Balanced Literacy Program for Second Grade This paper outlines a sample balanced literacy program and how it is organized for second grade students. In addition, the paper explains instructional approaches that can be integrated in the balanced literacy program to improve students' reading and writing skills. Moreover, the paper gives an insight of school practices that when initiated can improve students' classroom learning. The paper further notes components of balanced literacy

Literacy Coaching: Elementary Grades Learning to read and write begins early in children's development, long before they enter kindergarten. Moreover, literacy skill development in early childhood provides the foundation for children's long-term academic success. Over the past two decades, researchers have identified key emergent literacy skills that develop progressively in children during their preschool years and are highly predictive of later success in learning to read (Elish-Piper, 2011). These skills include

.." And is a concept which has as its basis that "at the beginning of learning, students needs a great deal of support" and over time the support is removed in a gradual manner as the student become prepared to be more independent. Modeling is the process of assisting the students in the construction of meaning and assisting them in learning the necessary strategies and skills in the learning process

Educator Patricia M. Cunningham says in "What Research Says about Teaching Phonics," for example, that children do profit from systematic phonics instruction. However, there is more than one effective way to teach phonics. Positive results are the result of a high level of interaction, classroom management, explicit skills teaching, curriculum integration and a great deal of enjoyable reading and writing practice. References Gambrell, L.B., Morrow, L.M., Pressley, M., & Guthrie, J.T.

As an alternative to the protectionist approach, Kellner advocates a media literacy that demonstrates the potential of new media and technology to empower students. Media can be used as strong avenues of self-expression and social activism (7). We should use media as a tool, and cease viewing the media as the enemy to educated civilization, as a pedestrian form of social expression. Protectionists fail to recognize the positive power of

Decoding: Identifying Improved Techniques and Approaches for Helping Children Learn to Read Because reading is essential to overall academic success, one of the most serious and explosive issues in the United States today is how to meet the educational needs of an increasingly diverse population of students with a wide range of developmental needs. The situation is urgent as well, since current trends in educational achievement suggest that millions of