Supporting Literacy Development Online
By Ashley White
Online learning is different
Teachers know better than anyone that learning online is different from being in a physical classroom. Online learning can be an effective option, but serving students who struggle, particularly with reading and writing, might feel like a tricky obstacle to tackle for many teachers.
Reading, writing, speaking, and listening are the four main components of literacy and students continue to develop these skills throughout their education. Students each have individual learning needs and taking into account the repercussions of the pandemic on student learning, teachers are tasked with supporting students with a unique set of learning gaps.
Online learning can offer students an individualized path to grow in their literacy development with the time and space to process their reading and writing.
Literacy Equity
In an online platform, teachers have the flexibility to offer differentiated literacy instruction to all students, creating a more equitable learning experience. Students are not pulled from a mainstream class or given different curriculum; it is easy for teachers to differentiate online.
Many students, even high achieving ones, have gaps in their literacy development. Scholarowrks outlines the complexity of teaching writing that makes it difficult for high school students to be successful college writers (The Journal of Writing). In short, the high school curriculum does not offer enough explicit instruction on writing nor are all students given the time students need to process this complex task. Students benefit from explicit instruction and frequent, focused writing practice. Online, teachers are able to utilize virtual class sessions and pre-recorded mini-lessons to target specific writing skills while giving students focused time to grapple with the writing process.
Teachers cannot anticipate the specific skill gaps of students in their class, so offering basic differentiated instruction for all gives students a menu of support whether it is a review, reminder, or new information.
Supports to Provide
Using the vocabulary and discourse of a new subject correctly is challenging. One way to scaffold this literacy skill is providing a writing framework for students. According to Jules Csillag in Edweek, it is suggested to “[...] provide a structured support to let students know how to begin, what to focus on, and what a response can look like” (EdWeek). Teachers can offer this valuable literacy support in the student instructions or chunked into parts within the assignment.
Even for older students, explicitly showing how to use content vocabulary and more advanced transitional phrases and paragraph structures can help students grow as writers. Consider having a word bank included in the online instructions to challenge students to use content specific vocabulary in context. Another idea is to link a graphic organizer in a Google Doc or include sentence starters within individual questions when developing a quiz.
Pre-recorded videos are an equitable access point to learning online. Videos paired with assignments increases UDL accessibility for all students. Accessibility does not just benefit students who have a specific learning disability, but any student who needs more processing time, prefers to review concepts to take more effective notes later on, or review examples.
Whether it is recording a live lesson or embedding a pre-recorded mini-lesson within an assignment, all students will benefit. When processing and interpreting written instructions into a written response, video instructions help bridge that gap between the different literacy skills. Students who cannot attend class or have a disturbance in their learning due to illness or absence have equitable access to their lesson through access to the recording. Teachers can use Screencastify or their local district’s video recording tool to record and link recordings to assignments and projects.
Videos paired with assignments increases UDL accessibility for all students. Accessibility does not just benefit students who have a specific learning disability, but any student who needs more processing time, prefers to review concepts to take more effective notes later on, or review examples (Understood).
Teacher Takeaways
Teachers can easily increase literacy support for all students online using their district’s provided tools. Solution Tree Blog outlines some simple activities that can be adapted to online learning using tools from G-Suite specifically related to reading instruction. My favorite takeaway from this site is the ideas on how to increase student choice in the classroom (Solution Tree). Students need to practice frequent reading and writing to optimize growth and engaged students are more willing to practice. Thinking about doing lit circles online? Consider building a general unit about a common theme and allowing students to choose what core text they read that fits into the chosen theme. Scaffold students through their core text by incorporating shorter supplementary texts with skills-focused assignments.
Larry Ferlazzo’s blog has effective writing frames to use when working on teaching writing within the content areas. The ideas on this site can be adapted to any grade level or content area (Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day). If you want to create a bigger impact on student learning, help students transfer their skills by checking in with your grade level or content team to use common language and instruction when teaching students how to write.
Ashley has taught for over fourteen years, half being in online education. Ashley’s literacy specialist background helps her understand the need for more differentiation and direct literacy instruction for all students and she works hard to build that into her curriculum. At SYS, she serves other teachers through her instructional coaching and is passionate about supporting teachers in developing the best possible learning experiences for their students.