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Dive into our first episode as Dr. Jane Oakhill, Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex, gives a high-level overview of Scarborough's Reading Rope. She also emphasizes the importance of inferencing in comprehension, why the Simple View of Reading is still relevant almost 40 years later, and how each element of the rope comes together to deconstruct the complexity of reading.
Quotes:
"We're often quite surprised at what children don't understand and we make a lot of assumptions about things we find utterly trivial."
"It's not just having knowledge that's important, but also being able to activate that knowledge when appropriate."
Resources:
Understanding and Teaching Reading Comprehension by Jane Oakhill

Want to discuss the episode? Join our Facebook group Science of Reading: The Community.

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s3-01. deconstructing the rope: an introduction with dr. jane oakhill

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‎Science of Reading: The Podcast: S3-01. Deconstructing the Rope: An Introduction with Dr. Jane Oakhill on Apple Podcasts

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Dive into our first episode as Dr. Jane Oakhill, Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex, gives a high-level overview of Scarborough's Reading Rope. She also emphasizes the importance of inferencing in comprehension, why the Simple View of Reading is still relevant almost 40...

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The beginning of the year is such an exciting time. There are so many fun ways to get to know a new group of students and one of my favorite ways to begin conversations and get to know them is reading aloud. Here are some of my favorite beginning of the year read-aloud books.

Reading aloud with students helps to build a classroom community at the beginning of the year because you can carefully choose books with themes that will help set the tone in your classroom. There is something about reading a book together as a class that seems so welcoming and helps students feel comfortable in a new classroom setting. Students have a chance to learn routines for whole group instruction and also learn to feel comfortable as contributors to discussions in your classroom.

We pack so much into the first days and weeks of school; reading aloud to your students is a nice time to come together for a short break while also giving you time to get to know your students through the discussions you have.

Here are some of my favorite books to read aloud at the beginning of the year (in no particular order):

1. All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold

All Are Welcome is a great story for the beginning of the year because just like the title reads, it will show each of your students that they are welcome in your classroom.

2. The Bad Seed by Jory John

I love this book for the beginning of the year because we all know that some students may have a reputation that travels with them and this story is such a great book to read about positive change. You can find a free activity to use with this book in this " First Week Favorites " post.

3. I Walk with Vanessa by Kerascoet

" I Walk with Vanessa " is a powerful book without any words that is sure to spark amazing discussions with your students. The pictures tell such an important story about inclusion and kindness.

4. Enemy Pie by Derek Munson

I love reading the story because just like the narrator is surprised by the "enemy pie" his dad serves up, so are my students. It's such a great story for the beginning of the year because it teaches kids not to believe all that you may think or hear about someone you don't know...get to know people before making judgments.

5. Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson

"Each Kindness" is such an amazing book with beautiful pictures and an even more important message. Many times students are surprised by the ending because it's not the expected happy ending that they are used to. It is so relatable and a great way to discuss friendship and small acts of kindness.

6. Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers

I love reading " Here We Are " to talk about asking questions and helping each other out...we are all here on Earth and there is so much to learn, so we must help each other; the same goes for your classroom and this book is a fun way to discuss asking others for help.

7. Nerdy Birdy by Aaron Reynolds

The book " Nerdy Birdy" is such a great story for the beginning of the year and a great way to talk about friendships. Nerdy Birdy feels like he doesn't fit in, but finds his way with another bird. Such a great way to discuss how we all have interests and we may find friends with things in common with us but we can also learn from friends that have different interests too. And if your kids love it as much as I do, then I'm sure they'll love " Nerdy Birdy Tweets " too.

8. I Am Enough by Grace Byers

This is such a beautiful book with such a beautiful message. " I Am Enough " is such a great book to learn more about your students and their interests and it could also make for a great display and have students write their own comparisons. You can grab a free template to use with your students below!

9. This School Year Will Be The Best by Kay Winters

This is a fun book to read at the beginning of the year and discuss things to be excited about the upcoming school year. Students can share something they are looking forward to but also share something about themselves so the teacher can get to know everyone.

10. Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

I love this book to discuss how the grass is not always greener on the other side and we may always think that someone else has it better or easier than we do, but we should be happy and proud of who we are. Another great book that prompts thought-provoking discussions.

11. The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig

I cannot say enough about this book. It is such an important book to read, and the beginning of the year is a great time to read it. One of my favorite parts of this book is the illustrations and I love to look at how the illustrations change with kids. How the character Brian's color changes and when and why it changes.

12. The Word Collector by Peter Reynolds

I love Jerome and his love for collecting words but also the symbolism of sharing and appreciating differences that are in this book too. It's such a great book to share at the beginning of the year; students can write words that they love, words that describe them, and so much more!

13. There by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick

There are so many ways that you could use and interpret this book and I love to use it to discuss goal setting. We talk about our goals and how we will get "there." You can read more about how I use this book in this First Week Activities blog post.

14. After the Fall by Dan Santat

"After the Fall " is a wonderful story about never giving up. I love this for the beginning of the year as an encouraging story that also teaches us to leave the past in the past.

15. Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller

" Be Kind" gives great examples of ways to be kind. Many times we say that we should be kind, but do kids understand HOW to be kind? This is a great book to read to open up that discussion! You can read about an activity that I like to do in this First Week of School post.

16. The Thing Lou Couldn't Do by Ashley Spires

Such a great story of determination and what to do when you are confronted with something that is difficult. Students have a choice when something is difficult or if they are presented with don't want to do something, just like Lou. The story is relatable and a great talking point with your students.

17. The Best Part of Me by Wendy Ewald

This book is filled with beautiful pictures and writing from students. I love reading this and doing an activity at the beginning of the year because I feel it allows me to get to know students a little bit but also gives me a glimpse at them as writers as well.

18. Being Frank by Donna Earnhardt

You are sure to laugh at how frank Frank really is, as maybe you may have had a frank student like Frank! This is such a great story to talk about how your words have so much meaning and can have such an impact on those around you.

19. Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry

" Stick and Stone " is a sweet story of friendship with an anti-bullying message that makes it perfect for the beginning of the year. It is the perfect book to help set the tone in your classroom for the year.

20. The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson

This is a beautiful story about beginning the year, feeling scared or different, and making new connections and friends. It is a must-read for the beginning of the year.

I hope you have found a few beginning-of-the-year read-aloud books that can help start your year off right!

You can read more about using picture books as mentor text in this " 5 Reasons to Use Mentor Text " blog post.

Please note that this post does contain affiliate links and I will receive a small commission if you purchase items with these links.

You can check out all of these books in one place in my Amazon Store.

Shop all of the activities featured in this post here:

Happy Teaching!

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20 Favorite Back to School Read Aloud Books

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The beginning of the year is such an exciting time. There are so many fun ways to get to know a new group of students and one of my favorite ways to begin conversations and get to know them is reading aloud. Here are some of my favorite beginning of the year read-aloud books.

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Originally shared by Lisa Ng.

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My child can't read. | United States | Fundamental Learning Center

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Phillips Fundamental Learning Center is a learning center with a teaching curriculum for children who struggle to learn to read. Dyslexia and other issues can be overcome for over 95% of kids who currently cannot match sounds to symbols to read or write. Excellent tools based on 25 years experience.

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Reading & Writing for K-8 | Nancy Fetzer's Literacy Connections

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Nancy Fetzer travels across the United States providing staff development for districts and schools. When Nancy conducts professional development at school sites, she demonstrates the techniques and...

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Constructing the Blueprint House - Nancy Hennesssy

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Constructing the Blueprint House - Nancy Hennesssy

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Nancy Hennessy - Constructing the Comprehension House: A Blueprint and Tools Provided!

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We encourage students to use the Narrative Writing Diamond as a pre-writing graphic organizer to plan their narrative stories. This provides a simple, basic story plan on which to build. Student's can use organizers like this to help them translate their story summary or pre-writing plan to a fully elaborated piece of writing. The Narrative Writing Diamond is needed to guide beginners through the development and the elaboration of a successful, entertaining narrative story.

