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Sample Learning Progression - 7th grade writing 

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Sample Learning Progression - 7th grade writing 

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Ohio's Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement - updated January 2025

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Ohio's Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement - updated January 2025

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Guide for Administering Literacy Assessments for Students with Low Incidence Disabilities and Complex Communication Needs 

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Guide for Administering Literacy Assessments for Students with Low Incidence Disabilities and Complex Communication Needs 

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Keys to Literacy Resources - Teaching Literacy Virtually

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Keys to Literacy Resources - Teaching Literacy Virtually

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Literacy Instruction at a Distance: Strategies for Supporting Students with Learning Disabilities

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Explicit instruction in core literacy skills (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) combined with multisensory supports, are key to helping children with language-based learning disabilities thrive in a virtual learning environment. Try these ideas and online learning tools with your students.

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PaTTAN Literacy Resource Hub - Virtual Supports Strand

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Radically transforming language and literacy instruction so every child is on a path to deep reading. #LiteracyandJusticeforALL

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High-Quality Instructional Materials in English Language Arts | Ohio Department of Education

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Ohio Revised Code 3313.6028 Requirements for High-Quality Instructional Materials in English Language Arts and Literacy

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New Changes to Ohio's Dyslexia Support Laws

House Bill 33 of the 135th General Assembly included several important updates to Ohio's dyslexia support laws.

Professional Development (Ohio Revised Code 3319.077)

The following dyslexia professional development requirements apply to teachers in grades K-3 and special education teachers in grades K-12 who are employed by a city, local or exempted village school district, community school or STEM school.

Teachers hired before April 12, 2021, who provide instruction to students in the following grade bands must complete the required professional development in accordance with the following timeline:

By the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year: Teachers of grades K-1, including special education teachers.

By Sept. 15 of the 2024-2025 school year: Teachers of grades 2-3, including special education teachers.

By Sept. 15 of the 2025-2026 school year: Special education teachers of students in grades 4-12.

Teachers hired after April 12, 2021, who provide instruction to students in the grade bands outlined above must complete the required professional development by the later of the aforementioned dates or two calendar years after the hiring date (unless the teacher completed the professional development while employed by a different district or school).

Dyslexia Screening (ORC 3323.251)

A district or school is not required to administer a tier one dyslexia screening measure to a student in grades K-6 who transfers into the district or school midyear if the student's records indicate a screening was administered to the student by the district or school from which the student transferred during that year.

Additional updates for screening transfer students can be found on the Dyslexia Screening webpage.

The 2023-2024 List of Approved Universal Dyslexia Screeners is now available

The list and detailed information are available at the List of Approved Assessments page on the Department's website.

A streamlined list of approved assessments that meet the requirements of tier 1 dyslexia screening and/or the K-3 diagnostic can be found here.

Administering Literacy Assessments for students with Low incidence disabilities and complex communication needs

This document provides resources and recommendations for accommodations and scaffolds districts may use when administering district wide literacy screenings and benchmarks or reading diagnostics. These can be used when administering the required tier 1 dyslexia screener, as well as the reading diagnostic required under the Third Grade Reading Guarantee and other district assessments. The purpose of these is to ensure these assessments provide proper data related to the reading abilities of students with complex communication need and low incidence disabilities. The document can be found here.

Literacy Assessment SelEction Tool K-6 now available

This document describes the different skills that should be assessed by tier 1 and tier 2 dyslexia screeners and will assist districts and schools with choosing screeners. The document can be found here.

Ohio's Introduction to Dyslexia, Kindergarten-Grade 3 course is available through the learning management system

Questions can be sent to Dyslexia@education.ohio.gov. If you need additional account support after consulting the linked support documents above, please contact OH|ID Profile Help at Profile.Help@education.ohio.gov for OH|ID assistance. If you are in the LMS application and need additional support, please contact LMS Support at LMSSupport@education.ohio.gov.

OHIO'S INTRODUCTION TO DYSLEXIA, Grade 4-12 COURSE IS AVAILABLE THROUGH THE LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Questions can be sent to Dyslexia@education.ohio.gov. If you need additional account support after consulting the linked support documents above, please contact OH|ID Profile Help at Profile.Help@education.ohio.gov for OH|ID assistance. If you are in the LMS application and need additional support, please contact LMS Support at LMSSupport@education.ohio.gov.

Helpful Resources for Districts and Families

Ohio's Dyslexia Guidebook

The Department is pleased to announce Ohio's Dyslexia Guidebook is available. As required by Ohio law, Ohio's Dyslexia Guidebook contains best practices and methods for universal screening, intervention and remediation for children with dyslexia or children displaying dyslexic characteristics and tendencies. Districts and schools should use the guidebook to access critical information for successful implementation of Ohio's dyslexia support laws.

The Department will develop additional resources and guidance to support schools and districts. The FAQ page will be updated as needed.

For questions about Ohio's Dyslexia Guidebook or Ohio's dyslexia support laws, please contact Dyslexia@education.ohio.gov.

Helpful Resources

Federal Funding Guidance: This document contains federal funding guidance for districts and schools to use federal Title funds, IDEA Part B School-aged Special Education funds (ages 3-21) and IDEA Part B Early Childhood Special Education funds (ages 3-5) to implement Ohio's Dyslexia Support laws.

House Bill 436 mandated a cost analysis report to ascertain the potential financial costs incurred by school districts to implement Ohio's dyslexia support laws. The final Cost Study Analysis is now available to download as well as the accompanying Appendix with detailed information.

On January 9, 2021, Governor Mike DeWine signed a set of laws strengthening dyslexia supports for Ohio's children. The new dyslexia support laws establish dyslexia screening measures (ORC 3323.251), professional development for identifying dyslexia and instructing students with dyslexia (ORC 3319.077), a structured literacy certification process for teachers (ORC 3319.078) and the Ohio Dyslexia Committee (ORC 3323.25). The following is a summary of the new set of laws:

Requires the Ohio Department of Education to establish the Ohio Dyslexia Committee consisting of 11 members;

Requires the Ohio Dyslexia Committee to develop a dyslexia guidebook for screening, intervention and remediation for children with dyslexia or displaying dyslexic characteristics and tendencies;

Requires the Ohio Dyslexia Committee to prescribe the number of clock hours of dyslexia-related professional development required for teachers;

Permits the Ohio Dyslexia Committee to make recommendations regarding ratios of students to teachers who have received certification in identifying and addressing dyslexia, the school personnel who should receive the certification and whether professional development requirements should include completing a practicum;

Requires the Department, in collaboration with the Ohio Dyslexia Committee, to identify screening and intervention measures that evaluate the literacy skills of students using a structured literacy program;

Requires school districts and other public schools to administer annual dyslexia screenings beginning in the 2022-2023 school year;

Phases in over three years dyslexia-related professional development requirements for public school teachers;

Requires school districts and other public schools, beginning in the 2022-2023 school year, to establish a structured literacy certification process for teachers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Ohio's Rule for Phonics

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House Bill 33 of the 135th General Assembly included several important updates to Ohio's dyslexia support laws. The following dyslexia professional development requirements apply to teachers in grades K-3 and special education teachers in grades K-12 who are employed by a city, local or exempted village school district, community school or STEM school.

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Acknowledgments About the Authors INTRODUCTION What to Expect From This Book CHAPTER 1: DISCIPLINARY LITERACY AND COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING: A PARTNERSHIP THAT WORKS Literacy Initiatives and PLCs: What Went Wrong? Collaborative Disciplinary Literacy Learning: A Story of Success Meet Our Disciplinary Literacy Learning Community Benefits of Collaborative Disciplinary Literacy Professional Learning Fostering Disciplinary Literacy Dialogue Resources for Continued Learning CHAPTER 2: UNLOCKING DISCIPLINARY LITERACY What Is Literacy in the 21st Century? Content Area Literacy Versus Disciplinary Literacy Disciplinary Literacy Instruction in Action Fostering Disciplinary Literacy Dialogue Resources for Continued Learning HOW TO CREATE A SCHOOL-WIDE CULTURE OF DISCIPLINARY LITERACY CHAPTER 3: CREATING A SCHOOL-WIDE CULTURE OF DISCIPLINARY READING Why Read in Every Discipline? Wide Reading in All Disciplines: There's No Downside Reading Strategies: When and How Vocabulary: The Key to All Content Reading Fostering Disciplinary Literacy Dialogue Resources for Continued Learning CHAPTER 4: CREATING A SCHOOLWIDE CULTURE OF DISCIPLINARY WRITING Exploring Disciplinary Writing Writing to Learn in the Discipline Areas Following the Pros: Disciplinary Mentor Texts Feedback: From Master to Apprentice Fostering Disciplinary Literacy Dialogue Resources for Continued Learning CHAPTER 5: CREATING A SCHOOL-WIDE CULTURE OF DISCIPLINARY THINKING Learning to Think in Disciplinary Ways Curiosity Drives Disciplinary Thinking Students and Teachers: Thinking Like Insiders Together Making Disciplinary Thinking Visible Fostering Disciplinary Literacy Dialogue Resources for Continued Learning HOW TO SUSTAIN A SCHOOL-WIDE CULTURE OF DISCIPLINARY LITERACY CHAPTER 6: BUILDING DISCIPLINARY LITERACY (DL) LEARNING COMMUNITIES The Problem With PLCs Fixing the Problem Through DL Learning Communities Tips for Creating Interdisciplinary Common Subject Literacy Learning Communities The All-Important First Meeting Supporting DL Learning Communities Moving Toward Collective Efficacy Sustaining DL Learning Communities Fostering Disciplinary Literacy Dialogue Resources for Continued Learning CHAPTER 7: WHAT MATTERS MOST IN A DISCIPLINARY LITERACY (DL) LEARNING COMMUNITY Collective Inquiry Autonomy and Authority Meaningful Collaboration Fostering Disciplinary Literacy Dialogue Resources for Continued Learning CHAPTER 8: FROM TEACHER LEARNER TO TEACHER LEADER Disciplinary Literacy Develops Deep Leadership Disciplinary Literacy Leadership Roles The Power of Disciplinary Literacy Leadership Fostering Disciplinary Literacy Dialogue Resources for Continued Learning CHAPTER 9: LEADING THE DISCIPLINARY LITERACY CHARGE Administrative Leaders as Learners Disciplinary Literacy Coaching: The Glue That Holds It All Together Fostering Disciplinary Literacy Dialogue Resources for Continued Learning Coda Appendix A: Disciplinary Literacy in English Language Arts Appendix B: Disciplinary Literacy in Math Appendix C: Disciplinary Literacy in Science Appendix D: Disciplinary Literacy in Social Studies Appendix E: Disciplinary Literacy in Art Appendix F: Disciplinary Literacy in a World Language Appendix G: Disciplinary Literacy in Health Appendix H: Disciplinary Literacy in Music Appendix I: Technology or Digital Literacy Appendix J: Disciplinary Literacy in Physical Education References Index

