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Great blog on how to be an amazing teacher of Reading.

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Blog — Jennifer Serravallo Author & Consulting

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Read full transcripts of the To the Classroom Podcast as well as blogs authored by Jennifer Serravallo and members of her consulting team.

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A site that translates books for students.

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Unite for Literacy provides free digital access to picture books, narrated in many languages. Literacy is at the core of a healthy community, so we unite with partners to enable all families to read with their young children.

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Article about Being a Teacher of Reading

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Maine Social Studies Standards in progress

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Maine Social Studies Standards in progress

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Standards will be finalized Spring 2019

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The Maine Learning Results, which include the History/Social Studies component of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts (ELA) & Literacy, are the Maine social studies standards. Local schools make decisions about the identification of resources that will support teachers and students in their learning and understanding in social studies. The Maine Department of Education offers materials on this page to assist schools in their local efforts.
Note: The Maine Learning Results for all subject areas, as well as the associated glossary, are available online.

Maine Learning Results (including CCSS). Supporting materials and information regarding the Maine Learning Results for Social Studies.

National Social Studies Standards & Frameworks. Links to information and standards documents developed by national disciplinary organizations. The Maine Department of Education does not endorse these standards and frameworks, however, this compiled list of resources is provided for educators' consideration.

Supporting Materials Specific to Social Studies
College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies

The C3 Framework focuses on inquiry skills and key concepts of social studies and provides connections to CCSS. The document is intended to serve as a resource for states and local districts to consider when developing or upgrading standards.

As a member of the Social Studies Assessment Curriculum and Instruction Collaborative of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), Maine was invited to participate in a targeted review of the C3 Framework. In April 2013, the Maine C3 Review Team (comprised of more than 30 educators from all grade levels and all regions of the state) provided feedback on the draft document. Our in-state review process was part of a larger targeted review where over 3,000 respondents from the social studies community offered feedback on the C3 Framework. These stakeholders represented K-12 educators, university faculty, state education personnel, professional organization representatives, educational publishers and cultural organizations.

More information and a free copy of the C3 Framework may be found on the National Council for the Social Studies' C3 web page.

History/Social Studies in CCSS for ELA & Literacy

The Maine Learning Results have been updated to include a History/Social Studies component in the CCSS for ELA & Literacy. The CCSS support a shared responsibility for students' literacy development and emphasize that, while students learn to read and write in ELA, they apply and develop specific literacy skills through engagement in social studies content.

Social studies is incorporated in the K-5 ELA Standards with expectations for reading, writing, speaking, listening and language applicable to a range of subjects with an emphasis on informational texts.

CCSS for Literacy in History/Social Studies parallel the 6-12 ELA Standards. Both use the same College Career Ready Anchor Standards and include grade span standards particular to the discipline(s).
Additional CCSS Resources for Consideration

Professional Development Modules. Learn more about the CCSS. To get started, check out Module 1: Getting Familiar, which is intended to help all teachers, not only ELA teachers, become familiar with CCSS.

Maine DOE ELA Resources. The Department has compiled these CCSS ELA resources, which social studies educators may also find helpful, as part of our commitment to supporting Maine's learning community.

National History Day. Promotes the development of critical-thinking and problem-solving skills; research and reading skills; oral and written communication skills; and presentation skills.

Civics and the CCSS: Proven Practices in Civic Learning. View materials from the Maine DOE social studies specialist's presentation (PDF, 268KB) at the 2012 Maine Council for the Social Studies Conference, and view a guide developed by the Los Angeles County Office of Education to align civic education and the CCSS.

National History Education Clearinghouse. Enter "Common Core" into this site's search engine to yield an array of resources.

Library of Congress. Provides strategies, resources and professional development modules for K-12 teachers. In addition, the fall 2012 issue of the Teaching with Primary Sources Journal illustrates how primary sources can support teaching to meet the CCSS.

