In a recent coaching session, the teacher I was working with (who has tried an amazing amount of strategies this year) mentioned that she was already anticipating the fall and asked what she could prepare this summer to get her GLAD® classroom started right. 

So, here's a blast from the past! This blog was originally published in August of 2023 and describes three things you can do to be ready to roll out your classroom routines on day 1. This one's for you Mia!

The beginning of the school year brings with it the feelings of anticipation, excitement, and nervousness for students and teachers alike. Dusting off our classroom libraries, moving furniture, and preparing bulletin board space for our students’ first projects are physical tasks we do to set up our classrooms. But we also think through the classroom structures and routines we’ll use. 

Were the management structures you used last year effective? Are revisions needed? 

Here are 3 quick easy steps using tried and tru...

One of the biggest challenges in today’s classrooms is helping students truly understand and use academic vocabulary—not just memorize definitions for a test. This is where OCDE Project GLAD®’s Cognitive Content Dictionary (CCD) shines. More than a vocabulary activity, the Cognitive Content Dictionary is a powerful strategy that builds language, comprehension, and confidence for all learners, especially language learners.

What Is a Cognitive Content Dictionary?

The CCD is a cornerstone strategy in the Project GLAD® model designed to explicitly teach key academic vocabulary in a meaningful, interactive way. Rather than presenting words in isolation, teachers introduce vocabulary as part of concept development, connecting words to visuals, gestures, discussion, and real-world meaning.

This multisensory approach ensures that students don’t just recognize a word—they understand it deeply and can apply it across contexts.

Why Vocabulary Instruction Matters

Academic vocabulary is often ...

Differentiation vs. Scaffolding: What’s the Difference—and Why It Matters

In education, few terms are used as often—and confused as frequently—as differentiation and scaffolding. Both are essential instructional practices. Both aim to support student learning. And both are grounded in the belief that students learn best when teaching responds to their needs.

But they are not the same thing.

At a recent GLAD® training, we engaged teachers in a discussion about the definition of differentiation. Here’s what your colleagues said (paraphrased for length):

“Differentiation is paying attention to learning styles and using a wide variety of strategies and methods.” Lidia

“Meet the needs of each student.” Lynn

“Planning to adjust your lesson to add scaffolding and adjust as needed without watering it down. They (students) still need to meet expectations.” Diane

(Responding to Diane) “That’s what I used to think, but adjusting for special education. You need to adjust students’ work for ...

How to make the most of your January reset - the GLAD® way

Back from winter break.

New year.
New energy… or at least new potential energy. 😉

The days after winter vacation are a sweet spot for teachers.
Students are rested (mostly).
Routines are rusty.
And everyone is ready for a reset.

This is the perfect moment to refresh key Project GLAD strategies—without overhauling everything.

Small shifts.
Big payoff.

Let’s walk through a few high-impact resets that work beautifully in January.

1. Reset the Seating = Reset the Energy

January is an ideal time to reconfigure teams.

New seating communicates, “we’re starting fresh.”

Try something different:

Instead of teams of four, experiment with groups of six.

Here’s how:

• Two teams per grouping of six

• Three students on each side

• Still heterogeneous

• Still purposeful

• Students notice the change immediately—and lean in.

2. Fresh Team Names (Tied to Content!)

New teams deserve new names.

YES - con...

Teaching is deeply creative work—and also incredibly time-consuming. Preparing chants, writing expert groups, creating pictorial input charts, awards, ELD questions, and frames can take hours of brainstorming, researching, and formatting.

This is where ChatGPT becomes a game-changer.

It is not a replacement for teaching—it's a productivity partner that can help you save prep time, expand your options, and enhance the quality of your instructional tools.

Below is a practical guide for how ChatGPT can support you in designing GLAD® strategies -personalized to your grade level, standards, and classroom needs.

Two hints before we begin:

• ChatGPT works best with very specific prompts. Some of these sample prompts will get you started, but the more specificity you include the more likely it will align with your goal.
• The more you use the tool, the better you (and ChatGPT) will become at streamlining just the right prompt (and product) for your purpose.  

