Embracing Literacy 2024

This session will begin with Scarborough’s Reading Rope and the big picture of reading acquisition. It will then zoom in to the word recognition strand of the rope. Educators will review the brain science that supports foundational skills instruction, learn the different components of effective foundational skills instruction, and experience instructional strategies in action through video clips, modeling, and opportunities to practice. Participants will walk away an understanding of the value of foundational skills instruction for all students as well as a tool kit of instructional strategies to begin building strong foundational skills in their own classroom. Throughout the session we will attend to strategies and impact for students with thinking and learning differences and multi-lingual learners.

Learner Outcomes:
Explain why daily, systematic, explicit foundational skills instruction is a critical component of a comprehensive literacy program. Articulate the difference between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. Select from high leverage instructional strategies for teaching foundational skills in the classroom. Select from high leverage instructional strategies for supporting students with thinking and learning differences and multi-lingual learners.

Learning Questions:

• Share two key takeaways around best practices in literacy instruction that you learned in this session. 
• Share one clear next step you plan to take from the learning in this session.        
• Share more about the learning that you would want or need to advance your practice in literacy instruction.

Throughout this session, teachers and coaches will explore the impact of knowledge-building on comprehension. Research supports that students’ prior knowledge about a topic impacts their ability to comprehend texts. Building student knowledge and vocabulary is important to support their future reading. This session will explore research-based strategies for building knowledge and support educators in developing plans to implement strategies in upcoming lessons.

Learner Outcomes:
Explain the importance and impact of knowledge-building on students’ reading, comprehension, and vocabulary development. Experience a lesson where students acquire knowledge and vocabulary on a complex, unfamiliar topic through text. Reflect on knowledge-building and vocabulary development in your own district/classroom materials and plan for implementation.

Session Questions:

1. Share two key takeaways around best practices in literacy instruction that you learned in this session. 
2. Share one clear next step you plan to take from the learning in this session.  
3. Share more about the learning that you would want or need to advance your practice in literacy instruction.

Session Objectives: 1) Participants will be able to provide explicit note-taking instruction and facilitate oral practice strategies to help students comprehend grade-level materials. 2) Participants will be able to articulate one way they can incorporate these strategies into reading and writing instruction. 3) Participants will explain why the combination of note-taking and oral practice may be more beneficial for students than one of these strategies alone.
Detailed Description: This presentation will explain a note-taking and oral practice strategy intervention, Sketch and Speak, that has preliminary evidence of effectiveness to improve comprehension of informational texts for students who have language-related learning disabilities in later grades (i.e., grades 4-9). Studies of this intervention have been conducted with speech-language pathologists as the interventionists, primarily in 1-1 settings, though clinically this has been used with small groups of students with positive results. The goal of this session is to provide educators with an alternate strategy intervention for their toolbelt that could be useful for students who are adverse to writing notes in traditional forms. The note-taking strategies include pictography and bulleted note forms to decrease some demands of academic writing for struggling students. The addition of oral generation and practice of complete sentences to note-taking in this intervention also helps students who have difficulty with language to remember important information, including key vocabulary words, main ideas, and supporting details. By the end of this session, attendees will be able to explain the importance of this strategy combination in improving comprehension, implement the strategies on a variety of expository text types after hands-on practice, and apply this strategy intervention across the curriculum.

Reflection Questions: 1) What are the potential benefits of using pictography as a note-taking tool? 2) Why do you think teaching note-taking is hard and how could you enhance your practice with strategies you learned in this session? 3) What is one way you could use note-taking and oral practice together to improve comprehension of material?

Participants in this session will explore four key understandings about the importance of small group instruction:
1.The purpose of teaching foundational skills as a means to an end
2. How foundational skills develop and why mastery learning is critical
3. Why explicit and systematic instruction based on student data is key
4. The most effective and efficient format for this type of instruction
Participants will walk away understanding why tailoring instruction based on individual student needs is the foundation of true mastery-based learning and instruction.

Learner Outcomes
Articulate the purpose of teaching foundational skills as a means to an end, how foundational skills develop and why mastery learning is critical, why explicit and systematic instruction based on student data is key, and the most effective and efficient format for this type of instruction

Phonemic awareness is an essential early literacy skill that underpins a child’s ability to read and spell and yet research demonstrates that without direct, explicit instruction in phonemic awareness it eludes many students (Adams, 1990). This presentation details the research supporting phonological and phonemic awareness and the theoretical frameworks that underpin it.  The main emphasis of this presentation will be placed on how to teach phonemic awareness aligned to effective structured literacy practices.  Assessments to inform instruction and intervention will also be offered. Participants will leave with comprehensive literacy resources to transfer knowledge to practice.


Phonological Awareness: Is the awareness of or sensitivity to the _______  _______ of language.

• sound structure
• number sense
• sentence structure
• semantic meaning

Phoneme segmentation and blending measures along with _______ _______are the best predictors of reading success or failure In novice readers.

• hearing ability
• letter naming
• counting letters
• positional terms

The easiest way to detect phonemes is to monitor where your ____ is positioned.

• hand
• eye
• mouth
• foot

Credit Reflection Questions:

1. After this session, how has your understanding of literacy been changed, challenged, or confirmed?
2. What knowledge or skills will you implement in your work?
3. How will you incorporate the strategies discussed today into your current practices to support student literacy development?

Reading, speaking and listening, and writing have a reciprocal relationship and all play into students’ development with language. This session explores this reciprocal relationship and provides teachers and coaches with research based strategies to support students with writing.