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Standards & Instruction - Social Studies

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The Maine Learning Results, which include the History/Social Studies component of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts (ELA) & Literacy, are the Maine social studies standards. Local schools make decisions about the identification of resources that will support teachers and students in their learning and understanding in social studies.

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Standards will be finalized in Spring 2019

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Standards & Instruction - Science & Technology | Department of Education

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As part of the Maine Department of Education's commitment to supporting schools in the delivery of effective K-12 science and technology instructional programs, this page provides links to resources to support implementation of Maine's science and technology academic standards.

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Lesson at each grade level for teachers to use

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The NSTA Next Generation Science Standards Hub offers information, resources, news, professional learning opportunities, and expert advice in understanding and implementing the Next Generation Science Standards - NGSS

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PORTLAND - Even in this digital age, handwriting is still a foundational skill that helps develop proficiency in reading, writing, language and critical thinking.

That's why the East End Community School has added handwriting, including cursive, back into the curriculum for students in pre-kindergarten through third grade this year.

Karen Fream, the literacy coach at East End, said recent studies show that learning to write by hand is critical for students in younger grades because it "triggers many other learning benefits."

"Handwriting activates comprehension and connection building in the brain" in ways that typing does not, she said. In fact, Fream said research she relied on shows writing by hand can actually strengthen the learning process.

East End School is now making handwriting a daily focus, Fream said, because "we began noticing there was a lot of inconsistency in teaching handwriting" throughout the building, and "we noticed a lot of student handwriting was illegible."

The question then became, "how do we solve this issue? We knew we needed to do something, so we did a lot of research and reviewed a number of different programs and handwriting curriculum and then created a plan."

She said students in pre-K through third grade are now spending about 10 minutes a day concentrating on learning the skill of handwriting and forming letters, which, she said, "provides a foundation for higher-order skills."

Students in pre-K through second grade are focusing on the mechanics of letter formation, while the third-graders are moving on to beginning cursive, Fream said.

For instance, in kindergarten classrooms, teachers are incorporating some aspect of handwriting into each learning station. She said the first-graders are using the Learning Without Tears curriculum.

The second-graders are using the D'Nealian curriculum, which Fream said allows for a better and easier transition into beginning to learn cursive in third grade.

While teaching keyboarding has often replaced a focus on handwriting in schools across the country, Fream said her research showed that learning "correct letter formation can significantly decrease a student's difficulty in reading and writing."

Learning handwriting, she said, also provides students with the "ability to express themselves more readily." In addition, Fream said studies show students can remember better if they write information down.

Learning to write by hand allows students to "gain fluency and automaticity in this skill that has been shown to bolster reading and writing abilities," according to the "Handwriting in the 21st Century? Research Shows Why Handwriting Belongs in Today's Classroom" white paper.

"When students do not adequately develop handwriting skills, the negative implications can be lifelong," the paper adds. "Without consistent exposure to handwriting, research indicates that students can experience difficulty in certain processes required for success in reading and writing."

Those deficits include difficulty in retrieving letters from memory, spelling accurately, extracting meaning from a text or lecture and interpreting the overall context of words and phrases.

Other research Fream looked at said "handwriting is a key step in cognitive development" and that even the act of holding a writing utensil and touching it to paper can be a key sensory motor exercise.

Handwriting is simply not the same as scanning a typewritten text, Fream said: "Students still need to learn this skill."

A student at East End Community School in Portland practices correct letter formation during a classroom session on handwriting, which has been brought back into the curriculum this year.

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Rewriting the script: Portland school brings cursive back into the classroom

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PORTLAND - Even in this digital age, handwriting is still a foundational skill that helps develop proficiency in reading, writing, language and critical thinking. That's why the East End Community School has added handwriting, including cursive, back into the curriculum for students in pre-kindergarten through third grade this year.

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High Impact Teaching Strategies

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Classroom Libraries and how to sort the leveled texts.

