Top 12 Literacy Teacher Skills to Put on Your Resume
In today's crowded job market, literacy teachers need to broadcast the right skills—clearly, confidently, and with purpose. The list below spotlights core abilities that show depth of practice and a steady commitment to growing readers and writers who think hard and communicate well.
Literacy Teacher Skills
- Curriculum Development
- Classroom Management
- Differentiated Instruction
- Reading Strategies
- Writing Workshops
- Assessment Tools
- Google Classroom
- Zoom Proficiency
- Interactive Whiteboards
- ESL/EFL Techniques
- Phonics Instruction
- Literacy Coaching
1. Curriculum Development
Curriculum development means shaping a coherent learning journey—texts, tasks, and talk—so students grow in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. It blends standards with real students’ needs, turning goals into sequenced lessons that actually land.
Why It's Important
A strong literacy curriculum aligns skills, content, and assessment, so growth isn’t accidental. It ensures instruction is equitable, cumulative, and nimble enough to meet different learners where they are.
How to Improve Curriculum Development Skills
Build smarter plans, then refine them relentlessly.
Study your learners: Run quick diagnostics, interest surveys, and conferences. Let data and student voice steer decisions.
Map a clear scope and sequence: Spiral key skills across units. Plan for revisits, not one-and-done.
Use multimodal texts: Pair print, audio, visuals, and media so access points multiply.
Align to standards: Pin every lesson to explicit outcomes. Keep success criteria visible and concrete.
Design authentic tasks: Real audiences, real purposes—book reviews, podcasts, letters, presentations.
Tighten assessment: Blend quick checks, rubrics, and performance tasks. Track trends, not just grades.
Iterate with feedback: Use exit tickets, student reflections, and PLC discussions to tweak pacing and texts.
Weave in technology purposefully: Drafting, collaboration, fluency practice—tools should serve learning, not distract.
Plan. Teach. Listen. Adjust. Repeat—until the outcomes match the intention.
How to Display Curriculum Development Skills on Your Resume
2. Classroom Management
Classroom management is the architecture of learning: routines, tone, and structures that keep literacy work humming—discussion-rich, interruption-light, and safe for risk-taking.
Why It's Important
Without order, reading stalls and writing wobbles. With it, students spend time thinking, practicing, conferring, and sharing. That’s where growth happens.
How to Improve Classroom Management Skills
Build calm, predictable momentum.
Co-create norms: Keep expectations few, explicit, and rehearsed. Model the small things—how to confer, how to annotate, how to ask for help.
Routinize the day: Entry tasks, mini-lesson, practice, feedback, share-out. Predictability frees up cognitive space.
Engage by design: Choice in texts and tasks. Talk structures that pull in every voice.
Respond, don’t react: Quiet redirection, proximity, private check-ins. Consequences consistent, never public theater.
Notice what’s going right: Affirm effort, collaboration, persistence. Reinforce the climate you want.
When students feel safe and seen, literacy takes off.
How to Display Classroom Management Skills on Your Resume
3. Differentiated Instruction
Differentiation means adjusting content, process, and products so every learner moves—whether they need scaffolds, acceleration, or simply a different doorway into the same goal.
Why It's Important
Classes are mosaics. Differentiation keeps rigor high while ensuring access, so no student sits stuck or coasts unchecked.
How to Improve Differentiated Instruction Skills
Small shifts, big impact.
Diagnose first: Reading levels, writing samples, language profiles. Let evidence guide groupings and supports.
Clarify targets: Post learning intentions and success criteria. Offer multiple paths toward them.
Use flexible groups: Regroup by skill, interest, or strategy work. Groups change as needs change.
Vary the how: Mini-lessons, stations, guided reading, conferring, and tech-supported practice.
Differentiate product: Essays or podcasts, argument or feature article—same standards, varied formats.
Layer scaffolds: Sentence frames, graphic organizers, word banks, models, think-alouds.
Reflect and recalibrate: Quick checks and conferences tell you when to pivot.
Equity lives in these choices.
How to Display Differentiated Instruction Skills on Your Resume
4. Reading Strategies
Reading strategies are the moves readers make—predicting, questioning, visualizing, annotating, summarizing, inferring—to crack complex texts and keep meaning in view.
Why It's Important
Strategy instruction turns passive reading into active thinking. Students become independent navigators, not passengers.
How to Improve Reading Strategies Skills
Teach the moves, name them, practice them—often.
Pre-reading purpose: K-W-L, previews, and goal-setting to prime the brain.
Guided practice: Think-alouds and shared annotation show how expert readers work a page.
Vocabulary in context: Morphology, context clues, and quick word-study bursts build durable knowledge.
Fluency reps: Repeated reading, partner reads, and reader’s theater for accuracy, rate, and expression.