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How do you get content area teachers on the same page about literacy? By trusting that discipline-specific literacy skills will naturally arise-or will they? With this book, you get a professional learning plan to assure they do. Field-tested for more than a decade, this is ready made PL at its best, sure to instill innovative reading and writing schoolwide.

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3-year implementation 4-12 Guide Sequence of Adolescent Literacy Practices

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3-year implementation 4-12 Guide Sequence of Adolescent Literacy Practices

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What is the Science of Reading?

The science of reading is an interdisciplinary body of scientific evidence that:

Informs how students learn to read and write proficiently;

Explains why some students have difficulty with reading and writing;

Indicates that all students benefit from explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and writing to become effective readers;

Does not rely on any model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual cues, including a three-cueing approach.

Why the Science of Reading is Important

Reading unlocks the door for all future learning and provides a lifetime of opportunities. Strong literacy skills are necessary for all Ohioans, starting with the very youngest of learners and continuing into the lives of students after high school, including postsecondary education, immediate entry into the workforce, military service or other types of career development.

As described in the Kindergarten through Grade 4 Literacy Report for 2021-2022, 40% of Ohio's third graders are not reading proficiently. Governor DeWine has called for a renewed state of how we teach reading in Ohio. It is time to critically examine what is working and what is not working and shift to literacy teaching practices that meet the needs of all learners.

In addition, Governor DeWine signed an Executive Order that directs the Governor's Children's Initiative to coordinate with interested parties to develop a program that will recognize schools that are demonstrating strong implementation of best instructional practices aligned to the science of reading and where students are making significant progress in reading. This recognition process will begin this fall.

Whether just getting started or already implementing the science of reading, this toolkit provides resources school leaders, teachers and families can use throughout the year.

Tips for Superintendents

Host a district discussion: What is the science of reading?

Host a district discussion: Why the shift?

Complete the literacy instructional material and professional development survey
The district's literacy lead must complete the Department's literacy instructional material and professional development survey, which will open in late August.

District leaders: Identify science of reading professional development

Have all teachers of grades K-1 completed the dyslexia professional development?

The dyslexia professional development requirements for teachers of grades 2-3 begin in the 2024-2025 school year. Have you planned for teacher participation in professional development?

Complete the literacy instructional material and professional development survey

The district's literacy lead must complete the Department's literacy instructional material and professional development survey, which opened in late August and will close on October 6th.

The Science of Reading Curriculum and Professional Development Survey (PDF document)

Special Note: The curriculum materials drop down list for the questions DOES NOT represent the approve instructional materials list. That list is still under development and will be posted January/ February.

If you have not received a link to the survey, please email ReadOhio@education.ohio.gov.

Tips for PrincipalS

Host a building discussion: What is the science of reading?

Identify science of reading professional development

Have all teachers of grades K-1 completed the dyslexia professional development?

The dyslexia professional development requirements for teachers of grades 2-3 begin in the 2024-2025 school year. Have you planned for teacher participation in professional development?

Prepare for principal walk-throughs to observe instruction
Develop a principal walk-through tool for observing explicit, systematic instruction of the components of reading.

Tips for Educators

Host a grade-level discussion: What is the science of reading?

Host a grade-Level Discussion: Why the shift?

Examine grade-level and classroom literacy data. Review the Ohio School Report Cards.

Review the building's literacy plan.

Identify science of reading professional development

Tips for Families

Get 8 Tips for Families to make the most of the time you spend reading with your young child!

Read Ohio Implementation Timeline

Fall/Winter 2023

August/September

Host discussions with administrators, educators and families around the importance of the science of reading. Use the following resources:

Administer the Reading Diagnostic.

​​Must be completed within the first 20 days of instruction for kindergarten students.

No later than Sept. 30 for students in grades 1-3.

HQIM Survey for Literacy

Coming soon:
​The application process for the Governor's Literacy Excellence Award.

October/November

Begin or continue planning for implementation of the science of reading. Use the following resources:

Fall administration of Ohio's State Test for grade 3 English language arts (Oct. 16-Nov. 3).

Reading Improvement and Monitoring Plan (RIMP) development.
Complete no later than 60 days after receiving the reading diagnostic results.

December

Develop a plan to implement high-quality instructional materials and register for the 2024 Literacy Academy.
Districts and schools are required to adopt high-quality instructional materials for the 2024-2025 school year. Review the following to prepare:

Winter/Spring 2024

January/February

Continue professional development to support students across all content areas.

Take the Science of Reading course (projected release)

Review and select materials from the list of high-quality instructional materials for core instructions (projected release)

Register for the next Literacy Academy (Date TBD).

March/April

Participate in the 2024 Literacy Academy on Demand.

Spring administration of Ohio's State Test for grade 3 English language arts (March 25-April 26).

May/June

Attend the 2024 Literacy Academy.
Additional supports and implementation strategies will be posted as they are made available.
Contact

Send questions to LiteracyOhio@education.ohio.gov.

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The science of reading is an interdisciplinary body of scientific evidence that: Informs how students learn to read and write proficiently; Explains why some students have difficulty with reading and writing; Indicates that all students benefit from explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and writing to become effective readers; Does not rely on any model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual cues, including a three-cueing approach.

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Implementing Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement: Resources for School Leaders

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Implementing Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement: Resources for School Leaders

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Implementing Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement: Resources for School Leaders | Ohio Department of Education and Workforce

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For more resources and information about implementing literacy instruction aligned with Ohio’s Plan to Raise Literacy Achievement, access the resources for each age band.

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WWC | Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

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This practice guide presents three evidence-based recommendations for helping students in grades 6-12 develop effective writing skills. Each recommendation includes specific, actionable guidance for educators on implementing practices in their classrooms. The guide also summarizes and rates the evidence supporting each recommendation, describes examples to use in class, and offers the panel's advice on how to overcome potential implementation obstacles.

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Intensifying Literacy Instruction: Intensive Intervention | NCII

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The Intensifying Literacy Instruction guide offers ways educators and educational leaders can increase their capacity to develop skilled readers and writers.

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Mid-Ohio ESC
Ohio Adolescent Literacy Specialist, ODE
kochheiser.suzanne@moesc.net
https://www.moesc.net/
419.774.5520

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Mostly sunny, with a high near 62. Southwest wind 13 to 15 mph.

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SST Region 7

Regional Literacy Specialist (RELS)

eadkins@ncoesc.org

www.sst7.org

419.747.4808 ext. 110

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Literacy

The Ohio Department of Education aims to increase student achievement by improving language and literacy outcomes for all students. SST 7 supports districts and schools to implement data and evidence based systems and practices (structured literacy) so that all students secure and sustain language and literacy proficiency.

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The Ohio Department of Education aims to increase student achievement by improving language and literacy outcomes for all students. SST 7 supports districts and schools to implement data and evidence based systems and practices (structured literacy) so that all students secure and sustain language and literacy proficiency.

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Ad Lit Walk Through for Principals - Center on Instruction

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School Leaders Walk Through Grades 4-12 - REL Southeast

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2 What To Look For_ELA_foundational skills 

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Ohio's Statewide Family Engagement Center

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Ohio Statewide Family Engagement Center - Ohio's Statewide Family Engagement Center

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We provide schools, families, and community partners with tools to work together to launch all children's success in learning and life.

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IES Practice Guide - Early Childhood, Preschool

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IES Practice Guide - Early Childhood, Preschool

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Academic Literacy Instruction for Adolescents

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Academic Literacy Instruction for Adolescents

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Providing Reading Interventions Practice Guide

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Providing Reading Interventions Practice Guide

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Routinely use a set of comprehension-building practices to help students make sense of the text

Part 3A. Build students' world and word knowledge so they can make sense of the text

Part 3B. Consistently provide students with opportunities to ask and answer questions to better understand the text they read

Part 3C. Teach students a routine for determining the gist of a short section of text

Part 3D. Teach students to monitor their comprehension as they read

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reading intervention; reading instruction; literacy; reading difficulties; reading disabilities; comprehension; fluency; decoding; comprehension monitoring; world knowledge; word knowledge; vocabulary; stretch text; grade 4; grade 5; grade 6; grade 7; grade 8; grade 9

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WWC | Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4-9

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Routinely use a set of comprehension-building practices to help students make sense of the text Part 3A. Build students' world and word knowledge so they can make sense of the text Part 3B. Consistently provide students with opportunities to ask and answer questions to better understand the text they read Part 3C.