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Listen to my interview with Jen Serravallo (transcript):
Sponsored by Peergrade and Microsoft Inclusive Classroom

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

A few weeks ago, a teacher named Isabelle O'Kane sent me a direct message on Twitter. She had been reading a debate that was raging all over social media, and she wondered if it was something I might want to write about. The debate took place in response to a single tweet sent out by literacy experts Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell:

The classroom library should NOT be organized according to level, but according to categories such as topic, author, illustrator, genre, and award-winning books. #FPLiteracy pic.twitter.com/hxJNDow3Qz

- Fountas & Pinnell (@FountasPinnell) September 21, 2018

Teachers responded to the tweet from all directions: Some shouted hallelujah, because it supported what they were already doing. Others agreed, but argued that their hands were tied because administration required leveled libraries. Quite a few insisted that the best approach was to do both; yes, students should be able to seek out books based on interest, but without levels, how would they ever find appropriate books on their own? And some threw up their hands entirely, wondering if a single, clear answer was ever going to present itself.

Because my training and classroom work has all been with students in grade 6 and above, I don't have a lot of experience or knowledge on this topic, but it definitely seemed like something teachers needed help with.

So it was pretty serendipitous when literacy consultant and author Jennifer Serravallo contacted me right around that time about her new book, Understanding Texts & Readers: Responsive Comprehension Instruction with Leveled Texts.

In the book, Serravallo takes a deep dive into the question of how best to match texts to readers. She starts with a discussion of why we have leveled texts to begin with, what their original purpose was, and the missteps we often make as teachers when using them. Then she explores the levels themselves-for fiction and non-fiction-and unpacks the characteristics to look for in each one. Finally, she brings it all together, showing teachers how to combine their knowledge of text levels and students to assess student comprehension, set goals, and match students with books that are just right for them.

In our conversation, which you can listen to on the podcast player above, we talked about the mistakes a lot of teachers and administrators make in how they use leveled texts, and what they should be doing instead.

What Are Leveled Texts?

When schools first attempted to differentiate reading instruction, they did it with texts that were written specifically for that purpose, like the SRA cards that were popular in the 1960s and 70s. Although these programs offered different levels to match student readiness, "(they didn't) actually offer kids real language structures or really interesting storylines," Serravallo explains. "And kids were not able to read those with as much comprehension as real children's literature."

In the 1990s, a shift came when teachers started looking at ways to level real books, books that were not written with "levels" in mind. Two types of text leveling emerged around this time:

Quantitative Leveling: Systems like the Lexile Framework leveled texts through computer programs that measured dimensions like text length and complexity.

Qualitative Leveling: This type of leveling is done by humans, and while it considers things like text length and complexity, it also takes more nuanced qualities into consideration, like whether a text delivers information in a purely straightforward way or contains multiple levels of meaning. One popular qualitative system is Fountas and Pinnell's Text Level Gradient.

Common Mistakes with Leveled Texts

When leveled texts are used in classroom and school settings, teachers and administrators make some well-intentioned but significant missteps that can negatively impact students' growth as readers.

1. Leveling Readers Instead of Books

One of the biggest mistakes Serravallo sees is labeling students by text levels. "Levels are meant for books, not for kids," she explains. "There's really no point in time when a kid is just a level, just one. There's a real range, and it depends on a lot of other factors."

This misstep, she says in her book, has had negative consequences. "Kids nationwide have become aware of something that many would argue they shouldn't be aware of at all...causing some students to compete, race through levels, and experience shame."

To compound the problem, a number of schools have begun basing student learning objectives (SLOs)-part of teacher evaluation protocols-on these levels: "(Districts will) say, 'You come up with goals for your students, and then we're going to measure and make sure you met your goals.' And what's happening is that I find teachers are using levels (to measure growth)-'This student's starting off at an L and is going to end up at a P,' or something like that."

