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in our teacher prep programs how to teach foundational reading skills, but also work(ed) in districts who follow outdated models of reading that underemphasize or completely disregard teaching foundational skills.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...

I love an infographic!

Maybe because they remind me of a Project GLAD® Graphic Organizer. If you ever search images for  “models of reading instruction”, you’ll come up with a plethora of graphics that researchers and authors have created to illustrate the various components. From the reading rope to the simple view, they all pretty much describe the same components, and it is important to note that all the elements share equal weight.

We will refer back to these models of literacy instruction as we go through this series on Project GLAD®’s literacy strategies. It seems like the best place to start is with decoding, but I’d rather switch our focus to certain GLAD® strategies as evidence-based practices. We’ll save word study and decoding for a future issue. In this issue, we’ll cover the equally important skill of reading fluency and how it relates to several GLAD® strategies that we can use to teach and practice it.

What is reading fluency?

Reading fluen...

After a busy summer of OCDE Project GLAD® Foundations trainings we are always energized by the enthusiasm of the teachers we’ve had the pleasure to support. Oftentimes, on the last day of the demo the teachers’ take away from the PD was that the students were so engaged and motivated to learn. They want to take that love of learning back to their classrooms and start the year off right with skills for motivating students.

All Project GLAD® strategies are grounded in underlying concepts that create a safe learning environment, where student take risks with language and concepts. It starts with building motivational routines.

Three Personal Standards

When you are creating your classroom culture, communicating and reinforcing clear expectations for behavior is one of the most important things to do to start off on the right foot.

Knowing what to expect and how you will react in many situations creates trust between you and your students. Many experts agree on the hallmar...

Graphic Organizers, Pictorials and Comparatives: What’s the Big Difference?

Drawing while talking, isn’t that the whole idea?  Does it really matter what you call it?  While the title isn’t going to revolutionize the learning experience, the purpose behind what you’re doing will. 

GRAPHIC ORGANIZER INPUT CHART

Let’s start at the beginning.  The BIG picture.  When introducing a new unit topic we first orient the content in time and space. 

How does everything we’ll be learning fit together? 

This is the purpose behind the Graphic Organizer.  It might be a world map, a timeline, the kingdoms of living things, or any other kind of graphic organizer that gives the BIG picture of the unit.  

The graphic organizer is generally the first input chart presented in a new unit of study.  

Now, consider your emerging bmultilingual students.  What does a graphic organizer look like when you’re tracing the organizer and writing in the key concepts and vocabulary?  Basically, we have a bunch...

INTRODUCING A QUICK AND EASY WAY TO OPTIMIZE TEAM COLLABORATION WITH TEAM TASKS

Have you ever been part of a team or committee where one person does all the work?  Or conversely, one person doesn’t contribute.  The same holds true for our students.  

Have you ever tried moving desks into team formation… and then reverting back to rows because it was so painful?  Yep.  We know the feeling.  

Once students are in teams we start by teaching the social skills needed for collaboration to take place. What does collaboration look like?  Sound like? (See T-Graph for Social Skills in Acceleration 101: Setting the Stage). 

Once you have teams and the T-Graph for Social Skills in place, it’s time to assign team projects or “tasks.”  

Setting up those team task for success is our insider tip for today! 

Spencer Kagan is a researcher we refer to for ideas to support cooperative learning. His cooperative learning structures revolve around four key principles to increase engagement duri...

One of our favorite parts of a GLAD® training is on the last day of the demo when we ask the students what helped them learn. One of their favorite parts is always working with a team during team tasks. The student teams are usually very cooperative and productive during that time but there are occasions, just like in real life, when they are not. In order to be convinced that cooperative learning is worth the effort, the teachers will understandably ask:  

What do I do if my kids are messing around during team tasks?  Does the quality of their work matter? 

The short answer is – Yes, the quality of their work matters. Here are a few key points to keep in mind. 

• The purpose of team tasks is small group practice. Remember, in the gradual release of responsibility model we start with whole class for input, small group for practice, and individual work for assessment.  All of the team tasks will eventually turn into individual tasks that you will assess. Since work at the team level ...

Bell to bell instruction is the idea that everything that happens from the start bell until the dismissal bell is an academic task that engages students toward the learning goals. It is one of the characteristics of a high performing school. 

There are many ways that teachers can accomplish this, but we’ll focus on one idea. Reducing transition time! 

Let’s reflect on how many transitions there are in the average school day and how much time they take away from instructional minutes available. In the average elementary classroom, there are between 5-10 transitions a day. Come sit on the carpet, go back to your seat, go to your reading group, wash your hands, line up for a specialist or lunch, walk to and from specials or lunch, etc. If each one of these transitions, conservatively, takes 3 minutes that’s 15-30 minutes of lost instruction time a day. If we’re counting based on the reality of a 5-8 minute transition, that is 25-80 minutes of lost instruction time a day. A 15-m...

Have you ever used matching worksheets with students? 

You know, the ones where students connect vocabulary words to the correct definitions, math problems to the correct solutions, beginning sounds to the matching pictures...   

These can be helpful tools for individual assessment and preparing students for similar testing techniques in standardized tests.  They can be made even more kinesthetic and engaging through online tools such as Jamboard for individual practice at home.  

That’s nice, you say… but what does this have to do with Project GLAD®? 

Project GLAD® strategies have the power to take what you already do or need to teach, and present it to students in a way that increases language development, communication, social interaction, memory retention and student engagement.

The “GLAD” version of a matching worksheet is a strategy called...drumroll please...

Where’s My Answer

Where’s My Answer can be used in any subject area or grade level.  

Simply take the items stu...