As educators, it is crucial that we understand the important role we have in shaping a child’s future by supporting their literacy development. We must strive to create classrooms that are literacy-rich environments to ensure the literacy development needs of our students are met, including providing meaningful opportunities to practice reading and writing skills and encouraging parents to do the same at home. We must find ways to continually assess their progress and use the resulting data to support the instructional cycle, because, as Tompkins says, “effective teachers link instruction and assessment” (Tompkins, 2017, p. 29). Once we determine what the students already know, where gaps may exist, and set our learning objectives, we need
