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MTSS Leadership Consultations for Session 1 BOY, Session 2 MOY and Session 3 EOY

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Hueneme + Panorama Consultations | SY 25-26: Master Deck

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Workbooks Organized By School Name HERE

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MTSS RESOURCES

Hueneme Elementary School District

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CK3usCBkQ-ff00o9usqHQipj24NeT8x19NLB2Jhb3r4/view?usp=sharing

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MTSS Leadership Kick-Off August 11, 2025,  8:00 - 8:30 ~ Check-In  & Warm Breakfast Blackstock's Cafeteria

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MTSS Leadership Kick-Off August 11, 2025,  8:00 - 8:30 ~ Check-In  & Warm Breakfast Blackstock's Cafeteria

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Link Here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TA4SaZ3x3JSmn3L_4oP47Wk9AV2R4_4aGBECjGDmWuA/view?usp=sharing

By the end of the day, school leadership teams will:

Align to Hueneme’s MTSS vision and shared priorities.

Define clear team roles, norms, and meeting structures.

Create school-level SMART goals in ELA, Math, and SEL.

Create a 6-week implementation plan for the beginning of the school year.

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MTSS Leadership Teams Blackstock Cafeteria Sitting Organized By School Site

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MTSS Leadership Teams Blackstock Cafeteria Sitting Organized By School Site

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Breakout Rooms   -    MTSS Leadership Teams Kick-Off August 11, 2025

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Breakout Rooms   -    MTSS Leadership Teams Kick-Off August 11, 2025

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Hueneme MTSS Leadership Teams Kick-Off

Charles F. Blackstock Junior High School

Monday, August 11 |  8:00 AM – 3:00 PM

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MTSS Leadership Teams Consultations Sessions #1, #2 and #3 - October, February and May 2025

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MTSS Leadership Teams Consultations Sessions #1, #2 and #3 - October, February and May 2025

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Hueneme + Panorama Consultations | SY 24-25: Master Deck

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MTSS Leadership 2024 - 2025 Dates At A Glimpse

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MTSS Leadership 2024 - 2025 Dates At A Glimpse

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MTSS Meeting Dates 2024-2025

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          HESD MTSS Leadership Team Meetings:  2024-2025 Consultation Dates with PANORAMA

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          HESD MTSS Leadership Team Meetings:  2024-2025 Consultation Dates with PANORAMA

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Link to View All MTSS Leadership School Team

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August 12, 2024 MTSS Leadership Kick-Off at VCOE 

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August 12, 2024 MTSS Leadership Kick-Off at VCOE 

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y8Oi6UUtmqzLrgcEx1O9fzuO5_pHQulAzx454CpXuO0/view?usp=sharing

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August 12, 2024 - MTSS Leadership Teams Kick-Off at VCOE 

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August 12, 2024 - MTSS Leadership Teams Kick-Off at VCOE 

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HESD Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) Program 8.8.24

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Community Agreements for HESD/MTSS Leadership Teams

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Link to Access the 2024-2025 Assessment Calendar:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mgaIezrEnB3Yjyx-541Oxv7IdOw0iacm20F0mSJ-H5E/view?usp=sharing

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hvSUqzUZEr0khpPmADsxDPp4an2G2Vb1lCd5w7hlJm8/view?usp=sharing

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MTSS/Leadership Master Deck Slide Session #1

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Hueneme + Panorama | SY 23-24: Master Deck

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RB6231SQMOZTUoClmiu8wL7-kz6j3c_3Q62k3q2B5u8/edit?usp=sharing

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MTSS/Leadership Master Deck Slide Meeting Session #3

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Site 5 Step Student Success Plans 2023-24

Hueneme Elementary School District School

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MTSS WORKBOOKS 2023-24

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Bard MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Hathaway MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Green MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Blackstock MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Hueneme MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Larsen MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Parkview MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Beach MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Sunkist MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Williams MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Bard MTSS Fall meeting #1

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Haycox MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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Beach MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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Hathaway MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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Green MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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Haycox MTSS Winter Meeting #2

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Blackstock MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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Larsen MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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Parkview MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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Hueneme MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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Sunkist MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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Williams MTSS Fall Meeting #1

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MTSS Shared Google Drive (You'll need to be signed in to your HESD Google Account)

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MTSS Shared Google Drive (You'll need to be signed in to your HESD Google Account)

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Access data monitoring spreadsheets and upload agendas, minutes, and other artifacts from your "in-between", site-level MTSS meetings

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Deb Sabin: Hello. Welcome to the Science of Reading in middle school. I can see that people are beginning to enter. So sit tight. We're going to give folks a minute or two to enter the room and then we will get started. We're very excited to see everyone who's starting to join.

Susan Lambert: Oh, we got shout outs from Youngstown, Ohio. I wonder where else people are from, and I hope the weather is warmer where they are than where I am.

Deb Sabin: Susan's calling us... joining us from Michigan. So if you can beat her temperature, I don't know, maybe you'll earn some extra points.

Susan Lambert: Alberta, Canada. I just saw Alberta. Wow.

Deb Sabin: Yeah, that might be colder.

Susan Lambert: Might be. Wow, this is great. The range of states is amazing, Deb.

Deb Sabin: What are you seeing?

