Today I enjoyed my first of three visits in grade 2/3 at GT. I was specifically on the lookout for classroom literacy inspiration ✨

The classroom library was sorted by topic. Each book has a coloured dot and a corresponding bin so that students know where to return each book. Students are able to freely choose from these bins based on interest. These are the books that students read during classtime, as opposed to the levelled books that are sent home each week. Our classroom teacher emphasized the importance of using both systems, to keep literacy skills sharp and help students develop a love of reading. This is something that I would definitely “borrow” for my own classroom, as I’ve heard many opinions on both systems. I think that encouraging reading out of interest can create strong, lifelong readers, but it is also important to keep students “on track” with the competencies. I also liked that that is something that they work on at home. I think that this teacher has struck a perfect balance between “levelled” reading and interest-based reading.

There were multiple “alphabets” on the classroom walls – an upper and lowercase alphabet with picture examples of words, an upper and lowercase cursive alphabet, and a UFLI board. The teacher described UFLI as “explicit instructions on phonics”, and states that she references the board throughout the day, but it is also used synchronously with the specific UFLI lessons that she uses.

Something notable that stuck out to me is the students were referencing the specific vocab that they’ve learned through the UFLI program – for example describing a sound in a word as a phoneme.

In terms of promoting literacy, something that I noticed was the abundance of things to read. I saw a tooth tracker, posters of the months and days, class jobs, quotes, labels. There were many opportunities to practice reading in a way that wasn’t overstimulating.