Comprehension routines: Visualize, question, infer, summarize. Try SQ3R for dense informational text.
Discussion structures: Literature circles and Socratic seminars to deepen analysis and perspective-taking.
Smart tech: Leveled articles, audio supports, and annotation tools that amplify—not replace—thinking.
Joyful reading: A robust classroom library and sacred time to read by choice.
Frequent check-ins: Conferences, running records, and response notes to spot needs early.
Home connection: Simple prompts and tips so families can nudge conversation about books.
Readers grow by doing the work of real readers, day after day.
How to Display Reading Strategies Skills on Your Resume
5. Writing Workshops
Writing workshops create a living lab for writers: mini-lessons, sustained writing time, conferring, peer response, and share-outs that make craft visible and revision normal.
Why It's Important
Writers learn by writing, not by worksheets. A workshop builds agency, voice, and stamina while giving every student targeted feedback.
How to Improve Writing Workshops Skills
Make the process transparent and the feedback fast.
Clear objectives: Short, focused mini-lessons tied to a single craft move or convention.
Study diverse mentor texts: Multiple genres, multiple voices. Let students see what good looks like—then try it.
Structured peer review: Protocols, roles, and checklists keep feedback kind, specific, and useful.
High-interest prompts: Choice-driven topics and authentic purposes spark momentum.
Model your own writing: Draft live. Show the messy middle and the small fixes.
Efficient feedback loops: Conferences, comment banks, and rubrics that make next steps unmistakable.
Revision culture: Multiple drafts, reflection notes, and before/after comparisons to celebrate growth.
Ongoing learning: Stay current with practices from trusted professional organizations and literacy networks.
When students see themselves as writers, quality follows.
How to Display Writing Workshops Skills on Your Resume
6. Assessment Tools
Assessment tools capture what students know and can do—running records, rubrics, quick checks, performance tasks, and digital measures that guide next steps.
Why It's Important
Good assessment illuminates patterns. It directs instruction, targets intervention, and showcases progress in ways grades alone never will.
How to Improve Assessment Tools Skills
Measure what matters, then act on it.
Balance assessment types: Diagnostic, formative, summative, and authentic tasks—each serves a purpose.
Align to objectives: Every item and rubric row should point straight at the standard.
Use clear rubrics: Student-friendly descriptors, exemplars, and co-created criteria drive ownership.
Leverage technology wisely: Quick polls, auto-graded quizzes, and dashboards for fast feedback.
Build student self-assessment: Goals, reflection logs, and checklists that make growth visible.
Ensure cultural relevance: Texts and prompts that reflect students’ identities and experiences.
Tight progress monitoring: Short, frequent probes for decoding, fluency, and comprehension to steer intervention.
Assessment is a flashlight, not a hammer.
How to Display Assessment Tools Skills on Your Resume
7. Google Classroom
Google Classroom, part of Google Workspace for Education, organizes assignments, streamlines feedback, and keeps class materials in one place—simple, searchable, and shareable.
Why It's Important
It cuts friction. Teachers communicate faster, students submit cleaner work, and feedback cycles shorten.
How to Improve Google Classroom Skills
Turn it into the hub your literacy class deserves.
Quizzes and forms: Build quick checks for comprehension or vocabulary to guide your next mini-lesson.
Collaborative docs: Real-time peer review, comment threads, and version history for process portfolios.
Multimedia prompts: Add short videos, audio snippets, or images to anchor reading and writing tasks.
Organize with Topics: Units, genres, or weeks—keep navigation intuitive and clutter-free.
Support access: Tools like text-to-speech, dictionaries, and read-aloud settings help diverse learners.
Use rubrics: Attach rubrics to assignments for crystal-clear expectations and faster scoring.
Differentiate assignments: Individualize or assign to small groups with just a few clicks.
Guardian summaries: Keep families in the loop without extra emails.
When the platform hums, students focus on the work, not the workflow.
How to Display Google Classroom Skills on Your Resume
8. Zoom Proficiency
Zoom proficiency means running virtual literacy learning that feels human—smooth screen shares, purposeful breakout rooms, crisp audio, and tools that keep students interacting, not drifting.
Why It's Important
When online, pedagogy meets platform. Strong Zoom habits protect instructional time and amplify student voice.
How to Improve Zoom Proficiency Skills
Master the essentials, then elevate the experience.
Nail the basics: Audio, camera, screen share, chat. Quick housekeeping at the start keeps class on track.
Breakout rooms with purpose: Clear roles, timers, and deliverables. Pop in, listen, nudge.
Interactive tools: Whiteboard for modeling, polls for checks, reactions for quick reads of the room.
Manage the space: Waiting room, mute controls, and spotlighting to minimize chaos.