This type of system often prompts teachers to put books in students' hands that they're not quite ready for. "The teacher is going to be pushing the student into harder texts in order to meet the goal," Serravallo says. "You've got this kid being pushed through because they can maybe decode the text but not because they're actually getting everything they can from it in terms of comprehension and meaning making. If the kids are not thinking on that level, why be pushing them into harder and harder books? Why not work with them in texts that they choose to help them get more from the texts that they're reading?"

What to do instead: Rather than focus narrowly on text levels, teachers should get to know students as readers from a variety of angles. "Factors such as motivation, background knowledge, culture, and English language proficiency should all be on our radar when considering how to help students find books they'll love, and how to evaluate students' comprehension and support them with appropriate goals and strategies."

2. Restricting Book Choice Based on a Single Assessment

"One of the ways that levels get misused is that teachers administer one assessment," Serravallo says. "It's usually a short assessment. It could be a computer assessment that's a short text with multiple choice, it could be a running record where kids read a selection of a text and answer a few questions. So there's this one assessment, and then from that they get a level or a level range, and they say to the kids, you can only pick from that level range. But the problem is that's misunderstanding all of the different variables that kids bring to the table, things like motivation, prior knowledge, stamina, their command of English, the genre. There's so many variables."

What to do instead: Take multiple factors into account when pairing students with texts. "We need to look at a couple of different assessments," Serravallo recommends, "and we need to account for these variables, and then once we have a sense of about where kids are able to read, we still need to be flexible when they go to choose. So if I have a kid who knows a lot about dinosaurs who typically reads books around Level O-P, if it's a dinosaur book and he wants to read it, and it's a Level R or S, maybe that's okay."

3. Inflexibility

Even if we have a pretty thorough idea of what types of texts would be a good fit for a student, only allowing them to choose books from a narrow range of levels doesn't take other important factors into account. There may be times when a student wants to challenge herself by going for a book that will require more support to get through, and other times when students want to read an easier book for fun.

"Saying to a student, 'You are a Level __ so you can only read Level __ books' is deeply problematic," Serravallo writes in her book. "We can use reading levels to help guide student choice, but levels should never be used to shackle a reader."

What to do instead: Use reading levels as a shortcut to knowing some likely features of books, but allow other factors to influence book choices. In her book, Serravallo shows us how to adjust our language to help students make these decisions for themselves: Instead of saying something like, "That book is too hard for you," she recommends saying something like, "That book is harder than what you typically read. Let's think about how I/your friends can support you as you read, if you find you need it."

4. Organizing Books by Level

While Serravallo admits to organizing the books in her classroom library in leveled bins years ago, "I've changed my thinking after seeing the consequence of what that does to kids' reading identity. What ends up happening is kids go to the classroom library and they say, 'I'm a Q. I'm going to pick a Q book.' And they go to the Q bin and they only look in the Q bin."

What to do instead: "I would organize them by topic, by genre, by author," Serravallo says, "So the first thing kids see when they go to the library is identities. And they think about themselves first before they think about level: Who am I as a reader, and what am I interested in reading?"

For her own purposes, Serravallo would still keep text levels on books, but put them in an inconspicuous place on the book, like on the inside of the front cover. "That way, when a child is holding a book, it's not like everyone can see the level on the book, so it's a little bit more private. But I like that having them on the book, because if I haven't read that book, I can peek at the level and be like, oh yeah, okay. Complex characters in this one. And I can use that to guide my discussions when I'm working with kids."

To learn more, check out Serravallo's book Understanding Texts and Readers, join the Reading and Writing Strategies Community on Facebook, or visit her website at jenniferserravallo.com.

Come back for more.
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What Are the Best Ways to Use Leveled Texts?

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Listen to my interview with Jen Serravallo (transcript): Sponsored by Peergrade and Microsoft Inclusive Classroom This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

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Professional Development on Accountable Talk 

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Professional Development on Accountable Talk 

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Slideshow October 2018

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Great site to purchase multicultural books.

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Great site to purchase multicultural books.

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Books for Girls!