Susan Lambert: Massachusetts, Washington, Georgia, Las Vegas, Springfield, Illinois. Oh, Maine, Knoxville, Tennessee, Jackson, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Mexico, New York.

Deb Sabin: Almost sea to shining sea.

Susan Lambert: Boise Idaho, California, West Virginia. Yeah.

Deb Sabin: We got it.

Susan Lambert: We got it.

Deb Sabin: We got it. I'm going to give people about 30 more seconds and we will get started. We have a lot to cover today. We want to make sure that we have time at the end for questions.

Susan Lambert: Auckland, New Zealand, we have somebody from New Zealand here.

Deb Sabin: crosstalk. What time is in Auckland, New Zealand?

Susan Lambert: Hawaii too. I don't know. If somebody is up at 3: 00 AM or something, that's amazing.

Deb Sabin: That's wonderful-

Susan Lambert: They said 10: 00 AM.

Deb Sabin: I should start looking for webinars that happen at 3: 00 PM crosstalk. I'm awake anyway. Okay. Welcome everybody to the Science of Reading in Middle School. Thank you all so much for joining us. I am Deb Sabin. I am the chief academic officer for Amplify 6- 8. So our language arts program for grades 6 to 8, and I am super excited to be joined today by Susan Lambert. Well, I'm sure many of you already know, she is our elementary humanities, chief academic officer here at Amplify, but you may know her better as the Science of Reading guru who hosts the podcast of the same name, the Science of Reading podcast. And if you have not tuned in, I highly advise that you do. There's some really useful information that gets passed along in that podcast. So welcome to all of you. I know how herculean this year has been for all of you and the efforts that you have put in. In fact, last Friday night, I actually was on... not a webinar of my own, but I joined... My husband's a middle school principal and some of his teachers were posting in their extra hours a cooking class for students. And I just thought, one, wow, Friday evening, they've just done a whole week of teaching and they're hosting a virtual cooking class. And two, how astoundingly excited the kids were in terms of being able to show off both their cooking skills and their little brothers and sisters. So thank you for the work that you do. We hope that this webinar will be useful for you. We're really hoping to help you think about that final push for this year and particularly as you think ahead to next year. We know that so many of you are beginning to think like, what should I be thinking about, as I think about my middle grade reader, and how can I really support those readers best, particularly as they return to a new situation, hopefully in the fall? So we have Susan here to really give us a primer of the Science of Reading, both in terms of early reading skills and how that begins to develop as students move into the middle grades and beyond. I'm then going to look more specifically at the middle school classroom and think about what does the Science of Reading tell us about core reading instruction in the middle grades? And then have Susan come back again to really think about, how do you spot and support students that, in spite of all our best efforts, we'll have gaps and have some struggles that needs some additional help, and then we'll have a Q& A session. I want to remind folks that if you dig way down into your toolbar, at the bottom of your screen, you can see a closed captioning icon. For people who need closed captioning, that's available down there. Obviously, a recording of this session will be available in about 24 hours for those people who would like that. And as always, you have your Q& A button in your toolbar, please keep those questions coming. We will have a Q& A session at the end. I think I handled all the logistics, Susan, not if you think I handled-

Susan Lambert: I think so. I think you got it all, Deb.

Deb Sabin: Okay. So I would love, at this point, to turn it over to Susan, to do what she does best, which is school us all in the Science of Reading.