The diamond is, essentially, a reminder of the shape and proportion that a successful story takes, as well as a reminder of the key skill elements needed for an entertaining piece of writing.

We suggest that each student have a copy of the Writing Diamond in their writing folders to help them organize and develop their stories, and that a copy is posted in the classroom at all times.

Remember - the diamond is not a rigid rule or formulaic pattern - rather, it is a basic guide to help students channel their creativity into what others recognize as story. In time, the diamond will disappear into the writing, providing shape and structure for their creative ideas.

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Narrative Writing Diamond is a pre-writing graphic organizer to plan their narrative stories.

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Originally shared in FB group by Leann Gallagher

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Sortegories from Sound to Syntax with Nancy Hennessy

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Why we should all be reading aloud to children | Rebecca Bellingham | TEDxYouth@BeaconStreet

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Incorporating Picture Books In Your Upper Elementary Classroom - Teaching with a Mountain View

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Recommended picture books for upper elementary students. Includes books for figurative language, math, growth mindset, and more.

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Back To School Picture Books for Upper Elementary

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Back To School Picture Books for Upper Elementary

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Best Back to School Picture Books - Teaching with a Mountain View

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One of the biggest requests I get is for picture books for back to school, especially for upper grades students!

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Originally shared in FB group by Yvette Maldonado

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What Is LETRS? Why One Training Is Dominating ‘Science of Reading’ Efforts

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The intensive, expensive teacher training has boomed—but what does it include? And does it work?

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Our guest author today is Susan B. Neuman, Professor of Early Childhood & Literacy Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, & Human Development at New York University.
Over the past few years, "the science of reading" has become the latest obsession in the field of education. From professors and textbook publishers claiming they teach it to politicians and principals claiming they follow it, the science of reading is everywhere.

And nowhere.

Like so much jargon, "the science of reading" is fast becoming a meaningless label-it's applied to draw attention to political circumstances and no longer signals any deep understanding of how literacy develops. So let's take another approach. Let's define reading proficiency in a way that may be comprehensible and compelling, not only to educators but to the general public as well. And the clearest model to date is Gough's and Tunmer's " the simple view of reading."

The simple view of reading is rather elegant in its efficiency. Basically, it argues that reading comprehension-that is, reading with real meaning is a product of fluent decoding and language comprehension. Essentially the model goes like this: Reading comprehension (RC) = fluent decoding (D) X language comprehension (LC). Neither fluent decoding nor language comprehension alone is sufficient for reading comprehension. Like Sinatra would say, you simply can't have one without the other.

The model has served many scholars well, with one BIG caveat. Most of us would agree on what fluent decoding looks like (e.g., the ability to easily and automatically translate a string of letters into words). And there is also a host of research on how to teach decoding effectively. But no one is quite sure what language comprehension is, or how best to teach it.

Like "the science of reading," the term "language comprehension" has many definitions. Some use it to describe listening comprehension; some, oral language development; others may define it as vocabulary, syntax or the ability to make inferences. And still others might refer to it as one single linguistic factor called "language." You can certainly make an argument that all of these areas contribute to children's ability to understand what they read. But if we take Gough and Tunmer's original charge-that is to make things comprehensible and actionable-then language comprehension includes two crucial skills: vocabulary and content knowledge. Luckily, they go hand-in-hand.

Think about vocabulary and content knowledge as reciprocal processes: one feeds the other. If you know a lot about a topic, you're likely to know the clusters of words associated with it. Similarly, words that constitute common categories or words that occur frequently in different contexts are likely to help children build a network of knowledge about the topic. Both are cumulative and exponential: the more you know, the easier it is to acquire new knowledge (including vocabulary) because your existing knowledge facilitates understanding and retention-and thus accumulation.

