Grade-5 teachers, who were nominated by their supervisors as effective in educating their students to be readers and writers, responded to questionnaires about their practice. The 33 teachers claimed commitments to: (1) extensive reading at the heart of their reading instruction; (2) diverse instructional activities (e.g., whole-group instruction, small-group instruction, cooperative grouping, individual reading); (3) teaching of both word-level and higher-order (e.g., comprehension, critical thinking) skills and processes; (4) development of students' background knowledge; (5) student writing, including teaching of mechanics and higher-order composition skills (e.g., planning, drafting, revising as a process); (6) extensive evaluation of literacy competencies using diverse assessments; (7) integration of literacy and content-area instruction; and (8) effects to promote student motivation for reading and writing. Excellent literacy instruction is a balanced articulation of many components, including whole language experiences and skills instruction. (Contains 39 references. An appendix presents a table of data listing elements of instruction reported by teachers.) (Author/RS)