Resource Library

The Common Core Standards along with grade-level expectations and standards from most states now call for a strong emphasis on reading and writing nonfiction texts — from the beginning. This means that learners of all ages need to become acquainted with the structures and features of informational texts, both as readers and as writers. This guide offers strategies for using those features to enhance understanding and increase efficiency in seeking and recording information and to communicate ideas.

This classroom resource guide highlights solutions for connecting home and school in order to improve student learning and success. Whether you’re a teacher, parent, or district administrator, this guide provides you with relevant and valuable tools and resources for how best to strengthen the bonds between schools, families, and communities for student learning and success.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is the key federal education law that serves students with learning disabilities. Being informed will help you support your child’s learning needs and advocate for his or her success. This guide takes you through the special education process — a process that is the same regardless of your child’s particular difficulties or disabilities. Special emphasis is placed on the category of Specific Learning Disability (which includes dyslexia) — one of the 13 disability categories defined by IDEA. Throughout this guide you will find personal stories that relate the experiences of parents like you, terms to know, and practical tools such as checklists, sample letters, and questions to ask.

This guide for parents provides basic information about dyslexia, common warning signs, and information on how to support your child with dyslexia at home and at school, using audio books and digital books, and accommodating students with dyslexia.

This synthesis of research on K-3 reading interventions presents findings from 12 studies that focused on students with reading difficulties who received supplementary reading interventions for at least 100 sessions. The summaries of the studies are followed by suggested implications for practice.

This guide for parents provides basic information about Response to Intervention (RTI), an example of the three-tier model, progress monitoring, RTI and special education evaluation and eligibility, RTI in action, and questions parents should ask.

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.

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.

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.

This publication helps educators plan differentiated instruction using 72 formatted activities called Instructional Routines, which provide a structure for teaching specific foundational reading skills.