***

If we recognize that knowledge is not a static characteristic, but rather one that is highly alterable, then how does it develop? Children need a fairly extensive knowledge network of vocabulary and concepts to read and successfully comprehend in later grades. But to get started, we need to begin in the early years to help children organize large amounts of information into meaningful networks with plenty of opportunities for repeated practice and extended learning.

In my team's research studies of vocabulary, we use shared book reading as an opportunity to expand children's content knowledge in science and mathematics. Topics in science-for example, wild weather and habitats-tend to intrigue children, and they also provide rich opportunities to build content and conceptual knowledge essential for developing knowledge networks. For example, if children learn that tornadoes, blizzards, and hurricanes are all types of wild weather, they begin to understand certain properties of a category-that wild weather can be damaging and destructive, and that people need to take safety precautions.

Based on our research, knowing a word's meaning is not sufficient unless it is tied to a network of concepts that helps children understand their world. Using both narrative nonfiction books and informational text, we work to deepen their knowledge about a particular topic, introducing additional content related words throughout our sessions. We concentrate on the topic over three weeks, building and adding new words along the way, so that by the end, children have acquired over 100 words connected to a network of concepts.

Years ago, my team and I were captured by ideas of E. D. Hirsh Jr. in an article written for American Educator, an AFT publication. In that article, he suggests a relatively easy approach to building content knowledge. We took it to heart, and developed a supplementary curriculum called the World of Words (WOW!), a shared book reading program for prekindergarten through second grade that promotes vocabulary and content knowledge. The approach is rather straightforward: we clustered our read-alouds by topics that seemed to be most interesting to children, and read books to children from multiple genre on the same topic for two to three weeks. For example, they might listen to narrative and informational books all about space throughout these weeks, and through these readings learn words like oxygen, asteroid, supernova-words associated with that topic.

For each lesson, teachers start off by giving child-friendly definitions of words to create a shared understanding for all the children, with the presumption that there's much to learn (e.g. we eschew "what's that?" questions) followed by conversations about the topic. At the end, children not only know a lot about the topic but they have accumulated a rich vocabulary within a conversational context to talk about it.

In other words, they have developed knowledge networks, a type of organizational prosthetic that can serve to diminish the information processing load in the future learning. As children learn about new words within a topic, they begin to form a mental representation of these concepts, devoting less mental energy to how words relate to one another. For example, when children are introduced to the word hurricane as a type of wild weather, they can begin to understand the properties of the category and appreciate that they need to find shelter. In this respect, learning words in categories has inductive potential. By diminishing the information processing load, children are able to access existing knowledge and acquire new information more rapidly. Understanding the basic concept of wild weather, for example, enables children to quickly make new associations and create additional unrefined schemas (e.g., tropical wild weather), which becomes increasingly differentiated with additional knowledge. In this respect, as Hirsch powerfully demonstrated, "knowledge begets knowledge."

Based on what we've learned about developing knowledge networks, we propose five instructional principles that thread throughout our work and that of other researchers who have focused on knowledge-rich instruction.

Principle 1: Big Ideas. We start our planning process with the big ideas we want children to learn. Big ideas are concepts and principles that allow for the most efficient and broadest acquisition of knowledge across of a range of examples in a domain. For example, big ideas in our topic of "marine mammals" include the fact that they have life cycles, have ways of protecting themselves, and live in habitats based on their needs. These big ideas serve as cross-cutting themes, linking one topic to another. Insects, pets, and wild animals, for instance, will share these common features, allowing children to understand commonalities across this broad domain (e.g., living things). Big ideas, therefore, serve to emphasize what is important, while concepts focus on smaller units of knowledge. In the case of marine mammals, we focus on concepts such as how whales, manatees, and seals all have lungs and breathing oxygen. Words cluster around a concept with similar properties.

Principle 2: Word Knowledge. Vocabulary is children's entry to knowledge and the world of ideas. So we need to focus intensively on vocabulary in the earliest grades. In order to have a good conversation or inquiry lesson in science, for example, children need a threshold of content-specific words in order to talk about their ideas. Words are learned incrementally and cumulatively after many different exposures. As children encounter a word repeatedly and in multiple contexts, they accumulate more and more knowledge. To develop a deeper understanding of words, we start with child-friendly definitions of words, making sure the children have a common understanding of them, and review them frequently through our shared reading activities. We select words in categorical sets (e.g., manatee, whale, seal) to help children begin to develop imagery and mental models of concepts.

