Balanced Literacy and Basal Readers

The whole purpose of balanced literacy is to bring students a variety of literacy instruction. Teachers using balanced literacy tailor the literacy instruction to the needs and interests of the students. By relating the literacy instruction to the students, they start to form a love for reading and writing. Within balanaced literacy instruction, teachers bring a variety of reading materials into the classroom the help enhance students' reading ability.

Although basal readers are included in balanced literacy instruction materials, they should not be the sole text used for students literacy exposure. Basal readers provide a number of stories but the reading level is not varied. In a normal classroom not all students are at the same reading level and although the basal readers would be appropriate for some, not all of the students can read them. Also, the stories used in basal readers are not tailored to the interests of the students. Although some of the stories are very interesting and exciting, some of the texts can be boring for students which can decrese their interest in reading in general. Therefore, solely using basal texts in literacy instruction does not coorelate with balanced literacy instruction because it lacks variety and personal connection.

However, I do feel that basal readers can be very useful to begninning teachers because of the numerous lesson ideas that they provide. Some of the stories in basal readers can be great for students and teacher do have the ability to adapt the basal lessons to meet the needs of the students. Basal readers provide teachers with suggestions and guidelines for instruction but teachers still have the liberty adapt the lessons to work in their classrooms.