We'll start with the most o...

Our last issue introduced the Project GLAD® strategy, Directed Reading Thinking Activity or DRTA, to use with whole class reading instruction. This is a little gem of a strategy that can be differentiated with elementary classes but also has great potential in the secondary classroom when our focus is disciplinary literacy.

Disciplinary literacy is the idea that each subject area—like math, science, history, or literature—has its own language, ways of thinking, and methods of communicating. To truly master a subject, students must learn how to read, write, and think like experts in that discipline. It’s not just about content knowledge; it’s about understanding how knowledge is created and communicated within a field.

What Is Disciplinary Literacy?

Unlike general literacy strategies, which apply broadly across content areas, disciplinary literacy focuses on the specific ways reading, writing, and thinking happen within each academic discipline. For example:

A historian reads primar...

This month, I had the joy of presenting at WABE (Washington Association for Bilingual Education), where the room was buzzing with passionate and creative educators. Our session? “One Strategy – Endless Possibilities.” And what was our jumping-off point? You guessed it...

The Sentence Patterning Chart (SPC)

For those who’ve had an initial GLAD® training, you know we only have time to scratch the surface of each strategy during those jam-packed days. The SPC is no exception. This year's WABE session was a delightful opportunity to explore meaningful ways for extending the SPC beyond the basics. 

Let’s talk about one favorite: an engaging twist on the classic Mad Libs—reimagined for deeper academic value, language development, and laughter-filled learning! 

Mad Libs Meets SPC: Language Practice with a Purpose 

Instead of passing around a generic Mad Libs booklet, let’s get intentional—and connected to what students are learning in class.

Here’s how to set it up: 

1. Choose a Text

 There has been a lot of push-back in recent years about the Science of Reading and teaching phonics to English learners.

Not too long ago I attended a bilingual education conference. In one of the plenary sessions, the speaker pronounced that there’s too much emphasis on phonics. “We already know how to do that. There isn’t anybody who’s not teaching phonics!”

I couldn’t disagree more.

There are thousands of teachers, like me, who not only didn’t receive any instruction in our teacher prep programs how to teach foundational reading skills, but also work(ed) in districts who follow outdated models of reading that underemphasize or completely disregard teaching foundational skills. And this has been happening for decades.

I think that the push-back toward the emphasis on phonics instruction is a worry that it will replace or overshadow the other components of literacy and language instruction that multilingual students need.

The detractors of SoR have also spoken out against the va...

Our last issue (https://shorturl.at/RIejJ) focused on a knowledge-based approach to reading comprehension. We discussed the points that building students’ background knowledge and teaching reading through content makes a difference in being able to comprehend a text.

This leads us to the question of what purpose, if any, is there in teaching reading comprehension strategies like summarization, compare/contrast, prediction, and main idea?

Tim Shanahan is the expert we will look to for the answer to this question, and then, of course, we have a GLAD® strategy to share to apply this wisdom.

Comprehension is two-pronged

Shanahan makes a distinction about the cognitive aspects of reading comprehension. He says that we need to be more specific when we talk about the broad topic of reading comprehension. Are we assessing if the student understands what he reads? Or are we asking him to remember or memorize the information to be used later for different activities like writing or discussio...

🤯 Mind blown!

During my research on reading comprehension and how best to teach it I came across a series of podcasts that have changed my view of how best to frame the concept of reading comprehension. What is it? How do we acquire it? Can you teach it?

Dr. Sharon Vaughn is the Executive Director of the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk at the University of Texas at Austin and the lead author of the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guides.

Vaughn posits that comprehension can’t be taught. Rather, we help build it for students by, first, teaching them how to read the words and knowing what the words mean – phonics + vocabulary. Then, if the student has enough background knowledge of the topic they are reading about, comprehension is the result.

Tim Rasinkski of Kent State University, corroborates this assertion quantitatively, “90% of 3^rd-4^th graders who have problems with reading comprehension also have problems with phonics, vocabulary, and fluency.”  

How a k...