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If you prefer, read the text-version of the infographic.

Click to Enlarge

Create a positive learning environment for students during remote learning with these ideas for creating a safe space and community.

1. Music: Ask students about their favorite songs and start each day with music based on their requests.

2. Rewards: Utilize class rewards and get input from students about what they would like to earn.

3. Tickets: Have students earn virtual "tickets" and post them on the student's page of your learning management system.

4. Activities: Incorporate fun activities along with learning - like 60 second sketches, scavenger hunts, show and share, freeze dance, or disappear dance.

5. Funny Voices: Let the class earn funny voices for part of instruction, or for a recorded reading they submit to you - students can read in a whisper yell, booming voice, or squeaky voice.

6. Movement: Use GoNoodle activities before or after lessons for a movement break.

7. Social Time: Have optional social login times for students to build relationships - like a virtual lunch!

8. Theme Days: Host theme days - like a "Cozy Friday." On cozy Friday, students can come in their cozies-PJs, sweats, blankets, whatever they feel cozy in.

Suggested Citation

National Center on Improving Literacy. (2020). Remote Literacy Learning: Creative Ways to Engage Students. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from improving literacy.org

Abstract

Create a positive learning environment for students during remote learning with these ideas for creating a safe space and community.

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Remote Literacy Learning: Creative Ways to Engage Students

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If you prefer, read the text-version of the infographic. Click to Enlarge Remote Literacy Learning: Creative Ways to Engage Students Create a positive learning environment for students during remote learning with these ideas for creating a safe space and community. Music: Ask students about their favorite songs and start each day with music based on their requests.

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This toolkit provides information about dyslexia and how to best support the literacy development of students with dyslexia. Explore the five sections to learn more about what dyslexia is, how schools can screen students for dyslexia risk, using data to identify supports for students with dyslexia,…

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This toolkit helps families and schools work together to support children's literacy success in and out of school.

You will learn:

Tips for starting or enhancing discussions about literacy instruction and intervention

Ways to increase your joint understanding of evidence-based literacy practices

Strategies for addressing concerns about children's literacy development together

This toolkit includes:

An Online Tutorial

Research Briefs & Infographics

Tools & Resources

Facilitator's Guides

Online Tutorial

Supplemental Materials

Explore these resources with ideas or questions linked to the tutorial.

Talk and Interact Often

Families and schools can partner for children's literacy success by talking and interacting often.

Big Ideas

Family engagement for children's literacy learning and achievement is a shared responsibility among families, schools, and communities.

Trust is the primary ingredient for strong home-school relationships for children's literacy learning and achievement. Strong home-school relationships rely on open, two-way communication.

An effective system of support and services for children's literacy learning involves home and school partnering together.

Visit these Resources to Learn More

Discuss Literacy Instruction and Intervention

Families and schools can partner for children's literacy success by discussing literacy instruction and intervention.

Big Ideas

Knowing what scientific research says about how kids learn to read can help you determine if the literacy approach, strategy, or program is evidence-based.

It is important to identify if the evidence-based literacy practices are appropriate for children's grade-level or if any key practices are missing.

Discussing literacy instruction and intervention can help you determine if the literacy approach, strategy, or program is designed and delivered effectively.

Visit these Resources to Learn More

Families and schools can partner for children's literacy success by sharing literacy resources.

Big Ideas

Two important foundational skills in early reading instruction are phonemic awareness and phonics.

For children who struggle to read, working with phonemes and decoding words can be especially difficult.

Learning to listen, speak, read, and write well also includes developing oral language skills and reading fluently and with meaning.

Visit these Resources to Learn More

Address Concerns Together

Families and schools can partner for children's literacy success by addressing concerns together.

Big Ideas

All children benefit from explicit, systematic reading instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Some children continue to struggle with reading even with evidence-based classroom reading instruction.

If you are concerned that a child's reading difficulties are unexpected or unusual, seek further information from and others about next steps.

Visit these Resources to Learn More

Facilitator's Guides

Explore More Toolkits

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Families and Schools Partnering for Children's Literacy Success

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This toolkit helps families and schools work together to support children's literacy success in and out of school.

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Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation - even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences - children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.

Sixty years ago, Marie Clay developed a way to teach reading she said would help kids who were falling behind. They'd catch up and never need help again. Today, her program remains popular and her theory about how people read is at the root of a lot of reading instruction in schools. But Marie Clay was wrong.
Sold a Story is an independent investigative journalism project from American Public Media. We rely on your donations to support this kind of rigorous reporting.
The controversial educational publishing company has sold instructional materials and professional resources in almost every state, earning at least $1.6 billion over a decade. Explore a map of school districts.

More states are now requiring districts to adopt curriculum that adheres to the science of reading. Look up the policy in your state.

At least 15 states have passed laws about how schools teach reading since the Sold a Story podcast was released in 2022, but there is pushback.

Here's a reading list put together by Emily Hanford.

This discussion guide, created by a teacher, invites educators, parents, community members and kids to have a conversation about the podcast.

Emails and voice messages poured in from people who listened to Sold a Story.

We'll let you know when we release new episodes of the podcast. Enter your address below.

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Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

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There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation - even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read.

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Implementing a Practice or Program with Fidelity Part 1 (Iris Center)

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Implementing a Practice or Program with Fidelity Part 1 (Iris Center)

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IRIS | Evidence-Based Practices (Part 1): Identifying and Selecting a Practice or Program

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This module, the first in a series of three, discusses the importance of identifying and selecting evidence-based practices (est. completion time: 1.5 hours). When you have completed the module, be sure to visit parts two and three:

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Implementing a Program or Practice with Fidelity (Part 2) - Iris Center

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Implementing a Program or Practice with Fidelity (Part 2) - Iris Center

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IRIS | Evidence-Based Practices (Part 2): Implementing a Practice or Program with Fidelity

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This module, the second in a series of three, discusses implementing an evidence-based practice or program with fidelity (est. completion time: 1 hour). Before completing this module, consider visiting part one. When you have finished parts one and two, proceed to part three:

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Educational and School Change - Iris Center

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Educational and School Change - Iris Center

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The IRIS Center Peabody College Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37203 iris@vanderbilt.edu. The IRIS Center is funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) Grant #H325E220001. The contents of this Website do not necessar…

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IRIS | Family Engagement: Collaborating with Families of Students with Disabilities

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This module—a revision of Collaborating with Families, which was originally developed in cooperation with the PACER Center—addresses the importance of engaging the families of students with disabilities in their child’s education. It highlights some of the key factors that affect these families and…

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The goal of parent and family engagement is to work with families to build strong and effective partnerships that can help children and families thrive. These partnerships are grounded in positive, ongoing, and goal-oriented relationships with families. The relationships are based on mutual respect and trust. They are also developed over time, through a series of interactions between staff and families.

Successful relationships focus on families' strengths. They build on a shared commitment to the child's well-being and success. As relationships between staff and families grow stronger, mutually respectful partnerships are built. Strong partnerships with families contribute to positive and lasting change for families and children.

Explore these resources to learn strategies to strengthen relationships with families.

Explore strategies around talking with a family about their child's development to strengthen your partnerships.

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Building Partnerships with Families Series | ECLKC

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The goal of parent and family engagement is to work with families to build strong and effective partnerships. Explore these three resources to learn ways to strengthen relationships with families.

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7 Tips for Building Positive School Culture

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7 Tips for Building Positive School Culture

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Building and maintaining a positive school culture can be an uphill battle for many principals and superintendents. Once attained, however, it has shown to have a significant impact in areas of concern including student academic performance and teacher retention.

Recently, one Massachusetts school linked positive school culture to a 100% college acceptance rate, and positive climate was also found to reduce teacher turnover in a turnaround school in Colorado. This kind of impact begins with strong district and school leaders, who model attitudes and behaviors for staff members and students.

For those wondering where to start, we've gathered advice from several veteran administrators on how they approach building positive culture within their schools and districts.

Value everyone's journey

"Building a positive culture starts with valuing everyone's journey within that culture. The more we recognize the great work happening in our spaces, acknowledge to the person that it's great work, and extend the conversation about that work to someone who wasn't there so they know that it is happening, the better chance we have to provide an environment where everyone can flourish.

We often protect what we built, so valuing everyone's place in our culture provides collective ownership across all areas of the organization."
-Joe Sanfelippo, superintendent of Fall Creek School District in Wisconsin
Avoid negative messaging

"A good starting place is to look at the walls. What do the walls of your school say? Are they filled with messages like 'Don't do this...' or 'No students allowed'?

At our school, we do not permit any negative signage. So on our walls, messages say 'Keep walking' as opposed to 'No standing,' or 'Thanks for putting your cell phone away' instead of 'No cell phones allowed.' Whether we are discussing our classrooms, hallways or the entrance, we want all who enter to sense that this is a space that belongs to them.

The no negative signage rule is the foundation of an environment where our communication is positive and affirming. What we believe about students and school is communicated not just in what we say, but also in how we say it."
-Susan Kessler, executive principal at Hunters Lane High School in Nashville, Tennessee
Encourage risk-taking

"If you want to create a positive culture of innovation in your schools, think about how you encourage and reward risk-taking by your staff and students. Do you start with a 'yes' and try to help new ideas become realities, or do you start with a 'no' and list the reasons why something new and different would not work?