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This resource guide was created in direct response to the multiple requests made by educators, parents and students. Like Marley Dias, so many of you have asked for books with black girls as the main characters. And because of you, we have received thousands of books. Here we are sharing with you the first 700 book titles. We have not yet catalogued all the books. As a small organization with only two full-time staff, our resources are limited. Beginning in April, each month we will provide you with updates of new book titles.

This resource includes words of welcome from Marley Dias, Creator of the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign. It also includes comments from Dr. Lauren Wells, Chief Education Officer, City of Newark who offers us tips on how we can foster and promote reading and literacy among our children.

As the President and Co-Founder of GrassROOTS Community Foundation, I have added a few words and call to action to the guide. My charge to parents and caregivers is a simple one: listen to your children, encourage them as well as promote their reading and literacy skills. Reading is a pathway to freedom and liberty. As caregivers it is our responsibility to develop the imagination of children so that they can dream, create and structure opportunities for freedom and equity.

We have reviewed the titles and descriptions of books to ensure that they fit the criterion of having a black girl as the main characters. We have also catalogued the books by reading level. This time-consuming task would not be possible without your financial donation to hire some interim part-time staff. We could not do it without all of you who donated, our volunteers and the librarians from West Orange Public Library.

Each month we will update the list and continue to serve as an information repository for Black Girl Books.

If you know of a black girl book, not listed here, please send us a copy so we can add it to our collection. We would like to see this list grow. Our address is:

GrassROOTS Community Foundation
59 Main Street
Suite 323
West Orange, NJ 07052

Financial donations are always welcomed. All donations are tax-deductible.

Thank you.

Welcome to the #1000blackgirlbooks Resource Guide. I started this campaign because I wanted to read more books where black girls are the main characters. With your help we have collected over 11,000 books; many of them are have the same title, but we do have lots of unique ones as well. This guide includes 1000 of those books and more is coming.

Love,

Marley Dias
Founder
#1000BlackGirlBooks

Sadly, in today's society we often lack the imagination to deal with some of the most deeply rooted social issues. Family and work obligations as well as our biases can stunt our imaginations; however, as adults it is our charge to foster the imagination of our youth. Marley Dias has an active sociological imagination. She imagined a world where black girls are the main, not minor, characters in children's books. She thought she was dealing with a personal matter, but she quickly learned from the outpouring response from the public that her personal problem is in fact an engrained social issue. Children's literature in the United States and abroad is homogeneous and exclusionary. Black girls are underrepresented and in many cases missing. Girls of color are almost completely absent relative to the majority culture.

As caregivers of children we must nurture our children's imaginations and equip them with the resources so they can be emboldened to act. The GrassROOTS Community Foundation through Super Camp enhances girls' sociological imagination and teaches them confidence grounded in the knowledge of history and self-hood so that they feel confident enough to feel like they can create change in their communities. Each year GrassROOTS encourages girls to develop a social action project. We choose the words social and action carefully. We want our children to understand themselves as social actors, connected to the world. In addition, we teach our girls that to achieve justice they must ACT. The #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign is Marley's 2015 social action project. As Marley's mom and the President of GrassROOTS Community Foundation, I have learned first hand what can happen when we foster and promote children's love of reading, educate them about their community, and their desire to create social change as well as fan the flames of their sociological imaginations.

Dr. Janice Johnson Dias
President & Co-Founder
GrassROOTS Community Foundation
#investingirls

A love of reading is the most important legacy we can offer to our children and our students. Reading opens windows to new ideas, peoples, places, and experiences. Reading also provides mirrors for students to see themselves and their lives reflected in the characters they meet in books. Reading builds vocabulary and background knowledge, empowering children with the tools needed to express themselves and think about the world around them. Nurturing joyful reading in children primes their brains for lifelong learning and develops important social emotional skills like stamina, reflection, and empathy. As we build readers, we must make reading pleasurable and help children understand that reading is a skill that builds over time.

