Adolescent Literacy Model

The Adolescent Literacy Model (ALM) is a cross-disciplinary literacy approach in which teachers in all disciplines provide gradual-release instruction on specific literacy strategies and integrate those strategies into ongoing content instruction for all students. The model presents the following goals:

 

• opportunities for students to engage in reading, writing, speaking, and listening experiences every day;
• intentionally chosen literacy strategies that make sense in the context of the lesson and classroom that positively impact student learning;
• explicit strategy instruction, utilizing the gradual-release model to provide students with the cognitive space to practice and learn the literacy strategies before attempting to apply them to new content;
• collaboration between teachers to foster common practices that support student understanding of literacy practices.

The ALM is comprised of four distinct components which create a whole-school approach to literacy and instructional design: Literacy Subdomains in Tier 1 Instruction, Professional Learning, Coaching, and Literacy Leadership. It is these four components used in conjunction with one another that can lead to the goals described above. No one component is more important than another, rather each component is strengthened and supported by the others.