Rather than using so-called " Tier 2 " words, we select words to focus on our big ideas and identify important, depictable words that are thematically related and that can be applied to higher-order concepts. Often described as "Tier 3," these words are central to building knowledge and conceptual understanding and are integral to contentlearning in various academic domains. For instance, children learn to classify vocabulary pictures by categories (e.g., this is a living thing; this is not a living thing) and to describe how words relate to one another.

Principle 3: The Use of Multiple Genres. Children develop deeper knowledge when they are exposed to a topic through multiple genres. For example, storybooks and particularly narrative nonfiction books are a wonderful source for learning new words and developing an emotional connection between the characters and the topic. On the other hand, informational books often include more dense vocabulary and concepts, and are likely to provide factual information about the social and natural world. When we use both genres (narrative nonfiction, informational) we can provide a more intensive experience for children, allowing them to deeply process lexical sets of content vocabulary and related concepts. That is, the integration of texts and topical units promotes more frequent encounters with words, and develops knowledge across genres which creates a deeper and more thorough understanding of the topic.

Principle 4: Distributed Review. Successful learning also depends on distributed review to reinforce the essential building blocks of information within a content domain. However, simple repetition of information won't reliably ensure learning. According to research (and here), review requires: (a) sufficient amount of time on a topic; (b) that it be distributed over time (e.g., not in a single dose); (c) that it be cumulative, with less complex information integrated into more complex tasks; and (d) varied contacts to illustrate its wide application to children's understanding of information.

Principle 5: Intentional Opportunities for Language Engagement. Opportunities to talk about and more deeply process information are essential for developing children's knowledge. Children will need to build a strong oral foundation in conjunction with many opportunities to learn content and connected concepts. One instructional technique that we use is to have children make contrasts and comparisons-such as describing what is similar or different about the properties of certain concepts. For example, we give children puzzlers like, are tomatoes a type of fruit? Why are they or are they not a fruit? Puzzlers help children think outside the immediate context and consider the reasoning behind the contrasts, which can further stretch their understanding of categories and concepts. This type of activity requires more complex thinking and encourages them to problem-solve, helping children manipulate the knowledge that they are acquiring, deepening comprehension, and facilitating the development of new knowledge.

***

Thousands of children have experienced and benefited from WOW, making statistically significant and practically significant gains in vocabulary, conceptual and content knowledge (see, for example here, here and here). But the most compelling data point of all from our perspective is to look at children's eyes, the sparkle when ideas catch and grab their attention. No assessment is quite so valid.

One important point here. Notice that I haven't used the terms "prior knowledge" or "background knowledge." These terms put some children at a disadvantage, by reinforcing a longstanding academic hierarchy that values a rather narrow band of subject-matter knowledge over a great breadth of family, community, and cultural knowledge.

Young children are naturally eager to learn but never so much as now, after this tumultuous year. Let's greet them with opportunities to learn about their world, and build culturally sustaining, fascinating experiences for them that feed their interests and developing vocabulary and knowledge. John Guthrie called it "teaching for engagement," which is recognizing that children WILL talk about a topic if they have something to talk about. They'll talk about wild animals, the mysteries of space, climate change, and more-if we give them the time, choice, and practices to do so. And if we do this at the very beginnings of their literacy experiences, it will give them a purpose and a goal for learning to read.

