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Documents

The purpose of early literacy essentials for grades K through third is to improve children's literacy in Michigan. Professional development throughout the state can focus on this set of research-supported literacy instructional practices for daily use in the classroom.

Early elementary education can help improve literacy proficiency outcomes. Research suggests that each of the 10 practices outlined in this document can have a positive impact on literacy development.

The use of these practices in every Michigan classroom every day can make a measurable, positive difference in the state's literacy achievement.

This Self-Reflection and Planning Guide contains supportive resources for Michigan educators to use as they self-reflect on their implementation and use of the Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy: K to 31 and plan for their professional growth. Use of the reflection tool in collaboration with a literacy coach can maximize impact for the teacher.

This Self-Reflection and Planning Guide is not intended to be used as part of an evaluation process.
This document is intended to be read in concert with Essential Instructional Practices in Literacy: Prekindergarten. There is important overlap and continuity in these two documents, and some children will benefit from instructional practices identified in the prekindergarten document beyond the prekindergarten year.
Released in 2017 and 2018.

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Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy: Grades K to 3

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Website for Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators

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I can STOP and REREAD when something doesn’t make sense

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Elementary Literacy Planning Template  (1)

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Practice 3_ Small group and individual instruction, using a variety of grouping strategies, most often with flexible groups formed and instruction targeted to children’s observed and assessed needs in specific asp

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K-3 Essential 3, Bullet 4: Small Group Literacy Strategies Sample Video

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K-3 Essential 3, Bullet 2 (I do, We do, You do)

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K-3 Essential 3, Bullet 2 (I do, We do, You do)

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K-3 Essential 3, Bullet 2: Coaching Reading in Small Groups Sample Video

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Link to directions

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ReadWorks

Text Project

Article-A-Day Book of Knowledge

Newsela

Florida Center for Reading Research

Epic

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Florida Center for Reading Research Activities

5-Day Fluency Plan

Achieve the Core: Reading Street Supplements

Article-A-Day

K-1 Achieve the Core

UFLI Virtual Hub-Hands-On Resources

Elkonin Boxes

Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping (Connect phonemic awareness to phonics)

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Foundational Reading Skills Tracking Form

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Foundational Reading Skills Tracking Form

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Elementary Literacy Planning Template  (2)

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Lesson Resources

The UFLI Foundations Toolbox contains all the lesson resources to accompany the lesson plans provided in the UFLI Foundations manual. (Don't have a manual yet? Click here to order one) Every lesson has companion resources that will help you implement the lessons efficiently, effectively, and consistently.

Some of the companion lesson resources you will find below include:

Lesson slide decks (in PowerPoint and Google Slide formats)

Decodable passages

Homework sheets

Games and activities for additional practice

We have grouped the lessons into smaller units so you can access these resources more easily. Scroll down to use the buttons below to find the resources for each lesson or groups of lessons.

Please note that we are still building out these free resources, and we will be editing this page over the next few weeks. We wanted you to be able to access some materials as soon as possible, but be sure to come back later to see the rest!
New to UFLI Foundations? Learn about its development, check out a sample lesson plan, view the scope and sequence, and more.

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The UFLI Foundations Toolbox contains all the lesson resources to accompany the lesson plans provided in the UFLI Foundations manual. (Don't have a manual yet? Click here to order one) Every lesson has companion resources that will help you implement the lessons efficiently, effectively, and consistently.

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Many children with literacy difficulties find it hard to blend phonemes together. Word Chains games allow a child to focus on sounds without the distraction of graphemes, as each sound is represented by a counter. A single phoneme is changed and the child 're-blends' to make a new word. The Word Chain lists progress from simple CVC words, like 'dog' and 'cat', to more complex words with initial and final blends, like 'stand' and 'crisp'. This allows targeted practice of a very specific skill in just a few minutes.

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Blending Phonemes - Word Chains - Dyslexic Logic

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Resources and word-chains (also called word ladders or word chains) to support teaching blending skills for children with poor phonological awareness, from basic CVC blends to CCVCC words with long and short medial vowels.