Susan Lambert: Thanks Deb. So excited to be here. I think this is the first time we've ever done some work together. So it's just been really great to bring the Science of Reading into the middle school environment. And for those of you that are middle school teachers, or are actively working in middle schools now, I think it's really instructive and really important for you to understand what happens in terms of the development of reading proficiency in the youngest of learners, and what does that mean for you by the time kids come to you. And then we're going to actually figure out, and go backwards with, well, what happens if I feel like they don't have proficient reading in middle school? What do we do about that? So we're going to ground everything in context of what do we mean by the Science of Reading? Well, when we talk about the Science of Reading, we're really referring to this framework of the simple view of reading. That's been around for quite some time, and validated over and over again. And essentially what it tells us is that reading proficiency or reading comprehension is the product of two things. And take special care of my language there. It's the product of two things, language comprehension and word recognition. Now, this is ELA webinar, but for those of you that actually know math as well, you know that if you put a zero in either language comprehension or word recognition, you're going to come out with a zero on the other side of the equation. And so, we need to pay attention to both these elements to make sure that our students are developing as proficient readers. So let's talk a little bit about what do I mean by language comprehension and word recognition. So language comprehension is really the ability to understand and make sense of spoken language. This is making meaning from what you hear. So this is the ability to engage in conversations to productively add to that conversation. You build your background knowledge this way, vocabulary this way. This is the thing that babies are born with that develops naturally. So if you've heard me before, you've heard me say this, that when my daughter and daughter- in- law were pregnant with my grandchildren, I would tell them, " You need to read to and talk to that baby before they're born, and get those books out and hit it hard even at day one." Because at birth, students or babies, children, start to take in all the language that they hear. And so they receive that information or receptive language. And over time they start to model that or express that same kind of language. But it's really important that we build that language capacity in students because the starting place for reading is actually speech. And again, this language comprehension develops naturally. Obviously, when kids come to school, there's some kids that have more background knowledge, more vocabulary, more language, more experience than the oral environment. And it impacts them when they start school but again, they don't need to be taught how to do this, it's naturally occurring. On the other hand, there's this thing called word recognition, and this is the ability to actually read the words on the page. It involves being really automatic to being able to recognize a word when you see it and not have to put the energy into decoding it. This is not magic. Those words don't magically appear off the page. You can't put a kid in a library, surrounded by books and paper, and expect them to come up and be readers. This does not develop naturally, it must be taught. And in some kids, it needs to take more time to be taught. This is a whole brain remapping process that has to happen. I just recorded a podcast episode with Bruce McCandless today, who does a lot of work in this area and it just reminded me of the miracle of teaching a kid how to read, just what we're bringing to them when that process happens. So word recognition has to be taught directly, and that's part of the equation. Well, it sounds simple, the simple view of reading, but when we dig in a little bit deeper, we find out and we know from experience, that is actually quite complex. And so Hollis Scarborough is a dyslexia researcher who actually put together something called Scarborough's Reading Rope. Many of you probably know this. If you have been on any of our webinars before you've been introduced to this, the idea that, within language comprehension and word recognition, there are various strands or elements that make up both of these things. And you can see it illustrated here. On the bottom we have that word recognition, which is essentially teaching kids that the sounds that we make, or the speech that we make, is represented in print by letters or combinations of letters, and those letters and combinations of letters then make up words. This is the place where we need to teach kids to be very automatic. And the other side is language comprehension. And this is what we were talking about in terms of building background knowledge and vocabulary, the ability to put together sentences and understand at the sentence level what those means, so that we can make connections between and across sentences, so that we can leave a text, or leave a conversation with the gist of what's going on. Now, these look separate in terms of how they're represented here, but you'll notice that they start weaving together and they really interact with one another as students are learning in the early grades. And you'll notice that they come together about 3rd grade, if kids are developing naturally, and become increasingly, woven together and tighter, where kids are becoming very automatic in their word recognition, so they can put their cognitive energy into becoming increasingly strategic. And this is the place where we want kids to be when they enter middle school. They don't need to worry about automaticity because they've already developed that, and they can use their cognitive energy then to actually engage in text, and read and write about texts. One more thing that I want to say before I turn it over to Deb, is that it may look like writing is not represented in Scarborough's Reading Rope, but what we know from the research is that writing is a very important part of actually developing both word recognition and language comprehension. So when we get to middle school, Deb will talk to you about the interaction between reading and writing. But even at the word recognition level, where we're learning about letters and sounds, and how they're parts of words, writing needs to be a part of that process, because there's a reciprocity that's just inherent in the development of reading. So that's the really quick, high level view about what we mean about the Science of Reading and the elements involved. And I'm going to turn it over to Deb who's going to talk about what that looks like them in the middle school years.

Deb Sabin: And Susan, I'm going to pause for a second because I'm just wondering. One of our facilitators, I think, may have a hand raised and I just want to check whether there was a question that she had. I'm going to give her a second. I don't think so.

Susan Lambert: All right.