Our students are getting ready to enter a future that is different from the [one] we experienced. Their schools need to evolve and move forward, and that starts with the culture you create in the buildings."
-Nick Polyak, superintendent of Leyden School District 21 in Franklin Park, Illinois
Model the behavior you expect from others

"We set the tone through our words and actions, and [we] should take every opportunity to model the behaviors we expect from others. Culture is built through every interaction we have with our students, staff and families, and those interactions must be optimistic, inspiring and supportive.

The most effective superintendents understand the power their words and actions have in creating a culture that serves as the foundation for high levels of learning for students in our schools."
-Candace Singh, superintendent of Fallbrook Union Elementary School District in California
Support others and never lose your humor

"Begin by ensuring that every member of the faculty and staff feel that they are supported by leadership in a professional community that values innovation, growth and collegiality. Teachers and administrators who feel professionally stimulated and supported are more present for their students and actively seek ways to engage them creatively and positively.

Then, provide a robust approach to social-emotional learning with students that nurtures a growth mindset, builds positive relationships with adults and peers, and fosters the emotional safety necessary for students to focus on their learning.

And, of course, never lose your sense of humor. Lightheartedness (which is different than taking things lightly) is infectious."
-Scott Baytosh, head of school at Alexandria Country Day School in Virginia
Do the little things that go a long way

"Leadership owns every aspect of climate and culture, and they influence the outcome daily within their practice. I feel strongly that the way not to go is to hold meetings, put together detailed mapping plans, or focus staff on what they can do to change climate.

I absolutely believe that if, as a leader, you simply do the little things every day, there then are no big issues to overcome. Visibility, honesty, empowering others, [keeping] your word, never leveling anyone by job description, and [saying] a simple 'thank you' are the start of a positive formula, and each of your actions needs to be real, meaningful and sustainable. Lead with passion for the school community and watch everyone follow your lead."
-Joseph Erardi, former superintendent of Newtown Public Schools in Connecticut
Make time to greet others

"We make every attempt to greet students in the morning and when they leave for the day. As the principal, I model that by being one of the first people students see; greeting them with a hello, a smile, a high five and/or a hug, and calling students by name. This friendly approach models for staff and students that school is a positive place for learning.

We ask teachers to greet students each class period at the door in the same way or a way of their choosing. This gives students the feeling that this is our shared school and that they are welcome here."
-David Wick, principal of Columbia Falls Junior High in Columbia Falls, Montana

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Administrators share 7 tips for building positive school culture

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Building and maintaining a positive school culture can be an uphill battle for many principals and superintendents. Once attained, however, it has shown to have a significant impact in areas of concern including student academic performance and teacher retention.

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Read Washington - Tim Shanahan's The Science of Reading Levels (10/15/22)

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Read Washington - Tim Shanahan's The Science of Reading Levels (10/15/22)

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Overview

Explicit instruction involves the teacher modeling skills for students ("I do it"), teacher and students practicing together ("we do it"), and students demonstrating skills ("you do it") with feedback. The amount of each component will vary based on student needs and accuracy of responses.

Reading instruction should be systematic and sequential, ensuring that:

Focus is on the big ideas.

Easier skills are taught before more difficult skills.

High-frequency skills are taught before low-frequency skills.

Prerequisite skills are taught first.

Similar skills are separated.

Complex skills and strategies are broken down into smaller components that are easier to obtain.

Elementary Schools

Adequate Time

At the elementary level, adequate instruction time is allocated daily to support all students and coordinate resources to ensure optimal use of time. A 90-minute reading block is recommended for reading instruction at each grade level. To maximize the instruction time, the reading block should be prioritized and protected from interruption. Any "discretionary" activities should be scheduled outside of the reading block.

Allocating instructional time for reading in and of itself will not be sufficient to improve outcomes for students. It is what is done with the time to maximize student learning that will improve outcomes. Within the 90-minute reading block, there should be a combination of whole group, small group, and practice stations for reviewing, reinforcing, and extending previously taught skills and strategies.

Whole Group and Small Group Instruction

Whole group instruction should focus on the big ideas for all students every day for 30-45 minutes per day. Small group instruction should be teacher-led and provided to groups of students with similar needs with the goal of increasing the probability of mastering grade-level skills. These small groups should be flexible, meaning students will move in and out of groups based on needs. Small group instruction will include pre-teaching skills, re-teaching skills, scaffolding supports, and extending learning linked to the core reading instruction and based on student needs.

Practice Stations

When students are not engaged in whole group or small group instruction, they should be engaged in practice stations that review, reinforce, and/or extend previously taught skills and strategies. For practice stations to be successful, the activities must be differentiated to meet students' skills. Activities must focus on work the student has relatively high accuracy with, and they should not involve something the student is unable to do independently with accuracy. Small group and practice stations should be occurring for 45-60 minutes per day.

Additional Skills to Teach

In addition to the big ideas of reading, skills that directly impact reading achievement can and should be a part of the reading block. These skills include:

Spelling based on phonics patterns to support decoding.

Attending to punctuation to develop prosody, a component of fluency.

Writing in response to reading to support comprehension.

The 90-minute reading block should not include:

Handwriting.

Keyboarding.

Sentence combining.

Grammar.

Writing process.

While these skills are important, they should not be a part of the 90-minute reading block.

Secondary Schools

At the secondary level, the emphasis on instructional time shifts away from a reading block as students enter into middle and high school grades. Reading instruction is embedded within content area courses such as science, social studies, and mathematics. These content area reading strategies are critical evidence-based instructional practices that are used across different content areas to provide higher-quality instruction by incorporating the practices into the curricula to ensure students can access and comprehend secondary narrative and expository text.

Maximizing Instructional Time

At both the elementary and secondary levels, there is a strong link between behavior management and maximizing instructional time in order to have optimal amounts of academic learning time. This intersection is between high-quality instruction and good behavior management is seen when instruction includes:

A brisk instructional pace using routines focused on the big ideas.

Frequent opportunities for students to respond with specific feedback.

Judicious practice and review.

Behavioral routines.

Clear behavioral expectations.

Efficient transitions.

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Teaching for Reading | Michigan’s MTSS Technical Assistance Center

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Explicit instruction involves the teacher modeling skills for students (“I do it”), teacher and students practicing together (“we do it”), and students demonstrating skills (“you do it”) with feedback. The amount of each component will vary based on student needs and accuracy of responses.

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You are welcome to print copies for non-commercial use, or a limited number for educational purposes, as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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An Example of the 90 Minute Reading Block

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Research shows that students need at least 90 minutes of uninterrupted reading instruction each day to become strong readers, and that this instruction must be systematic, explicit, scaffolded, and differentiated across the classroom.

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The Right to Read has received fiscal sponsorship from the Utah Film Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
All donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

Copyright © 2023 Ready or Not. All Rights Reserved.

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The Right to Read has received fiscal sponsorship from the Utah Film Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. All donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. Copyright © 2023 Ready or Not. All Rights Reserved.

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Are my Students Doing Disciplinary Literacy?

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Are my Students Doing Disciplinary Literacy?

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Embedding Vocabulary and Comprehension Instruction in All Subjects 4-12 (Keys to Literacy)

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Embedding Vocabulary and Comprehension Instruction in All Subjects 4-12 (Keys to Literacy)

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Currently, few middle or high school educators ever receive more than a token amount of training in literacy instruction, and few see themselves as teachers of reading and writing at all.

Instead, at the secondary level, most teachers tend to regard themselves as teachers of subject areas, such as biology, American history, or algebra. Even English teachers - who might be assumed to be responsible for reading and writing instruction - tend to define themselves primarily as teachers of literature, or writing, while not addressing the more basic literacy skills that many of their students lack.

Since 2009, the Common Core standards (and their counterparts in non-Common Core states), have required literacy skills be taught in all content areas. However, in practice many teachers have struggled to implement explicit reading and writing instruction, and the data have not shown Common Core to have had the impact on adolescent literacy that many had hoped for. Teachers generally continue to rely on textbooks, brief readings, and short, formulaic writing assignments rather than primary sources and writing assignments that promote critical thinking and writing.

To help our students reach their potential, we as educators should be more than teachers of facts, figures, dates, and procedures. We should be more even than teachers of mathematical, historical, scientific, and literary ways of thinking about and seeing the world. We also need to help our students to read and write and communicate like mathematicians, historians, scientists, literary critics ... and educated citizens. And while not every teacher can do the job of a reading specialist, we can all become better grounded in the essentials of literacy instruction, and we can collectively support students' overall literacy development through content literacy.

Specifically, we as teachers can:

Content literacy versus disciplinary literacy

In recent years, researchers have differentiated content and discipline-focused literacy. Content literacy focuses on reading and writing processes that are common to all content areas. Disciplinary literacy focuses on reading and writing skills specific to a subject area. Students get the opportunity to use their skills to read and write like a mathematician, scientist, or historian. For more, see ILA's Brief on Content Area and Disciplinary Literacy.

Content area literacy: the basics

Everyone can contribute to literacy instruction.

If math, science, and history teachers assume that the English department bears full responsibility for teaching reading and writing, they'll be missing an opportunity to support literacy development in their classrooms as well. Content-area teachers can have a big impact in promoting discipline-specific reading and writing skills.

If the school needs reading specialists, the school should hire reading specialists.