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Dyslexic Logic is a specialist dyslexia support service set up by Alice Frendo, a Dyslexia Assessor and Teacher who is also dyslexic. Dyslexic Logic was formed to promote the early identification and excellent support that dyslexic students need to fulfil their true potential.

Dyslexic Logic Support Services provides a complete service including training and support programme development. Dyslexic Logic is also available as a 1-1 or small group tutored programme for home-school, additional support or online support service.

Dyslexic Logic promotes Synesthetic Learning, the idea that learning using all our senses creates a richer memory trace. This means that children are not learning lists of words or lists of spelling patterns, but rather pictures, gestures, stories and rhythms that provide stronger and more appropriate cues for dyslexic brains.

The Synesthetic Learning Programme provides Free Resources so that as many people as possible can access them. They are specifically developed for dyslexic learners and are based on taking a multisensory synthetic phonics-based approach to early literacy.

There are also Synesthetic Learning books and sounds-cards in theshop. These are designed to provide step by step guidance on how to deliver excellent literacy intervention. You don't need specific training to access these materials; they are suitable for teachers, teaching assistants and home-schooling parents to use.

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Dyslexic Logic provides information and resources for teachers, tutors and parents working with dyslexic children. Dyslexic Logic provides international online and local face-to-face student support, plus training and programme development for schools, organisations and individuals working with dyslexic children. Free resources are available to download.

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Skill10: Multisyllable Words - West Virginia Phonics Lessons

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Of the key methods for supporting early literacy (K-3), researchers recommend that children receive a mix of not only whole-group but also small-group and individual literacy instruction. However, small-group literacy instruction is complex and can be applied inconsistently or in ways that mute the intended benefits. Researcher, author, and University of Michigan professor Nell K. Duke is an expert on early literacy development, particularly among children living in poverty. Her extensive knowledge of research on how children learn to read provides guidance for small-group literacy in the early grades.
In K-3 classrooms, teachers should devote a good chunk of every day to seeing children in small reading groups [so that] every child is being seen in a group at least two to three times a week. Students who have greater instructional needs may need to be seen more often. Research suggests that children living in communities with high rates of poverty, struggling students, and English language learners are particularly well served by small group instruction.

If we want students from these populations to achieve in and outside of school, we must make sure small-group instruction is not just "something we do on Mondays" or something we cut every time there's an assembly. It should be a mainstay of our literacy education that we provide regularly. Here are some research-based tips for small-group literacy success. (See literacyessentials.org for a deeper dive on these topics, plus free learning modules and classroom videos of these practices in action.)

Teachers decide what their small literacy groups focus on based on three factors: the education standards, where each child is in relation to those standards, and which research-supported instructional practices will help children progress. Those factors, together, drive the group formation and the focus of instruction. Different curricula and materials can guide teachers on the lessons and configurations they use in small group. For example, the well-researched software A2i uses a computer-based algorithm to inform teachers' decisions about groupings of students and instructional foci for their lessons.

Kids reading with the teacher coaching or supporting them is definitely a good use of time in small group; however, research draws into question only spending time in small group with the children reading and the teacher coaching. Other kinds of instruction, such as explicit phonics and comprehension strategy instruction, can be effective in small group, too.

Small-group instruction should include both instruction and application. Often, schools err too far on one side or the other: Either teachers spend all of the small group time on instruction and students don't get to apply what's being taught to the actual reading or writing of texts, or students spend all of the time reading or writing and don't get the focused instruction that will help them progress. We're really looking for both of those elements in any given small-group activity.

In the United States, especially in high-poverty settings, we are teaching very little science and social studies in K-3. Accountability frameworks focus on math and literacy. Often, the message to teachers is that's where they need to focus their efforts and attention. In the long term, this is problematic. When students move to upper elementary and beyond, authors and texts assume they know certain academic concepts and vocabulary. We want to make sure children are experiencing rich content, including science and social studies texts, that provides the context for the instruction they receive. Good long-term reading and writing development requires world knowledge, beginning early in schooling.

