Building Your Literacy Block

Like me, most of you are probably already thinking ahead of what your daily schedule is going to look like.  Like me, your normal schedule from last year probably got changed around to fit the new needs of the school.  Like me, you are frantically scanning through Pinterest, Facebook and other awesome websites to get some small spark of inspiration.  Well here are some tips and tricks that I have used to help me get started in planning out my Literacy Block for this upcoming school year.

So first thing I did was really think about what are the components that I must have to drive my literacy block.  I always, always refer back to my training on balanced literacy.  It is important to combine each piece as a firm structure that is balanced in all areas of literacy.  Every branch of the literacy block is glued together in the center with small group reading/writing and best teaching practices in literacy.

One non-negotiable that I believe a lot of school don't normally conduct is a time for Reading Intervention.  This is a 30 minute blocked out time in the middle of our Literacy Block where we meet with the most struggling students to help bridge the academic gap in their reading.  This is extra small group reading on top of their guided reading groups.   

My grade level is trying something new this year when it comes to our intervention times.  Instead of taking the lowest struggling students and dividing them amongst the teachers into 4 different small groups.  We are dividing up the whole grade level.  You heard me!  THE. WHOLE. GRADE. LEVEL.  Think about it.  We only have a small percentage of studetns who actually need this form of intervention.  So what are the other students doing?  After being reflective of last year, my team realized that we were reaching our lowest strugglers but we were not fully utilizing that time to extend the students that already knew it.  So instead of a few smalls groups, we will have 4 classes.  2 classes for intervention and 2 classes for enrichment.  This way ALL students are being reached during that 30 minutes of time.  I will post more on the intervention model and how we reach those students throughout the year.

Here is how I scheduled my literacy block for this upcoming school year.  I first needed to know exactly how much time I will have to distribute for each subject I'm hitting during this block.  Our literacy block is typically 120 minutes but because our block is at the end of the day, our grade level was able to squeeze in 10 more minutes! :)

From there I was able to come up with the following outline plan.  I planned out the amount of time for each individual component.

 At the beginning of the school year I typically spend the first 4-5 weeks of school really practicing our routines and procedures.  This helps build stamin and gives time to conduct BOY benchmark assessments.  Keep an eye on the needs of your students over the first few weeks of school.  You may be able to adjust your schedule based on those needs.  You may need more time for guided reading groups, more time to confer one-on-one with your students in writing...who knows?

Its hard to squeeze in so much in such a short amount of time but what helps me with my time management is setting timers on my phone.  I set them at the times of the day when I will conduct each component.  So yes, my alarm is obnoxious informs when its time to move on.  Eventually I can sense when 10 minutes has gone by and my lessons are able to fit in that time frame better.

Check out my Balanced Literacy: A Framework for You Classroom w/ Daily 5 packet on TPT to learn more about the balanced literacy structure and why it is such an important framework to use in your own classroom.

I hope that you found this helpful and please comment below if you have anymore questions about setting up your own Literacy Block! :)