Math, science, history, and English teachers are sometimes apprehensive when people start talking about basic literacy instruction. "I've never learned how to teach reading!" they might say. "I don't know how to help kids sound out words or read more fluently." They're right. Schools ideally should have reading specialists available to work with children who need extra help, leaving content area teachers to focus on the kinds of reading and writing that go on in their disciplines. But whether or not schools have reading specialists, it's important for teachers across the board to learn enough about literacy instruction to work constructively with students they already know.

Meet with colleagues from your department to define the specific kinds of reading and writing that you want students to practice in your classes.

Within each content area, teachers should have a clear and consistent understanding of what it means for students to read and write proficiently in that domain. Biology teachers shouldn't be in the business of telling history teachers how to guide students in the analysis of early American political tracts, and history teachers shouldn't weigh in on how best to teach the writing of lab reports. If secondary schools are to take seriously the teaching of literacy in the content areas, they should allow the content areas to develop their own expertise and to exercise their own professional judgment as to the kinds of reading and writing that are most important to teach in their classes.

More resources

Visit our library of essential articles on teaching literacy in the content areas.

Take a close look at the Standards for the Preparation of Literacy Professionals, published in 2017 by the International Literacy Association, along with the professional associations for teachers of English, social studies, mathematics, and science. While this document was prepared with literacy coaches in mind, it includes detailed descriptions of the many reading and writing skills that are distinct to each subject area, and it can help get content area teachers started on a discussion about their own priorities for literacy instruction.

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Reading and Writing in the Content Areas

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Content area teachers need training in the essentials of literacy instruction - how to provide effective vocabulary instruction in their subject areas and instruction in reading comprehension strategies to help students make sense of content-area texts. In addition, they should be able to teach students to read and write in the ways that are distinct to their own content areas.

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Browse our library of evidence-based teaching strategies, learn more about using classroom texts, find out what whole-child literacy instruction looks like, and dive deeper into comprehension, content area literacy, writing, and social-emotional learning.

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Three Directions for Disciplinary Literacy

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Three Directions for Disciplinary Literacy

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ILA Literacy Practices that Adolescents Deserve

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ILA Literacy Practices that Adolescents Deserve

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ILA Content and Disciplinary Literacy Strategies & Framework

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ILA Content and Disciplinary Literacy Strategies & Framework

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Structured Literacy vs Typical Literacy Checklist

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Structured Literacy vs Typical Literacy Checklist

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University of Florida Virtual Teaching Resource Hub

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University of Florida Virtual Teaching Resource Hub

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The materials here are designed to be used with video conferencing platforms for distance education and with interactive whiteboards in the classroom. The activities can also be used if you are creating video lessons for asynchronous lessons.

To use the materials, first watch the overview video for an orientation to our approach to virtual teaching. Then, click on the links below to download lesson templates, peruse our tips for creating engaging lessons, and finally, explore the instructional activities. toplan lessons appropriate for your students.

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The materials here are designed to be used with video conferencing platforms for distance education and with interactive whiteboards in the classroom. The activities can also be used if you are creating video lessons for asynchronous lessons. To use the materials, first watch the overview video for an orientation to our approach to virtual teaching.

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Science-backed early learning for children from birth to age 5.

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Vroom helps you add science-backed early learning moments to mealtime, bathtime, bedtime or anytime. By helping your child learn now, you get them ready for school, friends and life.

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Subscribe to a word of the day (vocabulary)

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Subscribe to a word of the day (vocabulary)

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Reading Rockets Growing Readers for Parents

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Reading Rockets Growing Readers for Parents

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Written especially for parents, Growing Readers provides monthly tips for raising strong readers and writers. Schools and PTAs can add these preformatted briefs to their parent newsletters. Growing Readers is also a great resource for libraries and community literacy organizations.

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Written especially for parents, Growing Readers provides monthly tips for raising strong readers and writers. Schools and PTAs can add these preformatted briefs to their parent newsletters. Growing Readers is also a great resource for libraries and community literacy organizations.

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Essentials for Assessing, Preventing, & Overcoming Reading Difficulties

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Essentials for Assessing, Preventing, & Overcoming Reading Difficulties

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Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Essentials of Psychological Assessment)

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Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Essentials of Psychological Assessment) [Kilpatrick, David A.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties (Essentials of Psychological Assessment)

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If you prefer, read the text version of the infographic or watch the video that takes a closer look at how to spot questionable or ineffective practices.

Avoid a Lemon: Looking Under the Hood

Supporting Resources

Sound-Spelling Chart

Make-a-Word activity from FCRR

Route to Reading For Families: Avoid a Lemon

You and the school can share literacy resources to help your child and others get evidence-based literacy instruction. Learn to spot questionable or ineffective practices.

Decoding Words

What is it?

The ability to figure out unknown words correctly.

If you are given:

Strategies that encourage your child to look away from letters to read words (looking at the pictures, using context clues, saying the first sound and guessing).

Ask for:

Ways to help your child use knowledge of letter-sound relationships* to read words.

Why?

Kids who can't decode often don't become strong readers. Reading words correctly require knowing how letters and groups of letters link to sounds to form letter-sound relationships.

Learning Sight Words (like high-frequency words)

What is it?

The ability to know a word instantly and easily, including ones spelled regularly or irregularly.

If you are given:

Strategies, tips, or activities focusing your child on memorizing whole words to learn sight words.

Ask for:

Strategies, tips, or activities focusing your child on saying and using letter-sound relationships* and letter order to learn sight words (irregular word parts and advanced letter-sound relationships are taught to be remembered).

Why?

Sight word learning is not based on visual memory. It requires knowing speech sounds, letter-sound relationships, and letter order. There are too many
words to learn by memory alone.

Spelling Words

What is it?

The ability to write words correctly.

If you are given:

Strategies, tips, or activities focusing your child on memorizing letters or letter shapes to spell words (word searches, tracing words, rainbow writing).

Ask for:

Strategies, tips, or activities focusing your child on saying and using letter-sound relationships* and the right letter order to spell words.

Why?

Spelling is not based on visual memory. It requires knowing speech sounds, letter-sound relationships, and letter order.

*Based on skills appropriate for your child's grade-level and literacy needs

Suggested Citation

National Center on Improving Literacy (2019). Route to Reading: Avoid a Lemon. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from http://improvingliteracy.org.

Abstract

You and the school can share literacy resources to help your child and others get evidence-based literacy instruction. Learn to spot questionable or ineffective practices.

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If you prefer, read the text version of the infographic or watch the video that takes a closer look at how to spot questionable or ineffective practices. Avoid a Lemon: Looking Under the Hood Supporting Resources Sound-Spelling Chart Make-a-Word activity from FCRR Route to Reading For Families: Avoid a Lemon You and the school can share literacy resources to help your child and others get evidence-based literacy instruction.

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

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Reading Rockets: Structured Literacy Instruction

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Reading Rockets: Structured Literacy Instruction

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References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

Brady, S. (2011). Efficacy of phonics teaching for reading outcomes: Implications from Post-NRP research. In S. Brady, D. Braze, & C. Fowler (Eds.), Explaining individual differences in reading (pp. 69-96), London: Psychology Press.

Denton, C. A., Fletcher, J. M., Taylor, W. P., Barth, A. E., & Vaughn, S. (2014). An experimental evaluation of Guided Reading and explicit interventions for primary-grade students at-risk for reading difficulties. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 7(3), 268-293.

Ehri, L., Nunes, R. S., Stahl, S., & Willows, D. (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71, 393-447.

Foorman, B., Beyler, N., Borradaile, K., Coyne, M., Denton, C. A., Dimino, J., Furgeson, J., Hayes, L., Henke, J., Justice, L., Keating, B., Lewis, W., Sattar, S., Streke, A., Wagner, R., & Wissel, S. (2016). Foundational skills to support reading for understanding in kindergarten through 3rd grade (NCEE 2016-4008). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from the NCEE website: http://whatworks.ed.gov

Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

McCardle, P., & Chhabra, V. (Eds.). (2004). The voice of evidence in reading research. Baltimore, MD, Paul H. Brookes.

National Early Literacy Panel (NELP). (2008). Developing early literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Child and Human Development.

Seidenberg, M. (2017). Language at the speed of sight: How we read, why so many can't, and what can be done about it. New York: Basic Books.

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Structured Literacy Instruction: The Basics

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Structured Literacy prepares students to decode words in an explicit and systematic manner. This approach not only helps students with dyslexia, but there is substantial evidence that it is effective for all readers. Get the basics on the six elements of Structured Literacy and how each element is taught.

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Ask an Expert - How do brains of people with dyslexia compare to each other?

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If you prefer, read the text version of the infographic.

Understanding Dyslexia: Risks by Age

Preschool Years

Typical Readers Readers

Readers at Risk for Dyslexia May

Notice repeated sounds in oral language (e.g. Baa, Baa, Black Sheep).

May start to pay attention to beginning or rhyming sounds in words.

Know the functions of print (e.g. know that different texts are used for different purposes, know that print has meaning).

Know 10 alphabet letters, and the letters in their name.

Have trouble learning common nursery rhymes.

Not recognize rhyming patterns.

Have difficulty learning and remembering the names of letters in the alphabet.

Use persistent "baby talk".

Kindergarten to 1st Grade

Typical Readers Readers

Readers at Risk for Dyslexia May

Learn one-to-one letter sound correspondences.

Understand that speech sounds map on to printed letters to form words.

Learn to decode regular one syllable words using their knowledge of letter-sound correspondences.

Begin to make sense of what they are reading.

Not associate letters with sounds.

Make reading errors that show no connection to the sounds of the letters on the page.

Not understand that words "come apart".

