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Intervention Support for Being A Reader K-2

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Intervention Support for Being A Reader K-2

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Professional learning embedded in high-quality curriculum is essential to the success of teachers and students—and this understanding is at the core of our work.

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Collaborative Coach: Asynchronous, Personalized Coaching For Teachers and Coaches

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Collaborative Coach is a personalized, interactive, video-based, asynchronous coaching experience that provides one-on-one coaching for individual teachers in a safe and supportive environment.

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Interview with Valerie Fraser: Introducing Being a Reader, Second Edition

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Interview with Valerie Fraser: Introducing Being a Reader, Second Edition

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Interview with Valerie Fraser: Introducing Being a Reader, Second Edition - Center for the Collaborative Classroom

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Collaborative Classroom is excited to announce the publication of Being a Reader, Second Edition, which will be available for the 2021–22 school year. With the launch of the second edition, Being a Reader is now a comprehensive reading program for grades K–2, adding rigorous comprehension work to th…

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Learning Portal Trial Access Page (Pre-Purchase)

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Learning Portal Trial Access Page (Pre-Purchase)

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Start a Trial License | Collaborative Classroom

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Sign up for a free trial license and receive full digital access to all Collaborative Classroom curricula for 60 days. Get access to the Collaborative Classroom Learning Portal - home to all digital program resources such as teacher's manuals, student resources, formative & summative assessments, professional learning supports, and more.

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Steps to Creating a Learning Portal Account (After Purchase)

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Steps to Creating a Learning Portal Account (After Purchase)

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Small Group Instruction Sets 1-5 Scope & Sequence (Foundational Skills)

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Small Group Instruction Sets 1-5 Scope & Sequence (Foundational Skills)

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BR2E Small Group Reading Resources Tab Tutorial

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BR2E Small Group Reading Resources Tab Tutorial

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Our video player supports keyboard controls. Using the tab key to move the focus to the various player controls, player functions can be activated as follows: Play (Icon in video thumbnail) Space to Play/Pause Play/Pause (control bar) Space to Play/Pause Mute Space to toggle on the Speaker icon Scrubber/Progress bar: Up/Right to go forward 5 seconds.

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From Guided Reading to Structured Literacy

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From Guided Reading to Structured Literacy

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From Guided Reading to a Structured-Literacy Approach: My Journey as an Educator

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We all want reading instruction that is effective and equitable, reaching every student. But how do we get there? In this blog, one educator shares her journey from guided reading to small-group instruction with a structured literacy approach.

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All of us engaged in literacy instruction aspire to lay the ground for highly literate students who love to read for pleasure and information and are able to understand and respond to what they read at a deep level. We know that there is no easy pathway to this goal, as every reader and text is unique and the interaction between capable reader and text is often an interior process. While there is no easy pathway, our approach to teaching reading acknowledges that foundational skills and making meaning go hand-in-hand, and must be taught in a supportive reading community where students feel safe to learn and share.

Setting the Foundation

In an article in The Reading Teacher , "Implications of the DRIVE Model of Reading: Making the Complexity of Reading Actionable," Nell Duke and Kelly Cartwright draw an analogy between reading and driving. Using the DRIVE (Deploying Reading in Varied Environments) model, they illuminate the underpinnings of learning to read and the many factors that contribute to successfully orchestrating the reading process. The DRIVE model moves the discussion around decoding and comprehension in a productive direction-toward the acknowledgement of the messiness of teaching reading. Students need both the foundational skills to decode the texts as well as deeper skills to comprehend, analyze, and synthesize the various texts they encounter. Readers bring everything they know about navigating decoding, the type of text in their hands, and the topic of the text to make meaning. The goal of reading instruction, therefore, is to provide the foundation from which the reader can step into the world of unmediated reading.

Learning to read is hard because so much has to be brought to bear on the text at hand. In order for students to willingly engage in the hard work, they need to see themselves as readers and experience the richness reading brings. For this reason, foundational skills should be taught in the context of a literate community that shares a love of books and provides a forum for students to share their ideas about the texts.

We know that learning flourishes when students participate in a supportive classroom community where everyone's ideas are valued and where they are able to take risks, make mistakes, give an opinion, hear others' opinions, agree and disagree respectfully. Creating this community and empowering teachers to bring the most basic components of early reading-decoding, shared reading, comprehension, and application to individual reading-together in the context of a specific class, time, and place is critical to student learning.

