but most of a Balanced Literacy's teacher instruction takes place in small group or one-on-one/one-on-two.)

Whole; reading by; one-on-one

(when he gets his turn conferring with teacher)

The name of the game is to keep those balancing acts in check. Guard against too much whole group, too much focus on the mechanical part of reading (or not enough), a lack of independent reading... and on and on. It's not easy. But it's OK to plan a balanced week, instead of a balanced day. While we do, of course, want each day to have a mix of part and whole, different sizes of groups, and reading to with and by, not every day can fit it all. So if you have to skip shared reading one day in order to fit a longer read aloud, just make up for it another day.

Columbia University's Teacher's College defines the components of Balanced Literacy as: Reader's Workshop, Writer's Workshop, Small Group work, Shared Reading, Read Aloud, Word Study, and Interactive or Shared Write.

Each of those components corresponds to either part or whole teaching, both being necessary.

Reader's and Writer's Workshop are whole.
Read aloud, word study, interactive writing focus on the parts.
Shared Reading, Small Group work, and Shared Write can be whole OR part.

Yup- it's all one big, balancing act! Are you up to it?

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