Not be able to sound out simple words like map, cat, pan.

Complain about how hard reading is.

2nd Grade and Beyond

Typical Readers Readers

Readers at Risk for Dyslexia May

Use knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to sound out unknown words.

Use word parts to decode regular multisyllabic words.

Read accurately and fluently enough to concentrate on comprehension.

Often be very slow in acquiring reading skills.

Often guess at words.

Not be able to sound out words.

Confuse words that sound alike.

Avoid reading out loud.

Have poor spelling and messy handwriting.

Suggested Citation

National Center on Improving Literacy (2020). Understanding Dyslexia: What are the Effects of Dyslexia. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from http://improvingliteracy.org.

Abstract

Signs of typical reading development and possible indicators of risk for dyslexia.

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Understanding Dyslexia: What are the Effects of Dyslexia

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If you prefer, read the text version of the infographic. Understanding Dyslexia: Risks by Age Preschool Years Typical Readers Readers Readers at Risk for Dyslexia May Notice repeated sounds in oral language (e.g. Baa, Baa, Black Sheep). May start to pay attention to beginning or rhyming sounds in words.

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What Dyslexia Is

Dyslexia affects about one in every five individuals, making it the most commonly diagnosed learning disability. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) describes dyslexia as a brain-based learning disability that specifically impairs a person's ability to read. Other definitions (e.g., First Step Act - § 3635; International Dyslexia Association; Mayo Clinic) describe dyslexia in a similar way. The reading impairments associated with dyslexia are also unexpected in that individuals with dyslexia typically demonstrate otherwise typical intellectual functioning and developmental growth. To further understand what dyslexia is - and what it is not - it may be helpful to examine the major elements of the definition.

Dyslexia is Brain-Based

For individuals with dyslexia, specific portions of the brain typically associated with important reading processes may not develop or function in the same ways that they do in individuals without dyslexia. Neuroimaging research suggests that individuals with dyslexia - compared to individuals without - may have fundamental differences in brain regions linked with reading and language. These differences are primarily, although not completely, noted in the left hemisphere of the brain.

Dyslexia affects the brain areas associated with detection and processing of sounds and their corresponding letters. These letter-sound linkages are fundamental to reading. When these brain regions do not function efficiently to make these connections, reading development is affected.

Dyslexia can be inherited. Children born with the neurological impairments associated with dyslexia are more likely than other children to have family members with the impairment. Many, but not all, of these children will eventually experience reading difficulties.

Dyslexia Impairs the Ability to Read

Individuals with dyslexia often have difficulty with phonological processing, spelling, or rapid visual-verbal responding.

Difficulty with phonological processing inhibits the ability to effectively decode letters into blended sounds to form words. A fundamental phonological processing problem may "block" access to other more advanced aspects of reading, such as word identification and comprehension.

Difficulty with spelling may be recognized in an inability to efficiently write the letters comprising words from memory. Increased time needed to spell words and spelling errors may be apparent.

Difficulty with rapid visual-verbal responding may be evident when it is increasingly difficult to quickly verbalize the letters and words appearing in print when prompted to do so.

What Dyslexia Is Not

Dyslexia is related to reading difficulties, not difficulties that arise from intellectual functioning.

Dyslexia does not imply the individual cannot read. People with dyslexia can learn to read with evidence-based explicit instruction, but may still have to put forth more effort.

Dyslexia does not otherwise impact the brain structure or functioning, or the intellectual, imaginative, or emotional functioning of the individual. In non-reading areas, abilities of those with dyslexia mirror those without dyslexia.

Individuals with dyslexia do not necessarily see and write letters or words backwards. Dyslexia is associated with brain-based phonological impairments, not visual problems.

Infographic

Enlarge Infographic

Suggested Citation

Stanley, C. & Petscher, Y. (2017). Defining Dyslexia. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from http://improvingliteracy.org

References

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (n.d.). What are reading disorders? Retrieved from https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/reading/conditioninfo/pages/disorders.aspx

Abstract

Dyslexia is a brain-based learning disability that specifically impairs a person's ability to read.

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What Dyslexia Is Dyslexia affects about one in every five individuals, making it the most commonly diagnosed learning disability. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) describes dyslexia as a brain-based learning disability that specifically impairs a person's ability to read. Other definitions (e.g., First Step Act - § 3635; International Dyslexia Association; Mayo Clinic) describe dyslexia in a similar way.

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Building to Impact The 5D Implementation Playbook

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Building to Impact The 5D Implementation Playbook

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The 5D Implementation Playbook for Educators

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Professional Learning Communities Facilitator's Guide for the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast developed a Professional Learning Community (PLC) Facilitators Guide to support educators in the implementation of recommendations from the What Works Clearinghouse's Practice Guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. The practice guide focuses on the foundational reading skills that enable students to read words, relate those words to their oral language, and read connected text with sufficient accuracy and fluency to understand what they read. The practice guide, developed by a panel of experts comprised of researchers and practitioners, presents four recommendations that educators can use to improve literacy skills in the early grades.

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are a form of professional development in which small groups of educators with shared interests work together with the goals of expanding their knowledge and improving their craft. REL Southeast developed PLC materials focused on the practice guide that were designed to assist a literacy leader in guiding a professional learning community in applying the recommendations from the practice guide. The materials include a facilitator's guide, participant activities, and videos. The facilitator's guide includes a framework for facilitators to conduct each of the ten PLC sessions. It also includes participant activities, discussion questions, small- and whole-group activities, and implementation and reflection activities. The participant's activities include reflection questions, lesson plan examples and templates, video-viewing guides, and sharing opportunities. The videos illustrate practices presented in the foundational reading skills practice guide.

Facilitator's Guide and Handouts

View, download, and print the full facilitator's guide as a PDF file (1.8 MB)
View, download, and print the handouts as a PDF file (558 KB)

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educational improvement; excellence in education; educational research; statistics; statistical data; statistical surveys; national center for education evaluation and regional assistance.

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Professional Learning Communities Facilitator's Guide for the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

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The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) conducts unbiased large-scale evaluations of education programs and practices supported by federal funds, such as Reading First and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

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What Works Clearinghouse - Foundational Skills K-5

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What Works Clearinghouse - Foundational Skills K-5

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"It ain't what you know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain

Most people think about learning as adding knowledge and skills. When you learn French, you learn that the word, avoir means "to have." You now have a new fact in your mind that didn't exist before.

Adding knowledge like this, I'd like to argue, is actually the less important case. The most useful learning isn't usually a strict addition of new knowledge, but first unlearning something false or unhelpful.

To see why unlearning might matter more than strictly additive learning, consider that, for any area of your life in which you operate regularly, you must acquire facts and knowledge about that area. You need to understand your work, where you live, the language you speak, culture you exist in, etc..

This means that, for the parts of your life that matter for you right now or in the past, you already have quite a bit of knowledge. For new knowledge to come in, and not replace or alter anything you know already, that knowledge either needs to be about a detail in your current life that was too insignificant to merit observation earlier, or it has to be about a domain with which you still have relatively little experience.

That additive learning must pertain to either unfamiliar domains or relatively unimportant aspects of domains you are familiar with may seem a strange fact. Most of what we learn in school is of this type of additive learning. Yet, by this very assertion, much of it must not be very important for our day-to-day lives.

When you first need to unlearn or modify what you currently know, that knowledge must involve something you had already learned. This doesn't guarantee that it is important, however, since most of our knowledge is acquired for living practically in the world, there's a higher chance something that must be first unlearned is more important.

Types of Unlearning

There's different ways you might unlearn something in light of new information. The first is a straightforward refutation of the old idea. If you thought that Abraham Lincoln was the first American president and then read in a book it was actually George Washington, you might, if you believed the book, completely revise your view.

This complete refutation is atypical. More likely the new knowledge doesn't contradict the old one, but it may modify it in some way. If I believe my best friend is very trustworthy, but I learn he is cheating on his wife, I may not completely revise my opinion of him, but I may trust him a bit less or trust him less in marital matters.

Other times new knowledge revises a simpler picture by filling it with more complex details. This is similar to adding new knowledge, although because the older, simpler view of the issue has been overwritten with more detail, there is some unlearning going on. When Albert Einstein discovered special relativity, this overthrew Isaac Newton's laws of motion. However, this wasn't a complete refutation, but a modification-Newton's laws still hold approximately in areas where near light-speed or extreme gravitation aren't issues.

In all of these cases, however, you have to first let go of something you thought you understood to make way for a new understanding. This isn't always easy to do.

Difficulties Unlearning

The first challenge of unlearning is that when something contradicts your current understanding, you are likely to dismiss it. This may be adaptive in a world where many of the things people say or information you encounter are false, or lies constructed to manipulate you. Things that you don't currently believe are, ceteris paribus, more likely to be false. However, this confirmation bias can make it harder to unlearn when that's valuable to you.

A deeper problem, I believe, is that human beings tend not to deeply represent doubt and uncertainties in a fine-grained way. That is, the things you believe now, you tend to believe completely, even if provisionally. However, whether those beliefs are near-certain or highly-doubtful, the way they are represented in the brain is much the same.

It's true that a more doubtful belief is more likely to be dismissed than a certain one. If I try to argue that the moon is made of cheese, for instance, I'll be met with a lot more resistance than if I try to argue something you only believed loosely. However, this revision occurs in an active sense-when one is directly assessing reasons for the belief in question. I believe that, when a belief isn't being actively considered, it can still inform your thinking in other ways and, that, in those cases the relative certainty of the belief isn't used.