Deb Sabin: All right. We will keep on. So thank you, Susan. I want to pause a second on this and just again, note that you have these discrete strands, but they're really coming together into this tightly, woven, strategic reading process that's happening in the middle grades. So as we think of core reading instruction in the middle grades, you're really trying to think about, how do you both leverage those strands, particularly the reading comprehension strands that you see in Scarborough's Rope, while also providing students with the experience they need, putting all those strands together? And one of the things that I really think about, as teachers shift from the early to the middle grades is, in the early grades, I think we spend a significant amount of time thinking about, what are the skills my students need to build their understanding of text? As you move up into the middle grades, you want to begin thinking as much, if not more, about, what are the texts students need to build their understanding of the skills? Because, particularly when it comes to the language comprehension skills, those are going to happen in the context of text. So again, Susan spoke about... that your students arrive at school with a lot of comprehension skills, potentially already in place, or a variety of those, because they've been talked to, they've had exposure to the world. But as they move through schooling, particularly when they hit middle school, most of that knowledge is going to start coming from books. So they need to be spending... Good readers are in a reciprocal relationship where they are building their content knowledge as they read. Similarly, with their understanding of how words work, their knowledge of vocabulary. Again, you start entering in middle grades, this reciprocal relationship. So the more students read, the more they are exposed to how words work, the more they're exposed to how words work, the more they could read. So it's again, suggesting this tightly woven braid, and in terms of core instruction, making sure that students are being exposed in the context of texts to the ways that words work. And then Susan talked about sentences and the connection between sentences, but obviously that begins to extend into their exposure and understanding of text structures. So students arriving in the middle grades are entering a stage of their schooling where 75% of the reading that they will be doing, as they move up into secondary school, is focused on informational texts. So if we're thinking about, what are the types of knowledge, what are the types of structures that we need to expose them to, in the core instructional? We need to really be thinking, both in terms of literature, but also in terms of informational text. So as you are thinking of, what do we need to prioritize within core instruction in the middle grades? You really need to begin to be thinking about complex texts. What is the text that students are being put in front of that's going to give them strategic exposure to all those strands that we saw in Scarborough's Rope? And I like to talk about it as, what are the texts that present a minefield of opportunities for students? And I'm going to talk a little bit by actually diving in to an example of a passage from a text. So this is a text, we actually use it in 7th grade, but if you have not read this text, I suggest you do so. It is one that middle grade students seem to engage with easily. It is based on the famous case of Phineas Gage from 1848. He was a foreman, building a railroad, and he had the large misfortune to have an iron rod. And you can see him sitting with that iron rod on the right, shot through his head. He survived. He not only survived, he became very influential in the study of modern brain science. And so this book really is both a narrative, but also presents a lot of informational knowledge about early understandings of brain structures and then evolving into later understandings. But when we first introduced students to this text, we have them read an early chapter about his accident, and we really ask them, " Based on your reading of the text, what were the factors that enabled Phineas to survive?" So that's the question they're thinking about, but this is the type of text that they have to work with to answer that question. So, as I am reading, you can be thinking about your answer to that question, or based on just the small snippet, what is the factor that may have helped Phineas survive this accident? I'm just going to move this. Phineas should have been dead long before this. A 13 pound iron rod through the head should kill a person instantly. Surviving that, he should've died of shock soon after reaching Cavendish. He's lost a lot of blood, yet he remains awake and talkative. Even surviving the loss of blood, Phineas should have died of brain swelling. Any hard blow to the body causes injured tissue to swell. The brain is soft and the skull is hard. A hard blow to the head can rattle the brain around inside like a BB in a tin can. The rattling bruises... Sorry. The rattling bruises the brain and bruised tissue swells. The brain swells, but the skull stays the same size. A swollen brain can jam itself so tightly. It will cut off its own blood supply. This swelling can choke off oxygen to parts of the brain long enough to cause permanent damage. It can also cause death. That's a closed brain injury, sometimes called a concussion. Here, Phineas has a stroke of luck. His is an open brain injury. So again, students are given a text like this and they're asked like, what is one of the factors that helps Phineas survive his accident? So as you're thinking about that question, maybe putting your answers in the chat, I'm going to talk a little bit about what you're doing as a reader when you're working with this passage. So first of all, you are using the text to build content knowledge. So this whole highlighted area is giving you rich information about concussions. How are concussions caused, what is happening to the brain, how does that lead to injury. But even in order to unpack that background knowledge or to build that knowledge, you're starting to work with, what are fairly simple vocabulary words, but they're being presented in ways that are new for many middle grade students? So words as simple as tissue, they may be familiar with the tissue, but now it's being used in a different context. A word like rattle the brain around inside, they may be very familiar with rattle, but now it's starting to expand their understanding of the range of meanings that word can hold, similarly, jam and choke. And then down at the bottom, you have a little phrase, stroke of luck, that again is... There's familiar words, but they're now being put together in a slightly unfamiliar way and meaning. So again, we talked about the word relationships. Here's an example of where particularly simple words are now being asked to hold slightly different meanings. And then, just in terms of the structure of the text. So the yellow section is largely description, and yet within that description, you can see that the writer is drawing heavily on a cause and effect structure. So here's a sentence where it's clearly giving you a cause at the beginning of the sentence and ending with an effect. And continuing cause, the rattling bruises the brain, and affect. So for you to answer that question that I gave you at the beginning, what is one of the factors that led to Phineas' survival? You're again, having to... it's a minefield of opportunity, opportunities to build your content knowledge, opportunities to expand your understanding of how words work, opportunities to get exposed to different text structures. So, wow, the same literacy practices that may have gone on earlier, practice with fluency, thinking about vocabulary, working with student's comprehension, and writing are still taking place in that core instructional block. You're really focused on embedding all those practices within a rich text selection and sequence. So rather than giving students an outside practice with different text structures, you might be embedding that practice within their reading of this passage, because they're still going to need that deliberate literacy practice as they move through a text like this. And a lot of students are going to need additional supported practice because these are going to be new structures for them. So they might need an organizer like this that really helps them walk through how that entire paragraph is structured in a cause and effect structure. So the first point about core.... The implications of the Science of Reading on the core instruction are really thinking about the text selection and sequencing that happens in your middle grade classroom. So you want to be thinking of those text as you're choosing them, does the text stretch the breadth and depth of students word knowledge? You want to be asking yourself, does it put a variety of sentence in text structures to