Here are a few tips for parents and educators to create environments that invite children to confidently embrace and fall in love with stories and books.

Tips for parents:

Model reading. Read, read, read to your child, with your child, or in front your child every day.

Immerse your child in books. Transform your entire home into a reading zone by placing books in every room.

Affirm your child's culture, language, and race by choosing books and stories with characters, places, and experiences that reflect their background.

Awaken your child to new ideas, places, people, or experiences in books and stories by asking them questions and always answering the question they have.

Empower your child by allowing them to choose books to read, whether based on what interests them or on book covers and titles.

Arm your child by always leaving home with books. When your child gets older ask them if they have a book before leaving for school, the doctor, or a long ride.

Cultivate your child's use of language and words. Talk with your child about what is happening in their lives and the world around them.

Build your child's ability to make connections. When you watch television or movies, make connections to characters or ideas in books you have read together.

Expand your child's reading beyond fiction. Children have great curiosity about events taking place in the world, plants, animals, and people. It's never too early to expose them to historical fiction or non-fiction books.

Advocate for curricula, partnerships, books, and resources for classrooms and schools that are culturally relevant and responsive.

Tips for educators:

Model reading. Read, read, read to your students, with your students, or in front your students every day.

Immerse school culture in talk about books. Book talks over the intercom, book clubs, social media chats, and school-wide read alouds are a few ways to do this.

Affirm your students' culture, language, and race by integrating books and stories with characters, places, and experiences that reflect their backgrounds into the curriculum.

Awaken students as participants in their own learning by having them create reading goals for themselves, for example, minutes of reading, chapters read, and reading new genres.

Empower students by allowing them to choose books based on what interests them or on book covers and titles.

Arm your students with the power of their own language and stories by providing them with multiple ways to make personal connections to the texts they read.

Cultivate independent reading by creating comfortable reading spaces throughout schools. Classrooms, cafeterias, libraries, and cozy nooks in hallways are all fair game.

Build classroom libraries of interesting, appropriate, and relevant fiction and non-fiction texts.

Expand your reading beyond fiction. Students have great curiosity about events taking place in the world, plants, animals, and people. Use historical fiction or non-fiction books as tools to capture this interest.

Advocate for curricula, partnerships, books, and resources for classrooms and schools that are culturally relevant and responsive.

Dr. Lauren Wells
Chief Education Officer
City of Newark

Donations are the heart of the campaign. Because we value reciprocity, we donate the books we receive to schools and community members who need them. Children deserve to have windows and mirrors to the world. Please complete the form below.

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This resource guide was created in direct response to the multiple requests made by educators, parents and students. Like Marley Dias, so many of you have asked for books with black girls as the main characters. And because of you, we have received thousands of books.

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Great Go to texts by Jennifer Serravallo

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Great Go to texts by Jennifer Serravallo

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These texts can be used to teach reading and writing strategies.

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Jennifer Serravallo Go-To Books | AKJ Education

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Collections for Developing Skilled Readers & Writers We have teamed up with one of the brightest literary consultants in education today to offer exclusive collections for Kindergarten to Grade 5. Each grade level collection thoughtfully bridges to Jennifer's top strategies from her acclaimed publications, The Reading

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National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)

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There's an old bumper sticker that says, "If you can read this, thank a teacher." But for too many students--actually, too many Americans young and old--their teacher is a big reason why they struggle with reading. But it's not the teacher's fault--in too many cases the teacher was never shown how to teach reading properly.

On the 2015 NAEP, nearly a third of fourth graders (31 percent) scored below Basic, unable to locate information or identify details in a text. Only about a third (36 percent) of fourth graders score high enough that they demonstrate the ability to interpret texts.

Clearly, too many fourth graders are not learning how to read well, and studies found that students who are not reading by the fourth grade most likely will grow up to be essentially non-readers.

There's no doubt that the primary reason for this problem is the instruction that's not happening in schools, largely because so few elementary school teachers are themselves trained in the most effective methods for teaching reading. According to Professor Mark Seidenberg in Language at the Speed of Sight, "teachers are left to discover effective classroom practices [themselves] because they haven't been taught them" (pg 255).

Neuroscientists, psychologists, and reading experts all agree on the methods that will result in the most children becoming successful readers. Even though the National Reading Panel established scientifically-supported reading methods in its 2000 research report, which has been affirmed most recently by the Institute of Education Sciences' What Works Clearinghouse in 2016, most teacher preparation programs still are not teaching these methods.

Since NCTQ first examined this issue in 2006, the percentage of programs teaching these strategies has only climbed slightly, from 17 percent of our original sample to just 39 percent of the 820 undergraduate elementary programs examined in 2016.

The importance of this standard gains additional emphasis from our expert panels and school district superintendents, who agree that early reading is critical for elementary teachers. Moreover, the Common Core State Standards for early elementary grades, still used in 42 districts and D.C., aligned their standards with the findings of the National Reading Panel.

What are we looking for? Teachers need to know and practice how to provide explicit, systematic instruction in all five essential components of early reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension). By explicit and systematic instruction, we mean that teachers need to be shown how to use each strategy in the proper way; just mentioning to teacher candidates that there is such a thing as phonemic awareness is not sufficient. Nor is it enough to "embed" these components into an unstructured teaching method and say teachers will incorporate these strategies as they come up. Here is some information on what should be taught in the five components. We will devote a future Profile to how to teach reading through scientifically-proven practices.

Phonemic awareness: Phonemic awareness is the understanding that words are composed of sounds. Teachers show students how to hear the individual sounds in spoken words, identify the sounds in words, and manipulate these sounds (such as through rhymes). They can prepare students to learn to read by showing the sound combinations found in English. The National Reading Panel found phonemic awareness works best when teachers show students how to manipulate phonemes with letters, focus on just one or two types of phoneme manipulations at a time, and teach in small groups. This needs to be taught as part of an explicit plan leading to phonics.

Phonics: Phonics builds on phonemic awareness. Using phonics, teachers show students how to break down a word to connect the sounds in words to combinations of letters so they can read and spell words. Studies show systematic phonics can improve students' ability to decode (sound out) and spell words, especially for those in kindergarten and first grade. Teachers should not just use phonics as a way to show students how to sound out words, but have a structured plan to teach the phonemes and the possible letter combinations for each.

Fluency: Reading fluency is the ability to read accurately, rapidly, and with expression so the reader can process and comprehend what has been read. Readers who lack fluency struggle so much with decoding that they cannot focus on the meaning. Teachers can help students build fluency through "guided repeated oral reading."

Vocabulary: Vocabulary is the range of words a student understands. Students have both an oral vocabulary-words they understand when they hear them-and a print vocabulary. Teachers can show students how to use phonics to decode a word and, if it is in the student's oral vocabulary, understand it. Readers who understand more words can read faster with greater understanding of the content. Instead of requiring students to memorize lists of words, teachers can build vocabulary by teaching vocabulary words as they appear in the student's reading. Research shows the best instructional methods for increasing vocabulary depend on the reader's age and ability.

Reading Comprehension: Reading comprehension is the process of determining the meaning of the text. This is an interactive process between the student and the written content. Students comprehend meaning more easily when they can link it to something they know. This is especially true of content not designed for the classroom that assumes the reader has a basic background in the content. Teachers can help students improve their comprehension by teaching reasoning techniques and systematic strategies to assist the recall of information, asking and answering questions about the text, and summarization. The National Reading Panel determined that the most promising strategies were: comprehension monitoring, cooperative learning, graphic and semantic organizers including story maps, question answering, question generation, and summarization (pp. 4-42). Teachers not only need to understand these various comprehension strategies, but also when and how to teach them.

When elementary teachers never learn these scientifically proven strategies for teaching reading, many of their students struggle with reading throughout their lives. According to the 2002 President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education as many as two-fifths of the children in special education "are there because they weren't taught to read." Moreover, research has found that if teachers would use the above five research-backed approaches to teaching reading, the current rate of reading failure could drop from around 20 to 30 percent to just 2 to 10 percent. This shows the urgent need for teacher prep programs to incorporate these five components into their preparation for elementary school teachers.

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NCTQ: Blog: The Science of Teaching Reading

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There's an old bumper sticker that says, "If you can read this, thank a teacher." But for too many students--actually, too many Americans young and old--their teacher is a big reason why they struggle with reading. But it's not the teacher's fault--in too many cases the teacher was never shown how to teach reading properly.

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6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

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Support every student by breaking learning up into chunks and providing a concrete structure for each.

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Explaining Text Structures to students will help their understanding of the text.

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Explaining Text Structures to students will help their understanding of the text.

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Teaching Text Structures for Non-Fiction Reading

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Looking at the language of different text structures

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Looking at the language of different text structures

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Jennifer Serravallo Home - Books and Online PD Resources

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Goals, strategies and methods for using the reading, writing, comprehension and conferring books and resources by Jennifer Serravallo. Links, podcast, blog, videos, professional development workshop schedules, and online class lists are included.

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Jennifer Serravallo

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Understanding Texts and Readers Sampler.pdf

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Writing in the different genres across content areas

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Writing in the different genres across content areas

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Amazon Inspire is a service that provides educators a place to discover, manage, rate, review, and share educational resources. 

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Amazon Inspire is a service that provides educators a place to discover, manage, rate, review, and share educational resources. 

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With Amazon Education Publishing you can publish content in multiple media types while you maintain creative control, own your copyright, earn royalties, and distribute to students and learners globally. Use free services from Amazon and its affiliates for independent publishing and gain access to additional tools to easily publish:

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With Amazon Education Publishing you can publish content in multiple media types while you maintain creative control, own your copyright, earn royalties, and distribute to students and learners globally. Use free services from Amazon and its affiliates for independent publishing and gain access to additional tools to easily publish:

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Great site for podcasts as well as resources that get you thinking about your teaching and practice.

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.

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Great site to find articles on different topics and different levels.

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ReadWorks | Award-Winning, EdTech Nonprofit Organization

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ReadWorks is an edtech nonprofit organization that is committed to helping to solve America’s reading comprehension crisis.

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Pioneer Valley Books - Learn to Read, Guided Reading, Common Core

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Pioneer Valley Books provides educators and parents with high quality books and other resources (including Guided Reading) to support beginning readers in the successful acquisition of reading.

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Children's Book Reviews | Kirkus Reviews

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It's a goal we're passionate about, because we're inspired by you, our customers. We've seen your commitment and dedication to shaping the future through instilling the love of learning in your classes. That's what spurs us to build out the most comprehensive toolbox of products-along with expert service-to help busy educators like you enhance your curriculum and excite your students. Learn more

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It's a goal we're passionate about, because we're inspired by you, our customers. We've seen your commitment and dedication to shaping the future through instilling the love of learning in your classes. That's what spurs us to build out the most comprehensive toolbox of products-along with expert service-to help busy educators like you enhance your curriculum and excite your students.

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EPIC, site for e books and teachers can organize and send students specific books on certain topics.

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EPIC, site for e books and teachers can organize and send students specific books on certain topics.

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Instantly access over 40,000 of the best books & videos for kids on Epic

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Another great place to order Science and Social Studies books.

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Another great place to order Science and Social Studies books.

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Form Submission: DCI Arrangements of the NGSS

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Download a PDF of all standards grouped by Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI) or click on a grade band below for individual DCI bundles of standards. DCIs are the fundamental ideas that are necessary for understanding a given science discipline.

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Click link below...

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Teachers College

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Fountas & Pinnell

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Longfellow's texts A- M

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.