Reading levels are approximate. We know that students can read at a higher level when they have high interest or background knowledge related to a topic. We can't just say, "This child is always a level G or a level 14." Reading success depends on the text and how the child responds to teacher support. For those reasons, we can't be dogmatic about reading levels and should consider many factors and be flexible when grouping children.

Several grouping strategies are effective. In dyad or partner grouping, for example, children go through a specific protocol to read with one other peer. Another research-supported strategy is needs-based grouping, in which students are grouped based on having similar instructional needs (which doesn't necessarily mean the same reading level). Interest-based grouping, in which students are grouped because they share a common interest, has also shown promise. For example, in science, kids might select which type of habitat they are interested in reading about in a small-group context.

I do think there's a relationship between the decisions we make on grouping and our expectations of children. Grouping flexibly and using a variety of grouping strategies can help teachers to see children more multidimensionally. Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, known for the A-Z leveling system, don't want children to know or be defined by their levels. Levels are a tool for teachers to use when making instructional decisions.

It's really unfortunate when children know what their levels are, know what their friends' levels are, and see reading as a process of trying to get to a higher level rather than a powerful tool to accomplish their purposes-whether that's to be entertained, to learn something about the world, or to experience something through someone else's eyes.

To build time for more regular small-group reading, do a time analysis-a minute-by-minute accounting of how time is used during the school day. Transitions might take longer than they should. Students going to the bathroom in a group, as opposed to when they need to, may add time. Or kids may be spending time on activities with no research base-such as morning worksheets.

Next, manage small-group time so that students working with the teacher get focused instruction. That means the rest of the room is running smoothly and students not working with the teacher are engaging in productive, meaningful activities. Research supports activities such as partner reading, handwriting practice, brief communicative writing, and listening and reading along to recorded text. Once these routines are in place, teachers typically can see more small groups more efficiently in a day.

Use research as your guide to make choices about the software or programs children engage with and for how long while the teacher is with a small group. If 10 minutes a day on a particular program had benefits for fluency, let's not put students on that program for 40 minutes a day-or two minutes a day, for that matter.

Educators can search for research-supported programs in the What Works Clearinghouse or by typing the name of the program in quotation marks into Google Scholar. If there haven't been any studies, and educators have the more tedious process of looking at whether materials are aligned with research, check out the recommendations in the What Works Clearinghouse "Practice Guides" or " Essential Instructional Practices in Early Literacy" on literacyessentials.org. If a program aligns with the research-based best practices outlined in these documents, that's a good sign.

K-3 literacy instruction is complex. Teachers have a lot to accomplish in small groups-instructionally and in terms of the content students read and write. Teachers want to develop world knowledge, vocabulary, knowledge and skills for decoding, comprehension strategies, fluency, genre knowledge, and areas of learning that largely weren't on the K-3 radar until recently, such as morphology (the study of meaningful word parts). When I was growing up, morphology instruction was considered the purview of secondary English teachers. Now, there's growing evidence that teaching morphology, even in the early elementary grades, supports children's vocabulary and comprehension development.

Or how about "graphophonological-semantic cognitive flexibility"? That has to do with developing the brain's ability to look at words in terms of sound-letter relationship (so that one can decode the word), while also thinking about the meaning of the word. For emerging areas of research like these, we now understand much better than we did even 15 years ago how important developing that ability is. K-3 reading teachers are really on the front lines of putting this new knowledge to work to improve the lives of every student.

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Turn Small Reading Groups into Big Wins - ASCD

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Of the key methods for supporting early literacy (K-3), researchers recommend that children receive a mix of not only whole-group but also small-group and individual literacy instruction. However, small-group literacy instruction is complex and can be applied inconsistently or in ways that mute the

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Syllable Division Early Elementary Literacy Planning Template 

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Explicit Vocabulary Routine AND Template

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Explicit Vocabulary Routine AND Template