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Orton Gillingham digital 3 Part Drill all phonics skills Google Slides-This resource allows students to practice and review phonics skills with digital slides. The teacher is able to model for all students to see, as well as monitor all students. The interactive racecar reading slides are motivating for young students. This resource supports the bottom up approach through the focus on producing correct letter sounds, matching correct letters, and then blending sounds correctly to read words.

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Amira is a technology resource that works as an AI tutor for students who provides feedback and assistance in real time for participating readers. This resource is in alignment with Science of Reading in that assistance starts with the early literacy skills in the form of micro-interventions. Amira provides immediate tutoring in the moment to help improve reading ability. This resource supports the bottom-up approach because it intervenes and provides assistance prioritizing foundational skills such as phonemic awareness and decoding before progressing to sight recognition, vocabulary, and comprehension.

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Amira allows students to choose from several appropriately difficult and engaging texts to read. As students read out loud Amira listens, assesses, and when they struggle, Amira provides feedback and support.

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Amira allows students to choose from several appropriately difficult and engaging texts to read. As students read out loud Amira listens, assesses, and when they struggle, Amira provides feedback and support.

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Shared Reading is a technique that allows the teacher to guide students through the process of reading by modeling what good readers do. Teachers model how to think aloud, preview pictures and other key pieces of the text. This resource shows educators how to facilitate Sharing Reading for students. Shared Reading is key to the top down approach as it gives students the opportunity to be active in their learning and creates an experience for students to connect with text in a meaningful way. This resource is one of a set of videos that would be valuable for educators learning how to implement the Shared Reading model in their classrooms.

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The literacy manipulatives on this website allow for visual models like elkonin to be used for phonological awareness concepts such as segmenting words. Students can also practice choosing the correct digraphs and diphthongs to build words, as well as practice dividing words correctly for syllabication. This resource supports the bottom up approach by providing manipulatives that aid in the application of early literacy skills.

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Literacy Tools » Toy Theater | Learn • Create • Play

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Are you ready to read, spell, rhyme, and count syllables? These online literacy tools create a fun space for students to practice important skills. Use the virtual literacy tools to play class games, during group work, or as a literacy center activity.

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Heggerty is a research-based phonological and phonemic awareness program that helps strengthen and solidify phonological skills to build strong readers. This resource allows for teachers to understand the different components of phonological manipulation their students should master as well as provide examples. Heggerty supports the bottom up approach by focusing on sound manipulation before print to establish the proper foundational building blocks.

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IMES is online resource for Orton Gillingham instruction. IMSE 2.0 allows you to create phonics lessons for your students by choosing components that work for your classroom. Phonics lessons are available on Google slides with 3 part drill options as well. Readers, writing sheets, and syllabication sheets are among the many resources found through this subscription. This resource aligns with the bottom up approach as it focuses on phonemes, graphemes, then orthography, emphasizing the concept that learning is a process that starts with the smallest piece and builds to the big picture of understanding through comprehension.

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"My students love the hands-on engaging lessons. The structure of the IMSE lesson has shown its impact on my students' fluency, word attack skills, and comprehension. The phonemic awareness has greatly helped my students with decoding and spelling! I am so excited to see their growth and look forward in teaching these lessons each day!"

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IMSE | institute for multi-sensory education

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Orton-Gillingham is a sequential, multi-sensory approach to teach literacy. Our program breaks reading and writing into smaller skills, and builds on them.

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Article updated on Jan 4, 2023

This article first expresses the concern that the "top-down" approach is built on sight words and "guessing" through reading. It highlights 4 major advantages of the "bottom-up" approach. The first is the necessity of phonological awareness and the strategies needed to decode words/ break down sounds. This section points out that it is critical that children are able to blend sounds, even if it does not create a full word. The next advantage is that if a student has the ability to blend and use phonological skills, reading comprehension will come much quicker. The final two advantages go into the power of decoding over guessing, and why breaking down the steps of reading into small parts (phonics) can be very effective and helpful for young learners.

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Article published in Spring 2020

While this article does place importance on balancing multiple approaches for student success, it highlights the benefits of the "bottom-up" approach by explaining the effectiveness of this practice for lower-performing subgroups. It says that Gough's simple view of reading makes it easy to digest the sequences and linear progression that is needed for a young reader. It explains that taking the "bottom-up" approach allows for early intervention and specific needs being met. For example, if a student is struggling with blending a certain set of letters, you are easily able to assess that and apply interventions to correct it. The main idea here is that the "bottom-up" theory allows for necessary early intervention and benefits young readers by supporting them early on in their reading experience.