good use? And again, I worded that carefully to good use because it's very easy to find extremely complex texts that present long, wordy sentences, but they're not necessarily, really focused on driving... You would be looking for juicy sentences where unpacking that sentence on the part of the students is really going to help them build something else, build their word knowledge, build their content knowledge. And finally, you want to think of what types of knowledge are students building. And I want to give expanse here, not just knowledge of particular domains, and knowledge of particular text structures, and knowledge of particular words, but knowledge for middle grade students of themselves and the world around them. So that might be equally something that you're attending to as your sequencing text. This seems fairly common sensical. We have kids spend a lot of time with rich text. And I think what is surprising to certain people is when people go in and actually observe in middle grade classrooms. They find that students spend... proportionally, very small percentage of the classroom actually, deeply embedded with text. And so the next thing I'd like to just think about is why is that? If we know the Science of Reading, if we know that readers need time with text, why is it that we see these small percentage of times in the middle grades? And I think it's for good reason. I think that middle grade teachers know intuitively that there's a lot of other stuff that's happening in middle schools. Anyone who's walked in a middle school will not be surprised by that photograph on the right. Middle school's an active place. Students are doing important developmental work and they need teachers and classroom environments that acknowledge that developmental work. This age group really wants independence, but they still need a lot of guidance from adults. They have a lot of opinions and they are very eager to express them. They are ready for additional challenge, but we know the types of supports they need. They need a lot of support, and they're very invested in their peers. So what we need to do in core instruction is not only take those literacy practice and embed them within our rich text selection and sequence, but overall, be very attentive to the critical and collaborative engagement that this age group demands and needs. And if they are not finding it within the classroom practices, they tend to look for it in other areas. So what does that look like? If I am planning core instruction around text and I really want my students to be engaged, I'm looking for ways to harness their natural proclivity to collaborate with their peers and work with their peers. They will need explicit instruction on it but they really enjoy those moments. I want to make sure that I'm supporting a variety of interactions and ideas. And then, under the table, within that, being aware that that's allowing students a lot of opportunities to reread the text. Middle grade teachers are very invested in the feedback that they're giving students. The students are going to be doing a lot of the work of reading the text. My role as a teacher becomes therefore much more of the facilitator of that work. And then targeting the reading, writing connection, and I'm glad Susan spoke about that, becomes an incredibly important tool for core instruction. So here's just a few basic touch points when we think about, how do I get middle- grade students to work closely with the text in the ways that they need, but also understanding their need for engagement? Any ways that they can collaborate in their work with the text, usually are both productive and appreciated. I say, productive with the understanding that they need explicit guidance. So what we see on the right is just clear guidelines for students, how do I have a discussion with my peers about the text? And they may need these types of guidelines for a number of months before they can come off and ad- lib a little bit, but really your role in the core instruction is to help them have these types of discussion where they can go back and forth, and collaborate, and refine their understanding of the text. So they can go back, back to that passage about Phineas Gage and figure out like, " Okay, what actually is happening that gives him an advantage in the fact that he has a hole in his head rather than a closed head?" And we talked about giving them different approaches to the text. Make sure that they can hear the text. We know that their oral comprehension remains ahead of their reading comprehension up through 9th grade. So the more they could hear the syntax out loud, they have a model for fluent practice, is a great thing that should be taking place in the core classroom. Continue to allow them to visualize it. They do a lot of drawing in elementary school. Bring that into the middle school and allow them to think about how they are using details in the text to create a mental model in their own head, all these types of things, speaking it, performing it, particularly writing about the text. One of the things that researchers know about this reading, writing connection is that writing about a text is statistically, a very effective way to improve students' reading comprehension. So the more opportunities within the core classroom that students have to respond to texts, to summarize the text, to take notes on the text, you're really harnessing and leveraging their comprehension skills. And then I think because if we looked back to that Phineas Gage text, you can see I called it the minefield of opportunity. There's a lot of things that can go right and there's a lot of potential areas where students are going to need support. You need to really plan to support those strugglers. So how can you look at those critical passages that students are going to work with and think about the vocabulary that might be tough for students, to provide ways, not for students necessarily to have a list and write their definitions on the side, but early on, to understand how to work with that vocabulary in the context of the text? So here's just a small way in which a student might think about, " Okay, what's a basic synonym that I might guess at this point before I read the full text, write down my answer, and then come back again to see, 'Do I think I was on the right track of understanding what that word, rattle meant in this new context?'" Planning for fluency, again, you could even see when I read that passage, I got tripped up by some of the syntaxes. So giving them opportunities to read, reread, and have repeated readings of short passages so that they feel confidence about their fluency. And focus a lot on their expression, potentially less on their rate and more on their expression. And then I showed you a brief model of an organizational structure that might help students unpack that cause and effect. Providing them a small set, maybe only three or four graphic organizers explicitly teaching them how to use those organizers to look at some of the key text structures that they're going to see, particularly in informational texts, and then letting them use them and pointing them to those organizers at the key moments. And then writing practice, for strugglers, readers, yes, it's important for them to organize their thoughts before they write, but in terms of their reading comprehension, finding time for them to do targeted revision after they write to go back, look at their writing, look again at the text, and revise some of their use of evidence or the way that they articulated their ideas. So targeted revision can be important. So obviously, whether you are developing your own materials with the teachers in your districts, or you're working with partner- created materials, you're going to be really thinking about, what is the sequence of text that's really going to expose students and will give them the opportunities to work with all these vocabulary and text structures that will keep pushing their development in reading? You're going to want to create a variety of ways for them to encounter the text, particularly writing. You want to think about, how do I keep them focused on the text? How do I put the text at the center of most of what they are doing in the classroom? And then finally, before I turn it over to Susan, you want to think about, how can I make sure that all my students can participate in that core instruction? And I want to double down a little bit on that and just say that the more, even your strugglers can find ways to participate, to work with some of those grade level text, the more you're going to get a sense of what they can do. So I really want people to think about, what can my students do? Once I have set them up for success in this way, what can they do? And I think that will really help you begin to understand and think about the gaps that they may have and what they can't do. And that's where I'm going to turn it back to Susan who's going to talk a little bit.

