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Building the Foundation: A Suggested Progression of Sub-skills to Achieve the Reading Standards: Foundational Skills in the Common Core State Standards

Building the Foundation: A Suggested Progression of Sub-skills to Achieve the Reading Standards: Foundational Skills in the Common Core State Standards

In this guide, each section targets one grade level in print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency. It also includes instructional examples aligned to the sub-skills and instruction for students who are either struggling and need extra support or intervention, or for students performing above grade-level expectations and require enrichment.

Educator’s Guide: Identifying What Works for Struggling Readers

Educator’s Guide: Identifying What Works for Struggling Readers

This report published on the Best Evidence Encyclopedia (BEE) website provides an extensive review of the research on the outcomes of 27 early childhood programs. Six of the programs produced strong evidence of effectiveness in language, literacy, and/or phonological awareness. All of the effective programs had explicit academic content, a balance of teacher-led and child-initiated activity, and significant training and follow-up support.

Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

This practice guide provides four recommendations for teaching foundational reading skills to students in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Each recommendation includes implementation steps and solutions for common obstacles. The recommendation also summarize and rate supporting evidence. This guide is geared towards teachers, administrators, and other educators who want to improve their students’ foundational reading skills, and is a companion to the practice guide, Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade.

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Guidance for Educators Using a Balanced Literacy Program

Review the “Install This Research-Based Practice Instead” column below to see how you might disrupt practices to demonstrably boost your students’ achievement and allow more of your students to become strong and eager readers. Each characteristic described in the left-hand column presents an opportunity to redesign, adjust, or even radically alter instruction, and replace it with a new practice in the righthand column that is research-proven.

Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

Students who read with understanding at an early age gain access to a broader range of texts, knowledge, and educational opportunities, making early reading comprehension instruction particularly critical. This guide recommends five specific steps that teachers, reading coaches, and principals can take to successfully improve reading comprehension for young readers.

Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teaching of Reading

Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teaching of Reading

These standards provide an evidence-based framework for course content in teacher training programs and instructional reading programs. Written for general educators and specialists, the standards address the needs of all students – students with dyslexia, students struggling with learning to read, and proficient readers. The standards are not a curriculum; they list critical content knowledge, skills, and abilities — the foundation for good reading instruction. They can also be used to help parents select and advocate for effective teaching methods.

Self-Study Guide for Implementing Early Literacy Interventions

Self-Study Guide for Implementing Early Literacy Interventions

A tool to help district and school-based practitioners conduct self-studies for planning and implementing early literacy interventions for kindergarten, grade1 and grade 2 students. This guide is designed to promote reflection about current strengths and challenges in planning for implementation of early literacy interventions, spark conversations among staff, and identify areas for improvement. This self-study guide provides a template for data collection and guiding questions for discussion.

Self-Study Guide for Implementing Literacy Interventions in Grades 3-8

Self-Study Guide for Implementing Literacy Interventions in Grades 3-8

Developed to help district- and school-based practitioners conduct self-studies for planning and implementing literacy interventions. It is intended to promote reflection about current strengths and challenges in planning for implementation of literacy interventions, spark conversations among staff, and identify areas for improvement. This guide provides a template for data collection and guiding questions for discussion that may improve the implementation of literacy interventions.

Structured Literacy: An Introductory Guide

Structured Literacy: An Introductory Guide

Successful literacy instruction and interventions provide a strong core of highly explicit, systematic teaching of foundation skills such as decoding and spelling skills, as well as explicit teaching of other important components of literacy such as vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. This practitioner-friendly publication will help educators and others better understand the definition, characteristics, and purpose of the term and its affiliated principles and practices.

Student Center Activities Aligned to the Common Core State Standards

Student Center Activities Aligned to the Common Core State Standards

This publication helps educators create differentiated reading instruction experiences for their students by showing the relationship between two distinct resources: Student Center Activities (SCA) and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Reading specialists, reading coaches, and teachers will find this document useful in lesson planning, as it contains crosswalks that map the relationships between each SCA and a corresponding, grade-specific standard in CCSS. The guide illustrates how SCAs relate to standards in English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects in K–5.

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Text Features

As students progress through schooling, they are often faced with the challenges of comprehending informational and content area text. Informational texts are known for their use of text features. This guide takes you on a teacher’s journey to understanding the importance of teaching text features and shows you how to apply some of these activities in the classroom and with your students. 

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The Reading Revolution

The story of how Mississippi, Tennessee, and other states in the vanguard of today’s reading revolution have redesigned reading instruction and raised student achievement in thousands of public schools through state level leadership. The states profiled have addressed every aspect of early literacy, from how teachers and prospective teachers are trained to the curriculum they use, how students are assessed, and third grade retention.The report includes recommendations for other states as well as an appendix of each state’s literacy strategies and key legislation. 

Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making

Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making

This guide offers five recommendations to help educators effectively use data to monitor students’ academic progress and evaluate instructional practices. The guide recommends that schools set a clear vision for schoolwide data use, develop a data-driven culture, and make data part of an ongoing cycle of instructional improvement. The guide also recommends teaching students how to use their own data to set learning goals.

Why Teach Spelling?

Why Teach Spelling?

This resource brings together three documents that support the teaching of spelling in today’s schools: a discussion of why spelling matters, a checklist for evaluating a spelling program, and tables of Common Core State Standards that are linked to spelling instruction. Also included is a downloadable checklist for use in evaluating your own spelling program.

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