Record wisely: With permission and privacy in mind—great for review and absent students.
Accessibility: Live captions, readable fonts, and materials sent in advance.
Test and update: Keep software current and do quick tech checks before high-stakes lessons.
Less friction, more learning.
How to Display Zoom Proficiency Skills on Your Resume
9. Interactive Whiteboards
Interactive whiteboards bring text to life—dragging, annotating, zooming, and layering media so literacy lessons become immersive rather than static.
Why It's Important
They boost engagement and make thinking visible. Students see the moves of reading and writing in shared space, then try them themselves.
How to Improve Interactive Whiteboards Skills
Turn the board into a collaborative canvas.
Interactive close reading: Highlight, color-code, and move evidence inline. Students justify choices on the spot.
Multimedia context: Short clips, images, and audio to build background knowledge before diving into text.
Collective writing: Co-construct thesis statements, outlines, and revision plans live.
Games and checks: Quick vocabulary matches, phonics drills, and comprehension quizzes for lively practice.
Personalized pathways: Save boards, assign snapshots, and revisit prior learning during intervention.
Templates that travel: Sentence stems, graphic organizers, and annotation frames you can reuse and adapt.
Make interaction the default, not the exception.
How to Display Interactive Whiteboards Skills on Your Resume
10. ESL/EFL Techniques
ESL/EFL techniques support multilingual learners with targeted instruction across reading, writing, speaking, and listening, honoring home languages while building English proficiency.
Why It's Important
Access and equity. With the right supports, emergent bilinguals accelerate language growth and fully join the academic conversation.
How to Improve ESL/EFL Techniques Skills
Prioritize clarity, practice, and meaningful talk.
Heavy visuals: Pictures, realia, charts, and gestures to ground new vocabulary and concepts.
Structured interaction: Games, role-plays, and talk routines that lower anxiety and raise participation.
Leverage technology: Translation tools, audio support, and leveled texts for just-right access.
Listening first: Short, purposeful listening tasks to tune ears to rhythm, stress, and meaning.
Right-fit reading: Graduated texts and repeated reads to grow fluency and confidence.
Frequent writing: Sentence frames, guided paragraphs, and quick writes to build control.
Daily speaking: Oral rehearsal before writing. Pronunciation practice woven into content.
Differentiate supports: Word banks, anchor charts, bilingual glossaries, and modeled responses.
Ongoing feedback: Celebrate meaning first, then coach form. Track growth visibly.
Cultural responsiveness: Texts, prompts, and examples that reflect students’ identities and funds of knowledge.
Language grows fastest when it’s used for real purposes with high support.
How to Display ESL/EFL Techniques Skills on Your Resume
11. Phonics Instruction
Phonics instruction teaches sound-symbol relationships explicitly and systematically so students can decode, encode, and tackle unfamiliar words with confidence.
Why It's Important
It’s a cornerstone of the science of reading. Accurate decoding unlocks fluency, which unlocks comprehension.
How to Improve Phonics Instruction Skills
Be explicit, cumulative, and data-driven.
Start with assessment: Pinpoint phonemic awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and pattern mastery.
Systematic sequence: Move from simple to complex patterns; review is built-in, not an afterthought.
Multisensory practice: Say it, tap it, build it, write it. Engage eyes, ears, voice, and hands.
Decodable texts: Immediate application of taught patterns in connected reading.
Blend and segment daily: Word chaining and phoneme manipulation to strengthen flexibility.
Teach irregular words: Map tricky parts explicitly so memory sticks.
Progress monitor: Short, frequent probes to adjust pacing and groupings.
Precision now prevents frustration later.
How to Display Phonics Instruction Skills on Your Resume
12. Literacy Coaching
Literacy coaching is sustained, job-embedded support—co-planning, modeling, co-teaching, and data cycles—that helps teachers sharpen practice and lift student outcomes.
Why It's Important
Teachers deserve a thought partner. Coaching translates research into classroom moves and builds a culture of continuous improvement.
How to Improve Literacy Coaching Skills
Relationship first, impact always.
Build trust: Confidentiality, consistency, and empathy make honest reflection possible.
Anchor in evidence: Use observation notes, student work, and assessment data to set precise goals.
Customize the support: One size fits no one—adapt models, resources, and timelines to teacher context.
Model and co-teach: Demonstrate strategies, then share the wheel. Debrief immediately.
Short cycles, clear wins: Plan-Do-Study-Act rhythms that show measurable growth quickly.
Elevate reflection: Protocols and questions that push thinking from “what happened” to “what next.”
Leverage tools: Shared planners, video reflection, and resource hubs to keep momentum between meetings.
Great coaching leaves teachers empowered, not dependent.
How to Display Literacy Coaching Skills on Your Resume
