Achieving Equitable Literacy:
CLOSING READING GAPS IN GRADES 5-9
Masterclass SERIES Held over 4 sessions:
January 30, 2025 - February 20, 2025
Despite the investment in literacy and the rise of the science of reading, we still have districts where 30% or fewer of students are reading at grade level or above.
Districts are rapidly retooling their literacy programs for early grades.
But what about our older students?
To make good on our promise of equity, we have to address the current literacy challenge for older students in grades 5-9. Without strong reading skills, students won’t be able to learn independently and will be dependent on the teacher to provide excessive scaffolds to access high quality, grade-level materials.
While feeling confident in their subject knowledge and pedagogy, upper elementary and secondary teachers say they struggle with getting their most vulnerable students reading at grade level when they come to them more than six months behind.
Older students typically come into the upper grades with the following issues:
- Weak decoding skills that result in slow reading comprehension.
- Lack of advanced decoding skills to tackle big, multisyllabic words found in academic texts.
- Shallow word knowledge, which leads to shallow background knowledge and anemic writing.
- Learning to read English while trying to learn new content.
This can lead well-intentioned teachers to find ways around students’ poor skills rather than actually fill their reading gaps. We are using the excuse of creating “equitable access” for our over-scaffolding rather than helping students strengthen their skills and close their reading gaps incrementally.
With every crisis comes opportunity. With the growing body of evidence-based practices from cognitive neuroscience, the science of reading and research on translanguaging, we have a unique opportunity to help students who are now beyond the early grades where providing foundational reading skills are typically developed. Our task is to ensure that all students develop robust literacy skills so they can independently access high quality, grade-level materials.
How? By integrating the science of learning with the science of reading. Join me for this masterclass series to learn to integrate the two. In addition, learn how to review your existing program for the key skills students need to become proficient and how to provide opportunities for deliberate practice so students become skilled at applying their literacy knowledge to become a code breaker, meaning-maker, text user, and, ultimately, a text critic.
Register for the Masterclass Series
Registration Closes January 28th at 6pm ET
Series Includes 4 Sessions:
$995/per person
Thursdays:
January 30, February 6, 13, and 20
3-5 pm PST / 4-6 pm MST / 5-7 pm CST / 6-8 pm EST
REGISTER NOWAbout the Masterclass Sessions
In the four sessions of this masterclass series, we will explore how to use the science of learning to enhance the science of reading in your teaching practice. We will also explore three foundational reading skills and show you how to coach students to use them effectively.
We will look at how to integrate reading skill development in core subject areas to reinforce literacy development without you having to learn to be a reading teacher. In addition, we will cover how to attend to the emotions that struggling readers often experience as they work to improve their reading skills.
Session 1: Closing the Decoding Gap for Older Students Quickly
Session 2: How to Teach Advanced Decoding Skills to Close Gaps Permanently
Session 3: Engaging Students in Active Word Study
Session 4: Braiding it All Together During Tier 1 Instruction
Each Session is
2 Hours
You Have Opportunities to Get Coached
We Keep Conversations Going Between Meetings
JANUARY 30, 2025
Closing the Decoding Gap for Older Students Quickly
Reading instruction for secondary teachers usually focuses on comprehension. But all reading challenges show up as comprehension problems. With closer examination, we find that reading challenges have their roots in the more foundational skills – long vowel variation.
In this session, we will learn ways to incorporate very targeted instruction on long vowels into any existing curriculum.
We will look at the science of learning practices that help students learn this important information quickly, namely retrieval practice, timed quizzing, interleaving.
In this opening session, participants will learn:
- The most important skill gaps to help students close.
- How to teach the 18 English phonemes to Spanish-speaking multilinguals.
- How to leverage the science of learning to make learning sticky and help students internalize key phonics content.
FEBRUARY 6, 2025
Building Advanced Decoding Skills
Knowing basic phonics isn’t enough for older students as they attempt to read more complex text in upper grades. They need what we call advanced decoding skills. More than old school “word attack” skills, advance decoding requires that they learn the basics of syllabication. While there are six syllable types, only two are foundational for struggling readers in upper grades.
We will cover the two of the six syllable types students should know and how to teach them to students as well as how to coach students to apply this knowledge when reading using the science of learning.
In this session, participants will learn:
- The two rules of syllabication that are essential for pronouncing big words.
- The importance of non-meaning syllables and word families.
- The basic learner moves we need to coach our students through.
- The five moves from the science of learning that make learning sticky.
FEBRUARY 13, 2025
Engaging Students in Active Word Study Across Grades
Another key skill older students need in order to bridge decoding and comprehension is word learning skills. The traditional practice of frontloading vocabulary and having students look up definitions is ineffective. Instead, we have to engage in robust and continuous word study so that they are always curious about new words and have a cognitive routine to integrate it into their working lexicon, aka their private dictionary. This is essential as students read across a variety of subject areas beginning in middle school.
In this session, participants will learn:
- The three parts of effective word study
- How to actively teach vocabulary so students become “word nerds”
- How to put together a strong word study
FEBRUARY 20, 2025
Braiding it All Together During Tier 1 Instruction
In our final session, we will focus on helping you design a schedule that allows you to cover your core content while integrating consistent opportunities for students to practice the three foundations skills at a level of intensity to make learning sticky.
We’ll cover how to use informal reading assessments to check progress and know how to tune your instruction so students are growing their reading skills.
In this session, participants will learn:
- How to conduct a quick assessment at the beginning of the academic year and using informal reading inventories to track progress..
- Providing consistent and intense practice time for internalization.
- How to integrate regular practice opportunities for struggling readers into weekly class time.
Register for the Masterclass Series
Registration Closes January 28th at 6pm ET
Series Includes 4 Sessions:
$995/per person
Thursdays:
January 30, February 6, 13, and 20
3-5 pm PST / 4-6 pm MST / 5-7 pm CST / 6-8 pm EST
REGISTER NOW© 2024 Transformative Learning Solutions, LLC