The foundation on which a reading life is built begins with phonological awareness and develops through phonics, decoding, and fluency. But teaching these foundational concepts in isolation, without surrounding experiences with rich text, will not develop thoughtful readers who engage deeply with what they read. Only participation in a literate community will motivate students to persevere through the challenging work of making meaning from text.

The Three Tiers: Whole-class, Small-group, and Independent Reading

Our research and experience has informed our three-tiered approach to reading: whole-class lessons to foster students' ability to comprehend fiction and nonfiction and discuss their thinking with others, small-group lessons that meet students' decoding, fluency, and comprehension needs where they are in their own developmental trajectory, and individual reading with teacher conferring.

Whole-class lessons take several forms. During some lessons, the students engage with a big book or poem that they read and reread with the teacher before they address such academic content as phonological awareness, concepts of print, recognizing patterns, and developing a rich bank of literature and literary language that undergirds their decoding. During other lessons, the read-aloud and discussion might focus on a specific aspect of comprehension, such as building world knowledge, visualizing, asking questions of the text, or making inferences to understand character. And in other lessons, the class might dive into learning Tiers 2 and 3 vocabulary through the read-aloud and many opportunities to practice with new words. Because students are able to comprehend text of greater complexity than they are able to read on their own, a whole-class read-aloud and discussion format gives all students access to grade-level content, text structures, and rich vocabulary.

Much of Collaborative Classroom's work is based on a constructivist pedagogy. However, research has shown that explicit, systematic phonics instruction best meets the needs of young readers. To implement this principle, we partnered with Dr. John Shefelbine to develop and publish SIPPS: Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics and Sight Words (2001, 2004, 2013, 2018).

That learning was incorporated into Being a Reader (2021) a complete reading program that is part of the Collaborative Literacy Suite. Being a Reader incorporates the three-tiered approach, with whole-class Shared Reading and Comprehension lessons, small-group lessons at students' point of need, and individual reading with conferring. Decoding is taught in small groups of students at similar points in their reading development. Lessons follow a continuum of skills, from short vowels and single consonants through complex vowels and consonant blends to sophisticated polysyllabic analysis. Later small-group lessons focus on comprehension challenges such as making inferences, wondering and questioning, determining importance, self-monitoring, and sharing and supporting opinions .

In the quest for highly literate students who love to read for pleasure and information and are able to understand and respond to what they read at a deep level, it is critical that we give students the opportunity to apply all they are learning to their individual reading lives. This independent practice should be accompanied with teacher conferences. Independent reading with teacher conferences is an essential component of moving students to higher levels of comprehension.

At Collaborative Classroom, with generous support from foundation partners, we are continuously learning-from research, from experience, and from teachers and schools-and apply what we learn to our curriculum. We re-imagined a literacy block that is culturally relevant and engaging. A literacy block that authentically integrates academic and social development, ensuring students get the support they need to develop into highly literate, critical thinkers who care for and respect one another. The result of our learning is Collaborative Literacy.
Valerie Fraser is Vice President of Program Development and Publishing Services at Collaborative Classroom.

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Our Approach to Teaching Reading - Center for the Collaborative Classroom

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All of us engaged in literacy instruction aspire to lay the ground for highly literate students who love to read for pleasure and information and are able to understand and respond to what they read at a deep level. We know that there is no easy pathway to this goal, as every reader and text [...]

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Creating An Equitable Learning Environment for ELLs Through Being a Reader, 2E (Part 1)

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Creating An Equitable Learning Environment for ELLs Through Being a Reader, 2E (Part 1)

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Creating an Equitable Learning Environment for English Language Learners Through Being a Reader, Second Edition - Center for the Collaborative Classroom

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Part I—Building the Foundation The long-awaited second edition of Being a Reader is here! This edition is a comprehensive, researched-based reading curriculum for grades K–2 that combines systematic, sequential foundational skills instruction and rigorous comprehension work with integrated social-em…

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Creating An Equitable Learning Environment for ELLs Through Being a Reader, 2E (Part 2)

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Creating An Equitable Learning Environment for ELLs Through Being a Reader, 2E (Part 2)

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Part II-Providing English Language Learners Access to the Text and the Instruction

In part 1 of our blog series, I unpacked why it is imperative to provide equitable academic and language instruction for English language learners. An important component of equitable instruction is making sure your ELL students have full access to the read-aloud texts that are utilized so they can do the heavy cognitive lifting during reading instruction. Determining when your ELL students might need additional support in accessing the text, and what that support should look like, is vital. The more you know about your students, the better positioned you will be to make those instructional decisions.