There are some lessons to be learned here. First, all children bring valuable knowledge from their families and communities into the classroom-and all children have expertise to share with their classmates. Second, all children are capable of learning yet more-by building on what they already know and by investigating entirely new topics. New knowledge can and should be taught, early on through books, videos, and direct experiences-including peers sharing with each other. In some cases, the content that we teach might be additive, while for others it might be new. But by being explicit in our teaching of content and in our valuing of children's funds of knowledge, we place all children on an even playing field. Third, we don't have a minute to wait. Far too frequently, we hear the saying that children go "from learning to read to reading to learn." However, delaying the learning of academic content knowledge until children are presumably competent readers puts them at a severe disadvantage, especially given the slow, and often incremental nature of developing content expertise. It can also implicitly convey a message that reading is just a technical skill, like practicing the scales on the piano, without any real application to meaning.

There are other assumptions, as well, that need to be challenged, often derailing our instructional time and efforts to teach meaningful content: That children need to build stamina in reading. That leveled books can build reading skills. And finally, and perhaps most controversially, that reading comprehension is a generic skill which children may have-or not. As numerous studies have now shown, reading comprehension is not a skill that can be easily transferred from one domain to another (see here, here and here). This is precisely why we need to integrate content learning into literacy instruction, including all areas of the curriculum such as science, social studies, math, and art.

Our children will need skillfully engineered systemic instruction that is content rich and that maximizes the valuable resource of time. Whether couched as the "science of reading" or not, the imperative is to teach decoding skills as early as possible while simultaneously fostering children's knowledge as a means for providing a firm foundation for reading comprehension. Our children deserve no less.

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A More Actionable Take On The Science Of Reading

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Our guest author today is Susan B. Neuman, Professor of Early Childhood & Literacy Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, & Human Development at New York University. Over the past few years, "the science of reading" has become the latest obsession in the field of education.

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Originally shared by Lisa Ng.

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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: The Why, The What & A Bit of the How! with Nancy Hennessey

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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: The Why, The What & A Bit of the How! with Nancy Hennessey

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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: The Why, The What & A Bit of the How! with Nancy Hennessey

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Originally shared by Lisa Ng.

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History, drama, and controversy in the reading wars leading up to the Science of Reading

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History, drama, and controversy in the reading wars leading up to the Science of Reading

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Originally shared by Jen Rothstein in the FB group.

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Corinne Adams watches her son's lessons during Zoom school and discovers a dismaying truth: He can't read. Little Charlie isn't the only one. Sixty-five percent of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient readers. Kids need to learn specific skills to become good readers, and in many schools, those skills are not being taught.

Read: Emily Hanford's reading listRead: Transcript of this episodeSupport: Donate to APMMore: soldastory.org

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‎Sold a Story: 1: The Problem on Apple Podcasts

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Corinne Adams watches her son's lessons during Zoom school and discovers a dismaying truth: He can't read. Little Charlie isn't the only one. Sixty-five percent of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient readers. Kids need to learn specific skills to become good readers, and in many s...

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Comprehension Skills or Strategies | Shanahan on Literacy

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These days, the core reading programs do pretty much the same thing with the educational standards, with each standard being translated into a question type in lessons and assessments.

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A few days ago, I attended a Webinar by Kylene Read on her new book, "Why our kids can't read and what to do about it."  At the beginning of the webinar, she asked all of the participants what books got everyone hooked on reading and the responses were overwhelming.

Needless to say, I jotted them down, and now after countless hours, I was able to make a virtual library to share with everyone here.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KeyJXEDlp-7TeetJi_xFZGNyPgey-AEP9QMRAQ2rzTo/edit?usp=sharing

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ELA / Literacy: Text Complexity & Analysis

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Providing high-quality, engaging, and relevant texts is a critical component of literacy instruction. The resources below will help you analyze the complexity of a given text and will support you as you consider the intersections of your own identities, the identities of your students, and related considerations for complexity, academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness.

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GREJ - This is a wonderful concept developed by a Swedish teacher to help build background knowledge.

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GREJ - This is a wonderful concept developed by a Swedish teacher to help build background knowledge.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgRF5803Tsc

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Worth the listen!

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Science of Reading: The Podcast, hosted by Susan Lambert, delivers the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Listen today!

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Ciera posted this in her Adventures FB group.