Susan Lambert: Thank you. I want to highlight a couple of things, that Deb said, that I think are really important as we start to dig in to say, what do I do when I notice there are students that can't access grade level text, and I think they have a comprehension problem? So first of all, I love that she said plan for support. Every single 6th grade teacher, 7th grade teacher, 8th grade teacher knows, if they've been in the classroom more than a single year, that there is going to be a group of students that come in, that didn't get the instruction they needed to have in the earlier grades, didn't get enough of the instruction they needed to have, and they're going to need to support them. So make sure you preplan that and think about it ahead of time. Don't wait for that first day of school, or the first week of school, or even into the second or third month to figure out where your class is. Use what you know about your previous experiences to anticipate the structures that you can build and support for students. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is, her call to action, for continuing with grade level core instruction. I think our first response is always, " This kid can't engage in this grade level instruction and so I'm going to lower the expectation to help them feel like they're being successful." And that's a really dangerous and slippery slope to get into, because that will almost ensure that the student's going to get further and further behind. So we need to keep kids engaged in the core instruction and then figure out, like Deb said, what can they do as a catalyst for what do we need to give them extra support in? And I want to start to think about how we can backtrack with that. So we know-

Deb Sabin: Can I just tell one little story?

Susan Lambert: crosstalk.

Deb Sabin: And I think I'm among ELA friends here, but I will say that I was doing a workshop, a number of years ago, with social studies teachers and I was saying, " How do you present your content?" And they said, " Well, our students can't read the text, so we just present it as PowerPoints." And so, I know that the folks here feel, very much, responsible for building those literacy skills, and I would love to extend that sense of responsibility across all curriculum areas. But again, I think one of the points that we talked about, in that workshop, was just what you said. So if they're not spending the time with the text in your class, because you are having to give the content in another way, what happens the next year when they see that next grade texts?

Susan Lambert: Yeah. That's a great example. Just a great example. And we know, right? That not every student looks like this student, but comprehension is the ultimate goal, right? That's the whole purpose for why we're building to reading and why we look at Scarborough. So let's go back and look at Scarborough for just a minute to say, all right, if I have kids in my class that aren't reading or aren't comprehending, let's say it that way, they don't have good reading comprehension, we need to reframe how we're looking at this, not to say, " What kind of comprehension support can I give them?" But what we need to say is, " Where is their reading breaking down, such that it's impacting their comprehension?" So it's a subtle change to look at it, but we know that, based on what we've learned earlier in this webinar, reading comprehension depends on automatic recognition of words. That's that lower word recognition part. And if that is not automatic, it's going to keep kids from comprehending. We know that in order to be a proficient reader and have reading comprehension, there's this aspect of comprehension of the language of the text, right? So Deb was talking about how important it is to engage students in the language of the text or the vocabulary, and how really skilled readers will grow their vocabulary exponentially because they are engaged with texts and they're good word recognizers. So these two things are reciprocal and they interact with each other. And we also know there's this issue of strategic knowledge. Can you approach a text and understand your purpose for reading, right?... that enters into this? And especially important in middle school is the idea of motivation, right? Deb already talked about that, keys to engage and motivate students to get engaged or to be involved with text. So with that in mind, let's go back again then to the simple view of reading and make this back into our equation. So if you have a kid that is not a comprehender, you have to figure out then, what is it about either language comprehension or word recognition, perhaps maybe strategic reading, that's keeping them from reading comprehension? So let's go back to our math skills. And in order to get a different result on the right- hand side of the equation, in the reading comprehension element, you have to do something on the other side of the equation to ensure that you can make progress and moving forward. So we have to manipulate then, those variables on that left part of the equation. So how do we go about doing that? How do we think about going backwards in the rope? Well, I'd like to talk to you about what we call the cognitive model of reading or the cognitive model here. It's actually an assessment. And you can see, already by this graphic, that if you look at the top row in blue, the middle row in green, it's a little representative, isn't it? Of the simple view of reading. We're looking at word recognition skills, we're looking at language comprehension skills, and then we have this additional row in the bottom called strategic knowledge, which is super important. So if we start on the right hand side in this big gray circle of comprehension, what we need to do is we need to move backwards to figure out what is it that's keeping this kid from reading comprehension? And so we use this cognitive model as a roadmap then for an assessment- driven, decision making process. So let's put this in context of the Science of Reading. In the Science of Reading, when we look at assessment, the purpose of assessment is twofold. So we're not giving assessments to score kids, or see what their grade is, or see where they stack up against the rest of the nation, what we're doing here is actually using an assessment to aid in the design then of instruction or intervention for what that particular student needs. And so assessment in the Science of Reading model, really is designed to help us understand what are the gaps and what can I do in instruction to fill those gaps. So two things we're going to use it for, understanding what this particular kid needs, and number two, how can we set up intervention to help support them or move them back then into grade level instruction or instruction at the level of their peers. Now, I know sometimes we think, by the time they get to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, is this even possible? And I will tell you, yes, it is possible to get the kids to close gaps, right? Get them the information they need, the knowledge that they need, to be able then to come back with their peers. But it is not possible if you don't also keep them in core instruction. So we're going to come back to that in just a minute. But when we're doing this, we're acting like a detective. And so we're going to look at four questions. We're going to say, " Okay, first of all, given a list of words, can this kid actually decode them?" A great way to do that is with a list of nonsense words. If the kid can't decode nonsense words, you know that there is a gap someplace in that word recognition element, just an example. What about, can they comprehend grade level language? How would we do that? Well, if I could read a grade level text out loud to a student, are they able to comprehend the language? Can they engage in the syntax at that level? Can they answer comprehension questions about that? Do they understand the vocabulary? If they can, then there's not a language comprehension issue, right? It's probably another issue that's keeping them from being a comprehender. So then the next question, the third question is, can they actually self- monitor or do they have strategic knowledge to be able to approach a text? Do they understand why they're reading? Do they understand the purposes for the reading? Do they understand strategies they can bring to their reading to help them with that? And so that's another element that you can look at. And the one that's not represented here, but the one that I mentioned that's really important to middle schoolers is, have they lost motivation to read? Is there something that's keeping them from engaging in the text, some kind of motivation issue? Now, if they're not able to recognize words, if they're not understanding the language of the text, obviously, that's going to be very de- motivating to a kid. But essentially you need to look at those four things, can the child to code? Can they comprehend grade level language? Can they self- monitor? Do they have strategic abilities as they approach a text? And do they have that motivation? And so what do we do if we find an area of gap in one of these? Well, let's look at the model of RTI. So as a reminder, response to intervention is really an explanation of what do we do with kids and how do we monitor kids when they need extra support outside of grade level instruction. In this triangle, that bottom green, represents 80% of our students, right? 80% of our students should be in grade level instruction. Do they sometimes need support in that? Absolutely. Deb talked us through some of the ways that we can support students, particularly in the middle school. Rigorous instruction doesn't mean that students never need support, right? They need that support sometimes and we can give that to them in terms of supports and scaffolds in differentiated instruction within tier one. But when students need more instruction outside of that grade level instruction, similar to what you would see with a middle school student, we've got them engaged in core instruction, we're giving them supports there, but we notice that there's a gap. Maybe they need practice with that, with those word recognition skills. They need some morphology intervention, they need some language support. Maybe they need strategies for how to approach a text. This instruction should never be given in place of your core grade level instruction, it always needs to be additive, because if a kid is behind, that means they need even more instruction and they need it to be targeted. And again, this is so critical so that students don't get even further behind. And so we have to find time, within our schedule, to be able to make that a priority. Now, I know a lot of us are thinking about, what is it going to look like when we come back to school, when we're moving out of either a hybrid environment or a remote environment? And did kids lose ground in terms of their learning? Or what about those kids that always come to us and they need some kind of additional support? I would really encourage any administrators that are on this call, any leaders in buildings to say, " We need to actually look at our schedule and we need to calendarize intervention time to give kids double doses of instruction, to ensure we can get them back then, on track for reading." And so, it's really in our hands, as adults, to take ownership and responsibility for what students need to have, and use models from the Science of Reading, like Scarborough's Rope to go backwards and understand what kids need, to use the cognitive model of assessment, to be able to administer some assessments backwards, to figure out where kids are? Where kids need to have additional instruction? To then re- engage them in reading comprehension. So the last thing that I'm going to say before I turn it back over to Deb is just this reminder, to reframe this issue and think about not, what do I do? Because the kid has a reading comprehension problem, but remember to reframe it in a way to say, " What is keeping this child from being a better comprehender of text?" And with that, I'm going to turn it to Deb.

