Gay Su Pinnell and Irene Fountas understand that a high-quality curriculum is the important first step toward good teaching and successful learning. Good curriculum comes from knowing what students can do, can almost do, and need to learn how to do as readers, writers, and language users. In The Continuum of Literacy Learning, Grades K - 8 they combine everything they have learned about literacy development to create a powerful tool that enables curriculum coordinators and literacy specialists to observe teaching and learning, to plan responsive instruction, and to ensure consistency across buildings, grades, or classrooms.
Across the Grades
The Continuum of Literacy Learning, Grades K - 8 places the behaviors and understandings children can be expected to demonstrate on continua that reflect seven critical instructional contexts:
- interactive read-aloud and literature discussion
- shared and performance reading
- writing about reading
- writing
- oral, visual, and technological communication
- phonics, spelling, and word study
- guided reading.
Level by Level
The first six continua are organized by grade, while the guided reading milestones are laid out level-by-level along Pinnell and Fountas' A - Z gradient to facilitate reading instruction at the precise level at which it is most appropriate to support new learning.
This helpful representation of goals for literacy growth make it easy to analyze whether curriculum goals are aligned among grades, buildings, or districts. They can serve as a foundation for the creation of responsive, flexible curriculum documents. And, they present the information in Pinnell and Fountas' Continua for grades K - 2 and 3 - 8 in a different organization that enables literacy specialists and coaches to effectively communicate commonly shared expectations that are grounded in research and expressed as teaching practices. In fact, they provide numerous opportunities for conversations with teachers about:
- planning instruction for individuals, small groups, or a whole class
- assessing children's literacy development
- evaluating student progress and reporting grades
- discussing expectations with parents
- identifying specific needs for targeted intervention.
Discover the convenient, easy-to-read resource that supports every aspect of your curriculum by presenting a unified vision of language and literacy development. Read The Continuum of Literacy Learning, Grades K - 8 and discover the key to a new standard for excellence in literacy education.