Learner Outcomes
Explain the reciprocal relationship between reading, speaking and listening, and writing, and the overall impact of writing on students’ literacy development; Reflect on the principles of effective discussion and writing instruction and analyze examples of what these principles look like in strong instruction; Explore research on best practices for writing instruction; Plan and prepare for instruction for an upcoming writing task.

Session Questions:

1. Share two key takeaways around best practices in literacy instruction that you learned in this session. 
2. Share one clear next step you plan to take from the learning in this session.  
3. Share more about the learning that you would want or need to advance your practice in literacy instruction.

This session highlights the reciprocal relationship between reading and spelling and its benefits to both essential language skills! Hands-on instructional routines and practices will be shared, modeled, and practiced to optimize the transfer to classroom practice.

Spelling requires complete and _______word memories.” Louisa Moats

• written
• partial
• accurate
• detailed

Orthographic mapping is a connection forming process that bonds phonology, __________, and meaning.

• semantics
• syntax
• pragmatics
• orthography

A student who has spelled the word stone, ston has made what kind of error?

• phonological
• orthographic
• morphological 
• semantic

Credit Reflection Questions:

1. After this session, how has your understanding of literacy been changed, challenged, or confirmed?
2. What knowledge or skills will you implement in your work?
3. How will you incorporate the strategies discussed today into your current practices to support student literacy development?

During this unprecedented time, as educators we have been grateful for the outpouring of virtual resources offered freely and generously by many from across the globe to promote literacy. But what if it’s time to unplug and connect?  In this session you will revisit the “Big Five of Reading” and find easy ways to use everyday low tech items to maximize oral language and literacy while simultaneously making those all-important personal connections our children deserve!

Complete this sentence from a quote by Anita Archer: “There is no comprehension strategy powerful enough to compensate for the fact that you can't read the words.”

• tool
• program
• comprehension strategy
• resource

Fluency is composed of three attributes: accuracy, fluency, and ___________.

• rate
• speed
• volume
• prosody

Phonics is, “The study of the relationships between _____ and the _____they represent.”

• letters, sounds
• cues, picture
• graphemes, numbers
• meaning, pictures

Credit Reflection Questions:

1. After this session, how has your understanding of literacy been changed, challenged, or confirmed?
2. What knowledge or skills will you implement in your work?
3. How will you incorporate the strategies discussed today into your current practices to support student literacy development?

Implementing the reading components of an MTSS framework requires instructional coaching and coaching systems (teaming structures, developing processes and procedures). Not all of the coaching recipients are ready for change. This session will outline critical coaching practices to foster readiness to change practice. It also highlights information for school administrators relevant for how to create a school climate supportive for effective implementation.  

Beginning readers get off to a stronger start with aligned decodable text! This session will cover the what, why, and how of using decodable text as part of an explicit phonics lesson to build student accuracy, automaticity, and fluency in early reading. Decodable text builds the bridge from reading words in isolation to building confidence and motivation in reading connected text. Participants will walk away with a deeper understanding of varied text types and their purposes (leveled text, authentic text, decodable text, etc.), as well as an interactive decodable text routine for implementation of decodable text in the classroom.

Learning objectives:  ·       The learner will examine evidence for instruction in phonics instruction from the What Works Clearinghouse IES Educator’s Practice Guide for Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade
·       The learner will explain the purpose of decodable text
·       The learner will discuss the importance of the Six-Step Explicit Phonics Lesson with emphasis on the application of the phonics skill in decodable text
·       The learner will identify the features and purpose of controlled and authentic texts to determine when to use a particular text type
·       The learner will analyze the decodability of a text by comparing it with a given scope and sequence
·       The learner will view the Decodable Text Routine and discuss elements of explicitness as well as the amount of time students are actively reading
 
 Credit Reflection Questions:
1.     How is decodable text different from predictable and leveled text?
2.     Explain how decodable text can be used as a tool to promote orthographic mapping for automatic word retrieval.
3.     At what Phase of Reading (Ehri, 2014) is the decodable text most useful for developing fluency and confidence? 

The presentation is a combination of a dyslexia presentation and dyslexia and other learning difficulties simulation.  Participants will learn what is happening in the brain of individuals with dyslexia, the signs and symptoms of dyslexia, evidence-based interventions and accommodations to help people with dyslexia succeed.  Learning difficulty simulations will be interspersed into the presentation.  Participants will have a minute feeling of how people with dyslexia and other learning difficulties feel during their school day.

Learner Outcomes
Have a better understanding of dyslexia, including evidence-based interventions and accommodations.

Create your own toolbox of instructional strategies specifically focusing on phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, foundational decoding, and the continuum of building fluency from the letter, sound, and linking to the word recognition into text reading. Participants will explore easy-to-follow targeted intervention strategies that are intentionally focused on the most predictive skills for academic success.

After this session, participants will be able to: 

Understand why this quote is so important: “The ability to read novel words is the single most powerful way to discriminate good from poor readers at any age.” A lack of proficiency in word recognition will hinder comprehension!

• Participants will deepen your understanding of phonemic awareness and orthographic mapping.
• Participants will learn evidence-based instructional activities for phonological development, beginning phonics, advanced phonics and fluency.
• Participants will understand the urgency on closing the achievement gap by addressing effective instruction and intervention.

Questions to Ponder for Credit:

1. Select two or three knowledge and application concepts you will include in your teaching next year.
2. What changes do you believe will happen with your student learning based on today’s session?
3. What will you stop doing next year from what you experienced within this session?