Balanced Reading Program Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Balanced Reading Program - Essay Example Such issues have been addressed and overcome by the introduction of a balanced literacy program. The balanced reading approach offers effective techniques for enhancing reading, writing, listening, viewing and speaking skills of the students through its literacy program. According to Cohen and Cowen (2007): â€Å""The primary goal of a balanced literacy program is to teach reading, not as a skill broken into isolated steps, but as a lifelong learning process that promotes higher order thinking, problem solving and reasoning† (Pp. 37). The basic components of a Balanced Literacy Program include: Reading Alouds, Shared Reading, Guided reading, Independent Reading, Modeled/ Shared writing, Interactive Writing, and Independent Writing. The essential components of a Balanced Reading Program, on the other hand include: explicit instruction and practice in essential academic learning requirements which includes phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and thinking skills and strategies etc; Response to reading through writing, discussion and drama; Classroom environment i.e. conducting activities individually or in small groups, focusing on thinking and learning and problem-solving, as well as student interaction; High expectations, clear standards and continuous evaluation; Use of variety of materials such as fiction, non-fiction, and other popular genres; and Daily Reading which includes shared reading, reading to students by teachers, guided reading, and independent reading practice (Holcomb, 2004). This article on â€Å"IQ, Phonological Awareness and Continuous-naming Speed Related to Dutch Poor Decoding Childrens Performance on Two Word Identification Tests" by Kees van den Bos deals with the word identification variables and reading-related variables of intelligence, phonological awareness and continuous naming speed. For the purpose of this study, a series of experiments were conducted on children aged between 10 and 12 years who had poor