Deb Sabin: Thank you, Susan. I have very little else to say, because I think you just summed up so well. I do always like to think about this quote as I plan for middle school instruction to really help us all to remember that books still contain a lot of wonder for students. We all come to this profession because there's so much in books. We obviously have a lot of concerns about our students and kind of, how can I show this to them? But on the other hand, we all know when you put the right book in front of, even the wrong kids sometimes, wonderful things happen. They do not come easily just as this quote says. You have to pursue them. Kids have to take on the challenge of them. So just like we ran after the bees to find their tree, this writer says, " You must chase things through the pages of a book." And with that, I can see that there are questions in the Q& A tracker and so I'd love to have the time for questions. I'm going to quickly plug in my computer. It looks like it's running out of power.

Susan Lambert: Yes. Let me take one of them while you're plugging in your computer. And one of them is just a comment, really. " I'd love to see what a middle school master schedule could look like that included a reading intervention time." And a lot of times middle school schedules will have a block where kids can choose a class or kids have study hall time or something like that, but I think that is a really great issue that should be raised, both within your schools and within your district, is how could we do this? And it really takes a village to solve that.

Deb Sabin: Yeah. And I would also say that I think that, even when that happens, there are too many examples where there is not strong coordination between the core instruction and what's going on in that, for lack of a better word, pullout or secondary moment. And I think, I would like to urge there to be like a lot of planning together.

Susan Lambert: Yeah.

Deb Sabin: crosstalk what's happening in that intervention is also supporting what's going on in the core instruction.

Susan Lambert: Yeah. That's a great comment. I looked at... What? Another comment. " I see many of my students struggle with fluency. They work hard at getting through the texts that they struggle remembering what they've read. Any thoughts or suggestions for fluency practice?" This is a great one, Deb, because a lot of times we think this is a fluency issue, and when we actually really dive in, yes, it's a fluency issue, but it's a fluency issue because they don't have automatic word recognition. And you can go backwards then to figure out, " Okay, where is it, that they're breaking down, and can we start to teach them then some of these more complex, advanced phonics?" But that's a great place where you need to do some diagnostic assessments. Just teaching kids to be more fluent isn't always the answer. A lot of times it's really a word recognition issue.