If this view is true, then that means that many of the things we learned aren't dangerous because they are immune to counterargument, but because they can subtly influence our thinking in adjacent areas when we aren't being vigilant to how likely they are to be true.

If this sounds confusing, consider the example I mentioned earlier: a best friend who you discovered was cheating on his spouse. However, suppose you didn't learn it firsthand, but through a rumor by a third-party. You don't dismiss the charge outright, but you tentatively accept that there's some probability that your friend is being unfaithful. If forced to confront this belief directly, through debate or reasoning, you might come to the conclusion that there's only a minor chance that he is cheating. But, consider instead, if someone asked you, in an unrelated context, of whether your friend ever lies to get what he wants in business. Now, it's my opinion that this latent, provisional belief that "X cheats on his spouse" may implicitly inform your intuitions about his trustworthiness, even though that belief itself may not be very reliable.

The intuition I want to present is that beliefs, in our capacity to inform us, tend to be a lot more black-and-white as either believed or completely dismissed, rather than, a more accurate picture where many beliefs tend to have middling likelihood of being true. While we can have more nuanced views when the belief is being debated directly, the dangerous case is when they are being used to infer about other topics, yet their doubtful status is simply being ignored to make that inference.

The main challenge of unlearning, therefore, is that most of our false or doubtful assumptions about the areas that impact our lives are never examined. We use these assumptions to operate, but because they aren't actively reflected upon, studied or challenged, they maintain their full force, even if fairly simple arguments could overturn them.

Learning as Stamp Collecting Versus Diving into Strangeness

I see two main views of learning. The first is like stamp collecting. The person wants to collect more and more knowledge, mostly for the purposes of showing it off to people they want to impress. The knowledge here is largely inert and unimportant for their lives-it's just a collecting hobby accruing more facts and ideas.

There's nothing wrong with stamp collecting. Knowing facts and ideas, even if they aren't particularly useful or central to our lives, isn't a bad thing. It's probably a superior hobby to many other pursuits, since knowledge can, at least some of the time, spillover to more practical consequences.

The other view of learning, however, is centered around unlearning. This is the view that what we think we know about the world is a veneer of sense-making atop a much deeper strangeness. The things we think we know, we often don't. The ideas, philosophies and truths that guide our lives may be convenient approximations, but often the more accurate picture is a lot stranger and more interesting.

Stamp collecting is more popular than diving into strangeness. For one, it is strictly additive. Every new trivia fact, book of the month and water cooler topic gets added to your collection, which you can whip out in conversations and impress people who want to talk about them.

Diving into strangeness, in contrast, involves a cyclical process of first undermining the things you thought you had learned. Facts, ideas and theories, are no longer a comforting collection, but a temporary foothold as you leave them to try to get to something deeper.

What is Strange?

Almost everything is much, much weirder than it looks at first. Science is the clearest example of this. Subatomic particles aren't billiard balls, but strange, complex-valued wavefunctions. Bodies aren't vital fluids and animating impulses, but trillions of cells, each more complex than any machine humans have invented. Minds aren't unified loci of consciousness, but the process of countless synapses firing in incredible patterns.

Science confirms the underlying weirdness, but for most people, knowing science is another kind of stamp collecting. Knowing quantum strangeness doesn't overlap with most areas of practical life, so it can be an additional fact or idea one knows and can bring out in conversations.

More interesting, for me at least, are all the skills and knowledge that we depend on and use everyday that have hidden weirdness beneath them. When you remember something, did it actually happen that way? When you give a reason for your behavior, did reasoning have anything to do with it? When you think that achieving something will make you happy, will it?

Just as science has incredible depths of strangeness underneath, everyday life also floats calmly upon a deeper weirdness that first requires unlearning in order to appreciate.

Unlearning and Local Maxima

Unlearning is unpleasant for most people. Finding out something you thought you knew was false, or a misleading simplification, feels bad. Since strangeness tends to predominate, and we manage to get by in our lives without worrying about it most of the time, why bother? Why not just collect stamps and leave the bedrock of our intuitions comfortably untouched?

For most people, this aversion to unlearning may not be so bad. Skillful action exceeds skillful knowledge, so, for most people we manage to get by okay even if our articulated theories of the world are out of sync with a deeper reality.

The main advantage, I see, of trying to get a deeper picture is that it helps climb out of local maxima. Theories can, to the extent they are accurate, shine a light on potential things we could do, change or experience that are outside what we've experienced directly before. Theories help us make predictions about whether those unseen places are good places to be or not.

A powerful algorithm for machine learning is gradient descent. It has a complex mathematical formulation involving vector calculus and partial derivatives, but the intuitive picture of what it is doing is quite simple to understand. Imagine yourself standing at the edge of a valley. Your goal is to get to the lowest possible spot you can. However, the terrain is quite complex, and you aren't sure exactly what it looks like. What should you do?

The gradient descent algorithm is simple: go downhill. If you always walk in the direction of steepest decline, you'll eventually reach a spot where every direction goes uphill again. This must be a low spot in the terrain.

The problem with gradient descent is that you can get stuck in little pockets where, to go further downhill, you must go uphill for awhile at first.

This is a computer analogy, but I believe that human learning methods for acquiring many practical skills through experience work in a similar way. We are pushed and pulled by our intuitions to reach a local maxima of "goodness" in how our lives could be. Although we aren't always at this equilibrium, if our lives are relatively stable, we tend to return to it.

The problem with our lives is the same as with computers, however. Many people get "stuck" in local maxima. The person who is addicted to alcohol is in a local maxima. Drinking less causes pain, to make things better, they first have to feel worse.

Procrastination is a local maxima. Starting work first involves pushing through an unpleasant feeling about the task at hand. However, as anyone who procrastinates often knows, the state of procrastination isn't particularly good, in an absolute sense. It feels awful, it's just that any immediate action you anticipate makes you feel a little worse than that, so you stay stuck.

What's the connection between unlearning and local maxima? Well one way you can get out of local maxima is if you have some notion of what the terrain is shaped like. If you know, for a fact, that you are sitting in a locally optimal, but globally awful, position, you can push against your intuitions and accept transitional badness in hopes of longer-term goodness.

Knowing what the terrain is shaped like, however, depends on having an accurate picture of the very facts and knowledge that are closest and most fundamental to your life right now. If those facts are wrong, your ability to make guesses about what places further from your immediate vicinity are actually like diminishes rapidly. Depending on how large the local maxima is that surrounds you, it may not be possible to see a better future when one does exist, or there may appear to be one which is actually a mirage.

In many ways, unlearning has the same properties of the local maxima problem for your overall life situation. To get a more accurate picture, you have to first sacrifice some certainty in the things you take for granted. This sacrifice involves going against your natural local-optimization inclinations.

Strangeness, Randomness and Unlearning

So far, I've spoken about one method for overcoming the local maxima problem: having a better theory of what unvisited places in the vast space of possible life experiences might be like. This helps spot genuine opportunities for improvement and avoids mirages of hope-inspiring, but ultimately illusory directions to follow.

Unlearning fits into this because, unlikely with the stamp collecting of purely additive learning, we all have pre-existing theories of what the terrain of nearby life spaces is already like.

Another method, however, for getting out of local maxima is simply randomness. Programmers often use some amount of random motion in their gradient descent algorithms. This randomness means that their solutions don't snag on relatively insignificant dips.

Human beings can use randomness too to avoid the same problem. Exposing yourself to a larger variety of experiences can pull you out of temporary snags. The main disadvantage of this approach is that randomness can sometimes be destructive. Trying heroin, cheating on your spouse or joining a cult may all offer unique experiences, but their dangers may not be worth the payoff.

Unlearning, to me, proposes a relatively safer way of exploring larger swaths of the terrain of life possibilities. It may create a mental discomfort and instability, as you contend with the fact that many of the things you took for granted before may not be true. However, this is often a lot less dangerous than undirected randomness may have on your life.

How to Unlearn Things

How do you go about unlearning the things you think you know? This isn't a trivial task. Simply throwing your hands up and admitting you know nothing may be a Zen kind of solution, but it doesn't really offer a way forward to true knowledge. It simply admits ignorance of any theory for explaining the terrain, rather than trying to come up with more useful ones.

One way to begin unlearning is to seek additive knowledge in familiar areas and then use that new knowledge to start pulling up and modifying old knowledge. For me, learning about psychology and cognitive science often had this effect: I would start with a particular belief that seemed reasonable about myself, and then digging deeper, I would encounter careful arguments that showed why those beliefs were probably false. From that point of tension, I could start reworking some of my old beliefs.

This approach can work, but it's difficult and it requires a lot more patience for theory and academic learning than most people have an appetite for. Another approach is to seek other people's experiences of the world. Other people may not give you *the* theory for understanding the world, but the more diverse their experiences are from yours, the more likely they are situated in a different position in the space of life possibilities and how their lives differ from your expectations can itself give you information about your own thinking.

Travel, in this way, can be a potent form of unlearning. For me, the best travel experiences of my life haven't been going to a place that exceeded my expectations, but going to ones which deeply undermined them. I've written about how going to China forced me to radically rethink that place. But talking to people in different places has also shown me how arbitrary many of my own culturally-specific views are of things.

This kind of travel means actually talking to people. Learning languages helps because you're more likely to encounter people who differ from you more dramatically. The normal process of sightseeing and taking Instagram-worthy photos of famous landmarks is fine, but it's stamp collecting, not acquiring model-altering insights.

