Literacy — defined by Meltzer, Smith, and Clark as the ability to read, write, speak, listen, and think effectively — enables students to learn and to communicate clearly about what they know. Being literate gives people the ability to become informed, to inform others, and to make informed decisions (2001). Literacy is synonymous with learning. The partnerships between reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing — connecting with the ever-increasing knowledge base for each content area — provide the means for thinking among and between concepts and ideas. It is an active process.

By its nature, literacy is social. In being effective critical members of a literacy community, students collaborate with others. Whether it be engaging the ideas of an author or actively discussing and debating issues about their lives with their peers, this collaboration helps students gain an appreciation of themselves, others, and the world. There is a cumulative advantage to the reciprocity of sharing ideas. The more students engage in literacy, the deeper their conceptual understanding and motivation to learn becomes.

Give students a list of the learning targets they are responsible for mastering, written in student-friendly language.Show students anonymous strong and weak examples of the kind of product or performance they are expected to create and have them use a scoring guide to determine which one is better and why.Administer a nongraded quiz part-way through the learning, to help both teacher and students understand who needs to work on what.Highlight phrases on a scoring guide reflecting specific strengths and areas for improvement and staple it to student work.Have students identify their own strengths and areas for improvement using a scoring guide.Have students keep a list of learning targets for the course and periodically check off the ones they have mastered.Give students feedback and have them use it to set goals.Have students graph or describe their progress on specific learning targets.Ask students to comment on their progress: What changes have they noticed? What is easy that used to be hard? What insights into themselves as learners have they discovered?