Deb Sabin: Mm- hmm( affirmative). And I think there's a small percentage of kids that are the opposite. They will read very fluently and accurately, but it's when you're really trying to listen to their expression to this teacher's point, that you realize there's a comprehension issue, but that's a smaller percentage, crosstalk.

Susan Lambert: Yeah, for sure. Oh, I'm looking at... There's so many great questions in here. Oh my goodness. We should've had a facilitator here to help us with that. So master schedules. What about small group instruction in middle school, Deb? What's your view on that?

Deb Sabin: Yeah. No, I love small group instruction. Again, I, whenever possible, have heterogeneous small groups. So again, you're not trying to siphon off your strugglers all into a group together. If you're doing that, you're doing it purposefully to target particular things. But I would point to what I showed about the peer discussion guidelines. They need explicit instruction for how they work in those small groups, and they need those routines really taught to them explicitly, perhaps in whole group, and then move into the small groups with you, again, facilitating.

Susan Lambert: That's great. Somebody wanted to know, " Repeat the four questions." Yes, I can repeat those four questions to determine the issue at hand. Can the student decode? Can they comprehend grade level language? Can they self- monitor? And their motivation. Do they have motivation to read? " I have students..." This is a good one. And I'm looking at my time. We'll do this one as the last one. I think a lot of them are like this. " I have students in 6th through 8th grades that are two to three grade levels below. Many are not on an IEP. And I'm trying to raise their levels by using grade level text. We read it together and discuss each week. The topics are chosen by the students. I'm not just sure that I'm doing things correctly."

Deb Sabin: So I'm happy that you're working with grade level texts.

Susan Lambert: Absolutely.

Deb Sabin: That's the biggest part of the battle. You're keeping them on grade level text. And you're thinking about, what's going to drive their inquiry and their motivation? Again, fantastic. I would urge you to think about some of the things that we talked about in terms of bringing out some of the complexities of text. So where are those sentences where the syntax is complex and new for your students? And how can you have them paraphrase those, potentially before they go into their inquiry? And what are the words that you want to circle? Because they're a little bit unusual. They may be domain specific words, but more and more, they are just words that are carrying a different range of meanings for students. And so, building some of the practices of, people do those, vocabulary relationship, webs like that, can be fantastic for students to post and put up in the classroom, can be useful, crosstalk. But keep up with the grade level texts, love the idea of driving student- led inquiry, but preview those passages beforehand and really think about where those kind of minefields are and how can you have the kids work explicitly with those?

Susan Lambert: Yeah, I would agree with all that. And one more plug, which is, at middle school, don't forget the power of morphology instruction, because that will exponentially grow kids recognition of words and help them to be able to engage in more grade level text. Maybe that should be our next webinar, Deb, as we should do a webinar on morphology. It's fascinating.

Deb Sabin: I'll follow you anywhere, Susan.

Susan Lambert: That's awesome. Well, folks, thanks for the engagement. It's great. I know there's a lot of questions we weren't able to get to. We will go back and curate some of those and see if we can respond to them. But I think Deb has a couple of things she wants to share before we go.

Deb Sabin: Yeah. I just want to share that there are some additional upcoming webinars and we're always planning more. So if you say, " Susan, I'd love you to do a webinar on X, Y, and Z," feel free to give that feedback. But March 2nd, there is a webinar on how to adjust learning laws with new stimulus funding. So for district leaders that are looking at their budgets, tune in to that. And then March 4th, we have the Science of Reading virtual symposium with some pretty amazing guests.

Susan Lambert: Yes.

Deb Sabin: So I would look at amplify. com events to register. And I would again underscore that. I came into the educational field through secondary education and really didn't have a lot of exposure to the Science of Reading. So I would urge all of us, middle and secondary folks, to just catch some of those, the podcast episodes of the Science of Reading. I always find myself learning a lot.

Susan Lambert: Me too.

Deb Sabin: So thank you all for your time.

Susan Lambert: Thank you everyone. Have a great evening,

Deb Sabin: Yeah. Have a great evening. Stay safe.

Susan Lambert: Stay warm.

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SOR and Middle School: The Other End of Scarborough's Rope

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In this webinar, Susan Lambert and Deb Sebin will be discussing: The importance for educators to implement Science of Reading techniques and methods into their classroom. The Scarborough's Reading Rope, designed by Hollis Scarborough. Skills needed in the development of a strong reader and writer.

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When you add or remove members of your team, please update this roster.

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The Science of Reading and Middle School: The Other End of the Rope

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Ignore the Bard logo...not sure why it's showing here :)

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Google Slides (all on one) version of MTSS pyramid

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Google Slides (all on one) version of MTSS pyramid

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THANK YOU, MIRTA, FOR SHARING!

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The Science of Reading vs. Balanced Literacy

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THANK YOU, CARA, FOR SHARING!

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Create a new spreadsheet and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Sheets to edit Excel files. Free from Google.

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2025-26 MTSS LEADERSHIP TEAM MEETING DATES

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2025-26 MTSS LEADERSHIP TEAM MEETING DATES

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October 16, 2024 Principal's Meeting

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MTSS/LEADERSHIP TEAM 2023-24