A third approach to unlearning is to be more varied and bold in your experiments in life. Pure randomness can have a destructive quality to it. However, if you avoid obvious risks, many directions in life can be explored more thoroughly than most people do.

I think the main drawback of this third approach is that it depends on a kind of self-confidence that itself tends to depend on having had positive experiences venturing outside your safe, little local maxima in the past. Without confidence, people have an instinctive aversion to explore, and so this approach to getting out of life's local maxima has a feedback component to it. The more successful your unlearning and exploration of life's possibility space, the more likely you'll take larger leaps on theory rather than direct experience alone.

Being Comfortable with Mystery

A good meta-belief to this whole unlearning endeavor is to be comfortable with the idea that everything you know is provisional, and that underneath what you know is likely a more complex and stranger picture.

Human beings seem to be naturally afraid of this groundless view of things. I'm not quite sure why that is. It may be that this kind of epistemic flexibility might start to question societal norms and rules of conduct, and so people who think too much about things may have an amoral character. That's certainly the perspective of many traditional religious viewpoints on things, which discourages open-ended inquiry in favor of professing allegiance to dogma.

However, there's probably a more basic level aversion to groundlessness rooted in a feeling that uncertainty is bad and that certainty is good. Like most aversions, however, I think this is something you can condition yourself to be comfortable with via exposure.

I used to be very afraid of heights. When I was a child, I had a hard time even going near the window if I was in a tall building. Sometime around my late teens, however, I started pushing myself to be exposed to more heights. First roller coasters, then ziplining and paragliding. Last year, I went skydiving for the first time and, although it was scary, I felt a lot less anxious than I used to feel with much less extreme exposures to heights.

Psychologists have known for some time that progressive exposure can remove many conditioned fears and aversions to things. Sometimes, if the exposure gets paired with a reward, something initially aversive can eventually become desirable as spicy-food eaters and adrenaline junkies can attest to.

Similarly, I think exposure to the unknown, to unlearning comfortable old beliefs about things, to the deeper mystery of things for which our current knowledge is only a temporary foothold, can be something that can switch from we shy away from to something you enjoy. The thrills of finding a new, more accurate, way of looking at things, start to eclipse the aversion to uprooting a previously stable way of thinking.

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"It ain't what you know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain Most people think about learning as adding knowledge and skills. When you learn French, you learn that the word, avoir means "to have."

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Right To Read Project - Seeing the Good in Balanced Literacy

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Right To Read Project - Seeing the Good in Balanced Literacy

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Though Balanced Literacy was wrong about some important things, it has practices worth saving. And understanding the good in that approach to teaching literacy can help us transition to more effective instruction.

Seeing the Good

Balanced Literacy taught us the...

Importance of a print-rich classroom

Love of reading aloud to children

Value of students seeing us write

Pride in having an extensive classroom library

Power of a mini-lesson

Utility of great anchor charts

Procedures to teach students how to behave as readers and writers

Events that bring joy and accountability (author's chair, publishing parties, partner shares, etc.)

Ways to set up centers so that we can teach in small groups

Methods for introducing and organizing reading and writing materials

Routines to reinforce skills (Morning Message, Shared Reading, Interactive Writing, etc.)

Impact of school leadership when it focuses on literacy

Benefits of participating in a warm and responsive professional learning community

And so many other lessons worth remembering

And as we strategically abandon problematic practice (such as the MSV analysis of reading records), we'll want to thoughtfully retain some components (like listening to children read aloud).

Moving towards evidence-based instruction does not mean leaving behind the things that work; it means learning more about which practices work for whom, and why. It means intentionally excising the parts that stymie student growth ( like leveled books) even if we've used them for years. And it means learning new methods to shrink the achievement gap so we ensure that all students become skilled readers and writers.

Hesitating

I once worried that transitioning away from Balanced Literacy would fundamentally change me as a teacher. I couldn't envision how I'd deliver direct instruction while maintaining a warm tone and inviting classroom environment.

A shift in pedagogy was scary. I'd spent a decade of my career refining a constructivist approach to teaching; would my classroom lose its vibrancy?

Would it begin to look like this:

Moving On

I worried that changing my role would impact the relationships I formed with students. I was afraid that by teaching more content explicitly, I'd stifle their love of learning. That didn't happen. In fact, a student summed things up beautifully during our weekly appreciations:

"I want to congratulate [my teachers] for teaching me all the things to know because it will make me smart and do good in life." -2nd grader

I asked, "Do you think teachers teach you everything there is to know?"

And he replied, "No. But you teach the stuff that's important and how to ask questions so that we could learn the other stuff."

As the class nodded in agreement, I realized I had been wrong to fear dictating the texts they read, deciding how they practiced their skills, or selecting the topics we studied. My students (and their families) wanted me to ensure they were well-prepared for future learning, and they needed me to teach. In Balanced Literacy, I had often allowed children to determine the rigor of their education, and what a missed opportunity that had been!

Since I've shifted away from Balanced Literacy, many of its selling points (like student choice) have lost their allure because I can see how they exacerbate the achievement gap. Despite its promises and prevalence, Balanced Literacy is, according to reading experts:

"... unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America's public schoolchildren, given the research... Children who arrive at school already reading or primed to read, researchers agreed, may integrate seamlessly into the routines of the Units of Study model and maintain a successful reading trajectory. However, children who need additional practice opportunities in a specific area of reading or language development likely would not." Comparing Reading Research to Program Design: An Examination of Teachers College Units of Study

Looking Forward

Balanced Literacy has disseminated images of joyous classrooms and happy, nurturing educators for so long that it can be hard for teachers to visualize an appealing alternative. I might have made the shift away from Balanced Literacy sooner and with less trepidation, if I had been able to visualize how beautiful my classroom would become.

I wish I had known that instruction that's aligned with reading research...

Is NOT
dreadfully boring whole-class phonics lessons
It IS
highly-engaging, differentiated foundational skills instruction

Is NOT
students sitting in rows while reading from a basal
It IS
students cuddled up on beanbags enjoying a good book together because they have been to read

sucking the joy out of reading
Is NOT
Reader's Chair where students encourage each other to sound out words
It IS

teaching topics that students don't care about
Is NOT
using and learning language to discover more about the world around us
It IS

students completing workbook pages
Is NOT
students making anchor charts to share their learning about science and social studies
It IS

hours of boring instruction
Is NOT
kids learning about and making art because their reading instruction is efficient
It IS

teachers losing their love of teaching
Is NOT
teachers seeing evidence of their hard work in their students' growth
It IS

administrators with clipboards reprimanding teachers after stressful observations
Is NOT
leaders working hard to teach the curriculum they've adopted
It IS

unhappy families who say that their children don't want to come to school
Is NOT
schools where families learn that, despite a pandemic and interrupted schooling, their children are now on track for success in school
It IS

Shifting to explicit and systematic instruction increases achievement, and it frees up time. When students master skills during a more effective literacy block, we can shed supplemental materials like packets of phonics worksheets. Our students can truly make use of time for free reading because we've taught them how to read. And we can watch their love of literacy grow in parallel with their skills, rather than spending our time attempting to sell students on a love of reading.

Letting Go of the label "Balanced Literacy"

Instead of seeing Balanced Literacy as our primary method of teaching reading, we can view it as a collection of tools (some were effective, others weren't), which we've acquired over the years. We can intentionally retain some practices and acquire better replacements for others so that we reach the students who struggled with Balanced Literacy. But as we refine our craft, we don't need to worry that we'll lose our love of teaching or that our students won't enjoy learning.

Balanced Literacy does not have a monopoly on joy.

Balanced Literacy instructional change professional development

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Seeing the Good in Balanced Literacy... and Moving On

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Though Balanced Literacy was wrong about some important things, it has practices worth saving. And understanding the good in that approach to teaching literacy can help us transition to more effective instruction. Balanced Literacy taught us the...

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Reading for Life: High Quality Literacy Instruction for All

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Reading for Life: High Quality Literacy Instruction for All [Stone, Lyn] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Reading for Life: High Quality Literacy Instruction for All

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Equipped for Reading Success A Comprehensive, Step-By-Step Program for Developing Phonemic Awareness and Fluent Word Recognition

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In recent years, scientists have made great strides in understanding how children learn to read, as well as how to prevent and correct most reading difficulties. However, the American Federation for Teachers, the Journal of Learning Disabilities, and School Psychology Review have all highlighted ...

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A Fresh Look at Phonics, Grades K-2: Common Causes of Failure and 7 Ingredients for Success (Corwin Literacy)

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Amazon.com: A Fresh Look at Phonics, Grades K-2: Common Causes of Failure and 7 Ingredients for Success (Corwin Literacy): 9781506326887: Blevins, Wiley W.: Books

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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text

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The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text [Hennessy M.Ed., Nancy, Moats Ed.D., Louisa Cook] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Reading Comprehension Blueprint: Helping Students Make Meaning from Text

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Choosing and Using Decodable Texts: Practical Tips and Strategies for Enhancing Phonics Instruction

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Amazon.com: Choosing and Using Decodable Texts: Practical Tips and Strategies for Enhancing Phonics Instruction: 9781338714630: Blevins, Wiley: Books

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Structured Literacy Interventions: Teaching Students with Reading Difficulties, Grades K-6 (The Guilford Series on Intensive Instruction)

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Structured Literacy Interventions: Teaching Students with Reading Difficulties, Grades K-6 (The Guilford Series on Intensive Instruction) [Spear-Swerling, Louise] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Structured Literacy Interventions: Teaching Students with Reading Difficulties, Grades K-6 (The Guilford Series on Intensive Instruction)