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Article updated on May 14, 2019

Much like the Georgia Journal of Literacy article, here we read about the foundational skills needed in grade K-3rd that ultimately lead to comprehension growth throughout the rest of a students life. There is a progression from learning to read, into reading to learn. It highlights the benefit of a step-by-step, highlight structured, reading process. The mastery of phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension all play a vital role in a readers development. The "bottom-up" approach allows for a sequence to be followed, creating stability and predictability for both the teacher and student.

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The Classroom | Empowering Students in Their College Journey

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The complications of reading and learning how to read can be lost on those who know how to do it. For many people, it's difficult to remember a time when they couldn't read, as many learn while very young. For young learners, or those who learn how to read later in life, the difficulties of reading are clear. To approach these difficulties, literacy experts theorize how reading happens and develop instructional models to help individuals master this complicated process.

Traditional

Traditional theories of reading suggest it's a process by which individuals learn smaller, discrete words and parts of words before learning how to read whole sentences, paragraphs and so on. Traditional theories of reading maintain that individuals build up their vocabularies and grammatical rules, and through this act of accretion they slowly gather together the necessary components to read fluently. These bottom-up theories of reading lend themselves to models of instruction such as phonics-based learning, in which individuals sound out phonemes or parts of words and slowly combine them into whole words, whole words into sentences, and so on.

Cognitive

So-called cognitive theories of reading counteract traditional theories by maintaining that the concept and process of reading is learned first and then broken down into individual words, parts of words, sentences, paragraphs and so on. These top-down theories of reading believe there's a moment at which individuals understand the process of reading without being entirely familiar with all the discrete components of how to read, such as individual words, how words fit together, etc. Cognitive theories of reading lend themselves to models of instruction like the wholistic model that has individuals approach texts as a whole, even if they are not familiar with all the words or phrases or even how the words fit together into sentences. Through context clues and assistance, the wholistic model suggests students can eventually decode whole texts, which in turns allow them to decode that text's individual components.

Hybrid

As the name suggests, hybrid theories of reading borrow liberally from both traditional and cognitive theories. In hybrid theories, reading is both a top-down and bottom-up approach in that as individuals approach whole texts and decode discrete components of those texts they also build up their vocabularies and personal understanding of grammatical rules which, in turn, helps them decode future whole texts -- which in turn builds their vocabularies and grammars. Hybrid models of reading, much as with hybrid theories of reading, encourage individuals to both compile lists or banks of phonemes, words, sentences and so on, as well as approach newer and more complicated whole texts as the individual learns how to read.

Metacognitive theories of reading relate to how an individual thinks about his reading processes both before, after and during the actual act of reading. Metacognitive theories of reading maintain that individuals, regardless of whether they approach reading from traditional, cognitive or hybrid theories or models of reading. Metacognitive theories of reading lend themselves to modeling practices such as written or spoken reflection following a reading exercise, as well note-taking on the margins of a page or highlighting lines or passages while reading.

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The complications of reading and learning how to read can be lost on those who know how to do it. For many people, it's difficult to remember a time when they couldn't read, as many learn while very young. For young learners, or those who learn how to read later in life, the difficulties of reading are clear.

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Epic promotes a literacy rich classroom through access to digital books and videos. Exposure to literature is a major proponent of the top down approach. This resource is valuable as it allows students to explore many different kinds of texts and levels, as well as experience read alouds to provide an engagement and enrichment for readers of all ages and abilities. This resource provides students with the opportunity to access literature no matter where they are through their chromebooks or tablets.

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Free for educators! Give students unlimited in-class access to the best books & videos on Epic

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Repetition of sight words to increase automaticity is an important component of the balanced literacy approach. This resource provides a fun way for students to learn and remember sight words. These interactive videos could be used with the whole group, small groups, or individual students to practice specific sets of high frequency words. Automaticity of sight words is a key proponent of the top down approach. This resource is valuable because it provides route practice on high frequency words in an engaging way.

