I am so excited about my new book that I co-authored with Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey. THIS IS Balanced Literacy is available for pre-order at Amazon In the book Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey and I define balanced literacy in a new modern way for the TODAY classroom. We discuss the balance between small and large group instruction, fiction and nonfiction text, phonics and comprehension instruction, and skills vs strategy instruction. The answer is that all are part of the balanced literacy classroom.

I have been teaching balanced literacy in my classroom, and teaching others to organize their instruction around balanced literacy approach for over 25 years. I continue to find that balanced literacy works. Balanced literacy is not a one-size fits all approach, and most importantly, balanced literacy does not ignore skills like phonics. We outline steps you can take to implement balanced literacy fully, or partially, in your classroom.