Reading

Reading Fluency Playbook

  • Feb. 11, 2025, 11:02 a.m.
The Reading Fluency Playbook provides strategies for helping students improve fluency by focusing on expression, phrasing, accuracy, and reading rate. It outlines targeted interventions based on student needs and includes research-based activities to support fluency development.

Writing Responses to Reading Playbook

  • Feb. 11, 2025, 10:57 a.m.
The Writing Reading Responses Playbook is a resource designed to help teachers guide students in using writing to deepen their reading comprehension, organize their thoughts, and express their understanding. It provides strategies and structured activities for activating prior knowledge, planning responses, explaining thinking, and reflecting on new content.

Phonics and Word Study Interventions Playbook

  • Feb. 11, 2025, 10:12 a.m.
This resource provides a structured approach to phonics and word study interventions, offering targeted strategies based on students' needs. It follows an If…Then… format, ensuring teachers can diagnose and apply effective interventions.

Decodable Text Protocol

  • Feb. 11, 2025, 9:54 a.m.
The Decodable Text Protocol is a structured, multi-day approach to using decodable texts effectively in early literacy instruction. It focuses on decoding, fluency, comprehension, and expression to build reading confidence in young learners.

Fabulous Five Topic Vocabulary

  • Nov. 15, 2024, 11:39 a.m.
Using this table, students select the 5 most important words related to the central idea. They write a sentence explaining the importance of the word. As an extension, students revise the sentence to create a complex or compound sentence that elaborates on the original sentence idea.

Knowledge Journal

  • Nov. 15, 2024, 11:35 a.m.
A knowledge journal is used to help learners keep track of new and important information learned during a topic or theme study. The journal questions asks the learner to reflect on how the new information changes their thinking.

Get the Gist with a Twist-Summarizing Informational Texts

  • Oct. 17, 2024, 1:25 p.m.
Providing students with a structured approach when learning to summarize or retell informational texts, such as the "Get the Gist with a Twist" framework, helps them focus on identifying and extracting the most important ideas. This structure directs students to pinpoint who or what the text is about, understand the author's purpose, and summarize the key details relevant to that purpose. By organizing their thoughts with this framework, students are better equipped to discern essential information from supporting details, improving both comprehension and retention. This approach is particularly useful for struggling learners, as it offers a clear method to break down complex texts into manageable parts. With the downloadable PDF, teachers can easily guide students through this process, ensuring consistency and providing a valuable tool for mastering informational text summarization.

Summarizing Narrative Texts Using Somebody Wanted But (or And) So Then

  • Oct. 17, 2024, 1:13 p.m.
Providing students with a structured approach when learning to summarize or retell stories, such as the "Somebody Wanted So Then" framework, helps them organize their thoughts and focus on key elements of a narrative. This structure guides students to identify the main characters (Somebody), their motivations or desires (Wanted), the central conflict or action (So), and the resolution (Then). For stories without a clear problem, the adjusted "Somebody Wanted and So Then" structure simplifies the process while still helping students track the flow of events, as in stories like The Relatives Came. These frameworks are especially valuable for students who struggle with summarization, as they break down the task into manageable parts, ensuring that students capture the essential components of the story. By giving students a clear outline, teachers help them improve their comprehension and retelling skills, making summarizing more accessible and systematic.

Summarization Rubrics

  • Oct. 17, 2024, 1:07 p.m.
The summarization rubrics are designed to help teachers assess students' ability to effectively summarize both narrative and expository texts. These rubrics provide clear criteria for evaluating key elements of a summary, such as the identification of main ideas, supporting details, and overall organization. Teachers can use these rubrics to gauge the level of comprehension demonstrated by students in their summaries, scoring each element as complete, partial, fragmented, or incorrect. The rubrics also account for the level of prompting needed, allowing teachers to provide tailored feedback and adjust instruction as needed. By using these rubrics, teachers can track student progress in summarizing skills, identifying areas where students need further instruction and helping them move toward more fluent and accurate retellings of the text.

Alphaboxes-A Pre-Reading or Writing Activity

  • Oct. 17, 2024, 12:43 p.m.
The Alphaboxes activity is a versatile strategy that supports both reading and writing by helping students build vocabulary and organize their ideas. Before reading, students use the Alphaboxes chart to predict and list key terms, activating prior knowledge and setting a purpose for encountering new vocabulary.