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Meet the Sight Words - Level 1 (FREE) | Preschool Prep Company

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Background knowledge is important for building and sustaining connections to text, which is a key component in the top down approach. This resource allows students to take virtual field trips to gain experiences that will support their understanding of texts. Teachers can also display visuals for students to use to activate their background knowledge by describing, asking questions or making predictions. Developing, accessing and building schema is a vital for reading comprehension in the top down approach. This resource is valuable as it allows students to be active participants in their learning experience and prepares them to connect to new text.

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Nearpod is such a valuable teaching tool that can be used before, during and after any lesson. I really enjoy using Nearpod to assess students and help them build background knowledge about topics we study or read about.

Assessing Background Knowledge

The polling, open-ended question responses, draw it and fill-in-the-blank options when creating activities in Nearpod are helpful when trying to gauge students' knowledge about a concept before starting a lesson or reading a story. All students can answer the questions to the best of their ability and feedback is provided for the teacher instantly/in real-time. The shy students who are afraid to raise their hand now have the ability to participate and share their experiences.

Building Background Knowledge

There are many effective ways educators can use Nearpod to build background knowledge. One of my favorites is Nearpod VR field trips that will take students to anywhere in the world, including deep into the ocean!

Here are some specific ways to leverage VR across the K-12 curriculum for test prep! You can ask students to:

1. List adjectives they see.
2. Describe the image using their five senses.
3. What 2D and 3D shapes do they see.
4. Design a shelter that would protect you in this climate.
5. Write a narrative based on the picture.

Nearpod 3D is also great to make concepts visible and interactive for students. Below is an example of an animal cell. Use this feature to have students describe, ask questions, make predictions, and label or diagram.

Background knowledge is essential for reading comprehension. ? Tap into the different ways @JGTechieTeacher uses Nearpod address this important skill! Click To Tweet

The PhET Simulations are fun for students to play around and build curiosity about math and science topics. The simulations really prompt them to ask "Why is this happening?", which can be paired with discussions about cause & effect.

Having the ability to add and view videos right within the platform is a wonderful way to help students build their background knowledge!

Finally, the Collaborate Board is a very powerful feature! Students can post a reply and then read their peers' responses.

As you can see, Nearpod provides lots of different options and learning experiences for students!

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Using Nearpod to assess and build background knowledge

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I really enjoy using Nearpod to assess students and help them build background knowledge about topics we study or read about.

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Snap words combine a visual image with a sight word and description to help students connect and remember them. This set of Google slides is a digital resource that can be used with whole/small groups of students to promote retention and repetition in an efficient way. Exposure and application of high frequency words is a key component for success in the top down reading approach. This resource is valuable in that it provides that repetitive practice necessary to ensure sight word recognition and retention.

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Article Updated May 2019

This article highlights that the top-down model works towards creating a reader that process and thinks deeply about meaning, not just codes or symbols on a page. The end goal is strong comprehension and understanding as they not only navigate books, but also signs, codes, and other comprehension based opportunities in the real world. With the top-down approach, students should be heavily engaged in the text or story being read. This means there should be connection, not just decoding. It takes a more abstract form than bottom-up and is a less predicable system. Friedman writes about the importance of purpose in reading and the long lasting effects it can have on a learner.

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The Classroom | Empowering Students in Their College Journey

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Top-down reading models teach reading by introducing students to literature as a whole, and students use context to decipher unfamiliar words. Unlike traditional reading models that place the reader as a passive recipient of information, top-down reading models allow reading to be collaborative.

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Article updated 2021

Beginning on page 38, this article describes the need for a top-down approach in ELLs development. It describes the pros of auditory learning and how it is connected to the top-down approach to reading instruction. Especially for ELLs, hearing the language and processing interesting information is key to making those necessary connections to the English language. This article points out that as students are striving to learn English as more mature students (middle school, etc), they are able to identify strategies that can help. To best assist in application of these skills, we must constantly model and walk students through previewing texts, identifying topics, and other top-down strategies.

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Here we read about the developmental needs that are met when applying the top-down approach in the classroom. It may not always be the most important element to ensure a student is reading something they enjoy, but it certainly helps prepare their brain for the world when they are connecting to text. Tennant writes about the strategy of "skimming and scanning," a technique people use all their lives to be efficient in the real world. She also writes about the importance of understanding a text as a whole - everything thing from the conventions and paragraphing can alter the way a student takes in the information.

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This article looks at a variety of different strategies and examines why, when and how you might use each of them to develop your students’ reading skills.