When you have determined that ELL students are in need of additional support for any given week of instruction in Being a Reader, Second Edition, you can consider the pre-teaching support activities, which provide a scaffold for the learning. Pre-teaching instruction is always grouped under three headings: Build Background Knowledge, Preview the Text, and Provide Language Support. The support helps the students access the texts or other lesson content prior to whole-class instruction.

Let's dig into the support for a book used in Grade 1 for a closer look.

The texts that are used this week to support comprehension and shared reading instruction are The Frog Who Wanted to See the Sea and One Duck Stuck.

Below is a summary of the pre-teaching support offered for The Frog Who Wanted to See the Sea. As you read through it, consider what might best support your ELL students.

Building Background Knowledge

Explain that this fantasy (make-believe) story is about a frog named Alice who lives in a pond. She goes on a journey to the sea because she is curious.

Connect to students: When was a time you tried something new? (Suggest a few examples if needed.)

Discuss feelings connected to that event. (Use the feelings chart created in Unit 2 as support.)

Tell the students that the setting (where the story takes place) is near water.

Show illustrations from the book of essential objects in the story: pond, cattails, reeds, seagull, lily and lily pads.

Show illustrations from the book and discuss the differences between the river and the sea.

Preview the Text

Show illustrations or photos of items mentioned in the text but not illustrated: dragonfly, owl, fox, gnat, turtle, fish, and a sharp hook on a fishing pole.

Read the story aloud while showing the illustrations and clarifying the suggested vocabulary (suggested vocabulary with definitions are included).

When possible, act out words, use gestures, or refer to the illustrations to provide support for word meanings.

Provide Language Support

This week the students are introduced to the strategy of wondering and to using the prompt "I wonder" to share their thinking.

You might create a "wondering prompts" chart to provide students with additional support. Introduce the students to the chart and post it where they can refer to it throughout the unit. Such prompts might include:

"I wonder if . . ."

"I wonder whether . . ."

"I wonder when . . ."

"I wonder who . . ."

"I wonder how . . ."

Keep in mind that to select appropriate scaffolds, you'll need to know your ELLs' backgrounds as well as their academic strengths and needs. You'll also need to have a sense of the linguistic demands of the instructional tasks so that you can determine which scaffolds will set the students up for success.

Selecting scaffolds can cause us to look at our instructional goals in a new and exciting way. Instead of "simplifying" the tasks we give ELLs or overscaffolding, the scaffolds we use should be intentional and differentiated to students' needs.

In the last part of this blog series, we will explore the strong and intentional ongoing support that is embedded in Being a Reader, Second Edition. We will consider how the supports offered might provide scaffolding options as you differentiate instruction for your English language learners.

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Creating an Equitable Learning Environment for English Language Learners Through Being a Reader, Second Edition - Part 2 - Center for the Collaborative Classroom

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Part II-Providing English Language Learners Access to the Text and the Instruction In part 1 of our blog series, I unpacked why it is imperative to provide equitable academic and language instruction for English language learners. An important component of equitable instruction is making sure your ELL students have full access to the read-aloud texts [...]

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Keyboard Controls

Our video player supports keyboard controls. Using the tab key to move the focus to the various player controls, player functions can be activated as follows:

Play (Icon in video thumbnail)

Space to Play/Pause

Play/Pause (control bar)

Space to Play/Pause

Mute

Space to toggle on the Speaker icon

Scrubber/Progress bar:

Up/Right to go forward 5 seconds. Left or Down to rewind 5 seconds (per action)

Closed Captions:

Space bar to open options, Up/Down arrow to choose, Enter to select

Screen in Screen:

Space bar to toggle on and off on screen in screen icon

Full screen:

Space on the full screen icon

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Center for the Collaborative Classroom - Center for the Collaborative Classroom