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Motivation and How It Effects Reading Comprehension

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Teacher Professional Learning | Literacy, Math | MTSS

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Curriculum Implementation

Literacy Coaching & Site Implementation Support

Early Literacy Planning & Implementation Collaboration

Online Elementary Reading Academy

Adolescent Literacy Solutions

Professional Development for SIPPS®

Curriculum Implementation

Rise in Math

Math Coaching

Online Math Academy

Onsite Math Academy

Teaching Reading Sourcebook 3rd Edition

Curriculum Implementation

Literacy Coaching & Site Implementation Support

Early Literacy Planning & Implementation Collaboration

Online Elementary Reading Academy

Adolescent Literacy Solutions

Professional Development for SIPPS®

Curriculum Implementation

Rise in Math

Math Coaching

Online Math Academy

Onsite Math Academy

Teaching Reading Sourcebook 3rd Edition

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10 Things Teachers Should Know About the Science of Reading - Teacher Professional Learning | Literacy, Math | MTSS

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Reading is a fundamental skill, and getting it right in the early years can make all the difference to a child's future success. Because early reading is so important to get right, many educators are turning to the Science of Reading to inform the structure and content of their reading instructional practices.

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This was very helpful in understanding the seven levels of language. I would just add activities to represent each level.

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This was very helpful in understanding the seven levels of language. I would just add activities to represent each level.

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Originally shared in FB group by Millie Ramos Pena

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In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches, and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials. And for the first time in years, an instructional issue-reading-is headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the "science of reading" has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn-after all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it's effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools' reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren't asked to do much writing in early grades.

"Sometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you'll hear a teacher say, 'It's time to pick up your pencils,'" said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. "But your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning."

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the "balanced literacy" approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills-like phonics and language structure-have not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the "find the main idea" strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students' connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection. But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

"The body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There's no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills," said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. "Pick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, 'world knowledge.'"

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn't examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students' reading abilities-and vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National Reading Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn't examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on "process writing," emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects-the idea that students should be writing about what they've learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers say they received little training in their college education courses. That's probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that they enjoyed teaching writing.

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: Students in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

"Students need support in their writing," said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. "They need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development."

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction-that it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising-it hasn't yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don't typically provide many supports for students-or teachers, for that matter-for writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don't always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

"We have a lot of activities in writing we know are good," Shanahan said. "We don't really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn't exist the way it does in reading."

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

Want a quick summary of what research tells us about the instructional connections between reading and writing?

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students' reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing-no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on. Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are connected to the ability to connect speech to print and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students' cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught-rather than left up to students to "figure out" the rules on their own.

There isn't as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied, and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content-and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb "world knowledge"-think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science-so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students' content learning, too, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of "writing to learn" in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining. The study found that across all three disciplines, writing about the content improved student learning.
See this mini-explainer
If students are doing work on phonemic awareness-the ability to recognize sounds-they shouldn't merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode-record written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins' students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

"Young kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences-how they're created, how they're joined," Blevins said. "There are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice."

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure, and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres-narrative, persuasive, analytical-demand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students' exploration of content

Reading is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students' knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they've learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day -in addition to their creative writing.

This "writing to learn" approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

"We do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It's just a part of how you're responding, or sharing, what you've learned across texts; it's not a separate thing from reading," Blevins said. "If I am doing read-alouds on a concept-on animal habitats, for example-my decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we've elevated the conversations around these texts."

In this set of stories, Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas- encoding, language and text structure, and content-area learning. But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you've finished.

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How Does Writing Fit Into the 'Science of Reading'?

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Writing in the early grades is often segmented off from reading. Research suggests teaching them together is both efficient and effective.

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As I was considering which chapter books would work best as readers for my daughter this school year, I decided to go a different direction. There are so many great picture books that are designed to be read aloud by an adult that would work just as well. I went in search of classic picture books and chose ones that fell within the 3rd-5th grade level. I'm combining those with some chapter books for this school year. I like looking at the grade level and lexile level as well as my child's interests in order to determine which order to read the books. For reading, I have my daughter read aloud to me about 15-20 minutes most school days.

I've organized the book lists into picture books according the the grade level, picture books according to the lexile level, chapter books according to the grade level, chapter books according to the lexile level, and how I've organized the books for my kid. We own some of the books, but a majority of them will need to be reserved ahead of time from the library. Having a list helps me see which books I should reserve soon.

Picture Books organized by reading level:

Picture Books Sorted by Lexile Level:

Chapter Books Sorted by Reading Level

Chapter Books Sorted by Lexile Level:

How I'm combining picture and chapter books into a reading list for my kid:

Do you have any favorites that didn't make the list? Please share in the comments.

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Picture Books as Reading Books: 3rd-5th Grade Level

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As I was considering which chapter books would work best as readers for my daughter this school year, I decided to go a different direction. There are so many great picture books that are designed to be read aloud by an adult that would work just as well.

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Originally shared by Lisa Ng.

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Writing to Read is a new Carnegie Corporation report published by the Alliance for Excellent Education which finds that while reading and writing are closely connected, writing is an often-overlooked tool for improving reading skills and content learning. Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading identifies three core instructional practices that have been shown to be effective in improving student reading. Writing to Read is a part of a series of Carnegie Corporation of New York-funded reports intended to re-engineer literacy instruction across the curriculum to drive student achievement. The initial report, Time to Act: An Agenda for Advancing Adolescent Literacy for College and Career Readiness and corresponding reports were published in September 2009. Writing to Read is an extension of this work and provides practitioners with research-supported information about how writing improves reading while making the case for researchers and policymakers to place greater emphasis on writing instruction as an integral part of school curriculum.

Citation: Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve. Carnegie Corporation Time to Act Report. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education, 2010. Print.

Program: Education

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Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading | Carnegie Corporation of New York

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Writing to Read is a new Carnegie Corporation report published by the Alliance for Excellent Education which finds that while reading and writing are closely connected, writing is an often-overlooked tool for improving reading skills and content learning. Writing to ...

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If you haven't heard of Empowering Writers, they have amazing graphic organizers for teaching Expository as well as Narrative texts.  This one is a gem to have.https://www.instagram.com/p/CdI3EV3LPSF/

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A Video Series explaining the Science of Reading to kiddos

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A Video Series explaining the Science of Reading to kiddos

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Share Brain Builders with your students, an engaging student-facing animated video series to help students understand what the brain does in order to read.

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Nancy Hennessy - Constructing the Comprehension House: A Blueprint and Tools Provided!

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How Morphological and Etymological Families Work

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Quick reference chart for converting leveling systems such as Lexile and Flesch-Kincaid into CCR grade bands.

Step-by-step guide to accessing free, online tools that help identify the appropriate grade band for a text.

SCASS Rubric for Informational Text SCASS Rubric for Literature
Qualitative Dimensions of Text Complexity Chart: Scales for evaluating the qualitative features of text complexity: text structure, language clarity and conventions, knowledge demands, and levels of meaning/purpose

Grade 11-CCR Sample Qualitative Scale
Example of completed qualitative scale for the 9-10 band.
Companion to Qualitative Scales
Detailed explanation of qualitative features; to be consulted in filling out the qualitative scale.

Grade 11-CCR Sample Qualitative Scale
Example of completed qualitative scale for the 9-10 band.
Companion to Qualitative Scales
Detailed explanation of qualitative features; to be consulted in filling out the qualitative scale.

Use this guide to support the analysis of a text for complexity.
Read Aloud for Grades K-2

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Quick reference chart for converting leveling systems such as Lexile and Flesch-Kincaid into CCR grade bands. Step-by-step guide to accessing free, online tools that help identify the appropriate grade band for a text.

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Originally uploaded in FB group by Audrey Goninan

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FCRR Student Center Activities | Florida Center for Reading Research

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From 2004 to 2010, a team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created Student Center Activities for use in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. The activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught…