As we implement the Science of Reading to ensure that all students read accurately and fluently with good comprehension, we must draw from the Science of Instruction. In this keynote, Dr. Archer will discuss the critical variables in instruction: clear lesson purposes, structured lessons including demonstration, guided practice and checking for understanding, embedded formative assessment, active participation, effective feedback, and judicious practice. When these elements are consistently and effectively used, learning results.
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We’re all so sure we’re right we haven’t taken the time to consider why we’re so darn sure. Learn how and when the reading wars started, why it isn’t really about science all that much, and why what you believe has a lot less to do with you than you probably think. If you can understand how we got here, you have half a chance to understand where “here” is.
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Most teachers, even those who are content area teachers, are expected to teach reading skills to their students; however, the vast majority of these teachers are unsupported to accomplish this task. As a profession, we must consider how to better prepare and support teachers to teach reading. The session will explain how we coach teachers. Solutions will be proposed to address teachers’ need for substantive learning opportunities to apply the science of reading.
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What does the term “Science of Reading” mean? Use of the term is gaining momentum in the English-speaking countries, which makes it all the more important to be clear about what it really means. Dr. Hall will talk about the four different types of science concerning how reading occurs in the brain and reading instruction. She will also summarize the major insights about best instructional approaches and deepen participants’ knowledge about important terms including “phonemic proficiency” and “orthographic mapping.”
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Emily Hanford has been an education reporter for more than a decade and she didn’t know anything about how children learn to read until a few years ago. In this keynote, Emily will tell the story of how she became interested in the science of reading and share what she’s learned from researchers, teachers, and parents across the country. It’s a shocking story about a huge gap between research and practice. But a hopeful story, too, because of what can be done to help more children learn to read better.
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Hollis Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001) provides a powerful illustration of the multiple strands of proficient reading. This model identifies the critical competencies of word recognition and language comprehension and then, unravels each into contributing skills and processes. The strands of the rope directly inform our understanding of why some students succeed, why some struggle while providing necessary direction for effective instruction. This session will define the strands, examine their individual and collective contributions to skilled reading and surface connections to instructional practices.
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Many are familiar with The Simple View of Reading, which shows us that in order to comprehend text as we read, both word recognition and language comprehension are necessary. This presentation will introduce a Simple View of Writing, revealing how both foundational writing skills (transcription) and text generation (composition) are necessary for skilled writing expression. How writing assessment and instruction are informed by a Simple View of Writing will be discussed. Alignments to the Scarborough Reading Rope and the International Dyslexia Association’s Knowledge and Practice Standards will be provided.
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Using her globally recognized “Ladder of Reading” infographic, Nancy will address the wide range of ease as children learn to read and the instructional implications of this continuum. While reviewing the components of reading instruction so essential for the many children who do not learn to read easily, she will suggest how learning about the structure of language can benefit children whose reading skills are advanced. In acknowledging the wide range of skills in many classrooms from kindergarten to grade 3, and in recognizing that no one step-by-step program will meet the learning needs of every student, she will share some ways to differentiate using examples that can be applied to any approach grounded in the reading science. During this session Nancy will be addressing the learning needs of children with the exceptionalities of dyslexia, gifted, and 2e (dyslexia and gifted).
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About 40 states have now passed special legislation addressing students with dyslexia. This has prompted a response from the International Literacy Association questioning whether dyslexia is a special form of reading problem and whether there are characteristics and interventions specific for dyslexia. With these public policy issues in the background, this presentation will discuss a scientific view of dyslexia as a well-understood form of learning disability with specific reading, cognitive, neural, and genetic characteristics. Definition, assessment, and comorbidity issues will be addressed, along with the characteristics of effective intervention with dyslexia. The implications of current neuroscience research for intervention will be discussed. Dyslexia is best treated in the context of MTSS frameworks that prevent reading problems through early identification and prevention with explicit, comprehensive and differentiated core general education. For those who do not respond to core instruction, and supplemental instruction and intensive remedial intervention are needed. Like other learning disabilities, dyslexia is real, interferes with adaptation, and has definable neurobiological correlates. But the neural systems are malleable, and many students can overcome dyslexia with early intervention. Intractability to instruction makes dyslexia unexpected, not a cognitive discrepancy.
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The session will overview the establishment of Pennsylvania’s Dyslexia Screening and Early Intervention Pilot and how the project has evolved into a program bringing the science of early reading and writing instruction and intervention into practice in classrooms across Pennsylvania.
In this session, participants will learn about a student’s journey to proficient reading through three lenses, that of a parent, school psychologist, and literacy expert, as well as how the science of reading changed his trajectory and put him on a path to success. The session will highlight the potential social and emotional impact reading difficulties have on students’ response to reading instruction and behavioral challenges families
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If you are using Acadience Reading K-6 (formerly known as DIBELS Next) for universal screening, do you need an additional tool to screen for dyslexia? Learn how to use Acadience Reading screening and progress monitoring data to determine indicators of risk for reading difficulties such as dyslexia, including severe low skills on measures of phonological processing including phonemic awareness and phonics, sustained lack of progress or resource intensive progress in the essential early literacy skills, when provided with generally effective instruction. Explore how the Acadience RAN indicator may contribute additional information for decision making. Case studies will be used to explore decisions about who needs support, the effectiveness of Tier 1, how much progress is enough, when to suspect a disability, and how to determine eligibility for special education.
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Whether it is reading comprehension in elementary or secondary grades, the same big ideas must be addressed with research-validated practices to ensure student success.
- Can students read the words?
- Do students know the meaning of critical vocabulary?
- Do students have the necessary background knowledge for the passage?
- Do students use powerful strategies for focusing cognition on critical content in text?
In this session, Dr. Archer will address each of these questions with current research. Leave with procedures that you can put into practice immediately.
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Making meaning of text is complex and requires a comprehensive instructional approach. This session will introduce a blueprint, based in the science of reading, that addresses the development of critical comprehension competencies. This framework identifies and explores the language comprehension processes and skills necessary for extracting and constructing meaning. It structures and scaffolds the educator’s planning and preparation of instruction by posing questions related to these processes and the design and delivery of informed instruction. The blueprint calls for the use of best practices for developing the reader’s ability to make meaning of words, comprehend sentences, use text structures, access background knowledge for inference making and express understanding. Come prepared to explore the blueprint components, examine examples of related instructional routines, and to discuss application to narrative and informational texts and potential assessment activities.
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For students to be successful reading the complex texts emphasized in standards, students need background and vocabulary knowledge. If we can give them this information, they can access complex texts better. There are a few simple things you can do to teach background knowledge and vocabulary. In this session, a procedure for teaching these skills is presented.
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Vocabulary knowledge is a fundamental contributor to skilled reading comprehension; yet many children show lags in their vocabulary development and don’t have sufficient skill in this area to read for meaning. This session is designed to: (1) provide a primer on vocabulary development (What is it? Why is it important?), (2) summarize the current best evidence on how to improve vocabulary knowledge from pre-K to the early grades, and (3) make suggestions on how to improve vocabulary instruction in the classroom.
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An understanding of morphology, or the meaning parts that comprise words, is valuable for the development of vocabulary as well as spelling and word attack skills. In this interactive, hands-on workshop, Van Cleave engages participants in an introduction to morphological awareness. He first frames the discussion with an understanding of essential terminology and then guides participants through experimentation with words, examining their meaning parts and considering how this affects literacy skills. Participants consider components of an effective morphology-based lesson plan and leave with strategies they can use the very next day with their students.
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CAIU Educational Consultants, Jenn Brosky and Sara Lobaugh discuss how vocabulary can interfere with the comprehension of text, especially among middle and high school students. To address some of the gaps, they introduce Dr. Catherine Snow's program Word Generation and take a closer look at how teaching academic vocabulary across the curriculum can enhance student outcomes and understanding.
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In order to read fluently and comprehend connected text, students must know how to read and write a variety of sentences that are included in all their texts. This means that teachers must understand why grammar is important and how to teach it. Participants will learn a few tips on how they can support students’ reading fluency and comprehension by teaching phrasing and sentence structure with a focus on oral language and written expression.
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More often than not, students struggle at the sentence level far more than they struggle at the paragraph level; teachers ignore this fact if they move directly to practicing prompts for assessments.
This workshop focuses on parts of speech and sentence parts as they apply to developing student reading and writing skills. Participants learn about the components of a good lesson and strategies for developing sentence sense in student writers. They consider parts of speech as a method of understanding the way words interact with each other and sentence parts as building blocks for creating and understanding different kinds of sentences. They leave with strategies they can use the very next day with their students.
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While inference making is usually associated with the expression “filling in the gaps,” this description is not complete. This session will explore two types of inferences necessary for creating coherent representations of text meaning. Understanding text actually requires inferring meaningful relationships between various parts of the text as well as between those parts and related background knowledge. The proficient reader uses local coherence inferences to integrate information found directly in the text while global coherence inferences fill in details not explicitly stated. This session will explore how cohesive ties and connectives support the bridging of ideas and concepts within text and instructional strategies that develop the student’s ability to use local coherence inferences. Participants will also examine the role of global inferences in filling in the gaps between the text and background knowledge and those instructional practices that prompt students to use this type of inference to construct deeper comprehension of text.
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In this session the signpost strategy developed by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst is shared. The annotation strategies shared in this presentation can help students identify important features in both fiction and non-fiction to support analysis of text.
Recent research in Cognitive Science leads us to the following conclusion: Motivation may not predict achievement but Achievement does predict Motivation. This understanding directs us to instructional practices that increase students' attainment, their motivation, and subsequent concentration and effort in the pursuit of learning. In this end-session, Dr. Archer will review the Big Ideas offered throughout the 2020 PaTTAN Literacy Symposium that put our students on a path of Success.
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The Bangor Area School District has been persistently working to improve student reading achievement for the past eight years. During this time period, the students at the K-2 level had been unable to consistently meet the district goal of 90% proficiency as measured by DIBELS. Over the course of the last year, the district took further steps to improve their practice. The first step was forming a district-wide kindergarten through second grade elementary school focusing on ensuring all students are reading on grade level by grade three. The second step was to closely examine the core reading program to ensure that all components aligned with the evidence in reading research. In order to assist with this undertaking, the district implemented Michael Heggerty Phonological Routines and Enhanced Core Reading Instruction (ECRI) in all kindergarten through second grade classrooms. Through administrative commitment and embedded teacher leadership, teachers rose to challenge and vastly improved their core reading instruction through the implementation of the routines. The number of students achieving core levels reached an all-time high as well of the percentage of students achieving reading achievement in the blue zone. In addition, there was an increased consistency of reading instructional classrooms across all 27 classrooms. The district’s journey to improve student reading achievement shows to the power of steadfast commitment, investment in teacher knowledge, and data informed decision making. This long-term commitment and desire to provide the best reading outcomes possible for kids have led to results of which the district only previously dreamed. We will share our journey and what we learned along the way.
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Designing and facilitating meaningful classroom talk is essential for secondary English learners to develop more extended and sophisticated language use, while simultaneously learning subject matter. This session will address the components of the Scarborough Rope and connect them to the role of social interaction in language and literacy development, while exploring student interactions focusing on quality learning opportunities.
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This session will provide an overview of various components of data teams. Teams will gain a clear purpose for conducting data meetings ranging from district to individual student focus. Efficient and effective tools, planning guides and protocols will be explored to improve the teaming processes through goal setting and action planning.
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The Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia has developed graphic organizers that support schools in identifying and instructing students with characteristics of dyslexia. Dr. Hirschman will provide an overview of three tools: The Student Literacy Profile is a tool used to organize observation and assessment data to reveal a student’s pattern of strengths and weaknesses; Our word-level error analysis form helps educators capture and categorize word reading errors in order to determine targets for intervention; Tier-2 lesson frames model a structured literacy format for intervention focused on specific skills gaps: phonological awareness, letter knowledge & phonics, spelling & decoding, and reading fluency.
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The purpose of assessment should be to plan intervention, but identification issues for students with SLD often emphasize eligibility and “finding the right child.” Multiple methods have been proposed for the identification of SLD, including different forms of cognitive discrepancy methods as well as newer methods that emanate from RTI and MTSS. This presentation reviews the reliability and validity of methods of identification based on these classifications, including IQ-achievement discrepancy, Patterns of Strengths and Weaknesses, and methods based on RTI. Presently there is little evidence supporting a role for systematic assessment of cognitive processes for identification or intervention of SLD, especially if methods incorporate assessments of intervention response. However, all identification methods function weakly if based on a single criterion, rigid cut points, or strict formulae. A hybrid method for identifying SLD in the context of MTSS is presented.
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This session will provide guidance for selecting interventions and evaluating literacy programs. Differences in research-based and evidence-based practices will be covered. Participants will also explore the Pennsylvania State Literacy Plan’s tools for evaluating literacy programs.
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Fidelity to implementation matters when it comes to delivering reading programs as intended. Typically, teachers are exposed to training then expected to contextualize and individually translate this newly acquired knowledge into their complex classrooms. This session will explore a training and coaching project designed to improve the knowledge base of K-3 teachers supported by a virtual community of practice and the use of implementation tools. Key objectives, lessons learned, and barriers navigated will be shared.
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The Bangor Area School District has been persistently working to improve student reading achievement for the past eight years. During this time period, the students at the K-2 level had been unable to consistently meet the district goal of 90% proficiency as measured by DIBELS. Over the course of the last year, the district took further steps to improve their practice. The first step was forming a district-wide kindergarten through second grade elementary school focusing on ensuring all students are reading on grade level by grade three. The second step was to closely examine the core reading program to ensure that all components aligned with the evidence in reading research. In order to assist with this undertaking, the district implemented Michael Heggerty Phonological Routines and Enhanced Core Reading Instruction (ECRI) in all kindergarten through second grade classrooms. Through administrative commitment and embedded teacher leadership, teachers rose to challenge and vastly improved their core reading instruction through the implementation of the routines. The number of students achieving core levels reached an all-time high as well of the percentage of students achieving reading achievement in the blue zone. In addition, there was an increased consistency of reading instructional classrooms across all 27 classrooms. The district’s journey to improve student reading achievement shows to the power of steadfast commitment, investment in teacher knowledge, and data informed decision making. This long-term commitment and desire to provide the best reading outcomes possible for kids have led to results of which the district only previously dreamed. We will share our journey and what we learned along the way.
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This session will present the Lead for Literacy Center’s approach to support school leaders’ use of evidence-based literacy practices within the context of multi-tiered systems of supports (MTSS), including tools and resources to support teachers’ use of high-quality reading instruction. Specifically, the Lead for Literacy’s “leadership framework” will be discussed and presenters will demonstrate how the components from the framework can be used by school leaders to evaluate readiness for MTSS implementation and develop comprehensive action plans to support a robust, school-wide MTSS system. Overall, this session will showcase resources that can be accessed for immediate application in school settings.
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This session will provide guidance for selecting interventions and evaluating literacy programs. Differences in research-based and evidence-based practices will be covered. Participants will also explore the Pennsylvania State Literacy Plan’s tools for evaluating literacy programs.
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In this session, participants will learn how one school district aligned their practices with the science of reading through systems-level change. A systems-level design for the implementation of scientific reading practices will be shared with participants, which includes each of these components: professional development / coaching, curriculum, assessment, data-based decision-making, shared ownership, and finances/budgeting. Participants will also learn how the leadership team navigated barriers to implementation and celebrated successes along the way.
In the summer of 2019, McDonald Elementary School, a diverse school in the Centennial School District (Warminster, PA) began having conversations about the science of reading and embarked on a journey to align their instruction and assessment practices with the evidence base. Participants will hear how McDonald altered pedagogical practices, reframed structures, and aligned processes to improve literacy instruction for all boys and girls in K-2.
Linda will model how to use one video for professional development. Participants will be given a study guide to use for watching the video. The study guide will include the assessments that were given to the student so that Linda could determine the student’s needs. It will also have questions to guide participants as they watch and discuss the video. The first time participants watch the video, they will look for positive aspects of the teaching, and discussion will follow. The second time watching the video, participants will look for ways the teaching could be improved, with discussion following. The discussion will end with ideas for incorporating lessons from the video into small group or classroom instruction. The goal of this session is for participants to experience professional development using the videos, which are available for free at ReadingRockets.org, and to be able to take the professional development back to their schools.
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This session will review orthographic mapping and the essential differences between phonemic awareness and phonemic proficiency upon which orthographic mapping depends. In addition, the confounded terms: high frequency words, irregular words and sight words will be clarified.
Best practices in structured literacy instruction and instructional routines will be shared to increase reading accuracy and automaticity of word recognition.
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Teachers are often puzzled by their students who can orally segment and blend phonemes, know letter names and sounds, yet continue to read many words by first sounding out each letter, then blending the sounds into a word. Most of these students are in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grades, with a few in 4th grade or higher. The core problem with most of these students is that they have not mastered complete phonemic awareness, which David Kilpatrick explains so well in his book, Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Participants will (1) learn why these students don’t progress to whole word reading, (2) learn steps to help these students move to whole word reading, (3) practice activities to help students progress, and (4) receive some materials they can use with these students.
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Learn how to teach students to easily and accurately read and spell long words. The secret is to focus on vowels, not on rules. Participants will learn to use multi-sensory techniques to teach students to break words into syllables for reading and spelling. This method is explicit, systematic, and multi-sensory. It is also easy! This session is appropriate for students of all ages. The techniques can be used in kindergarten to help students read words such as batman, sunset, and picnic, and in upper grades to help students read citadel, tranquilize, and Madagascar.
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Session 1 – Linda will briefly discuss how the idea for the videos evolved, how the students were selected, and the taping process. The main purpose of this session is for Linda to introduce participants to the videos available, what they contain, and to suggest some ways to use them. There isn’t time to watch all the videos during this session, but participants will view parts of most of the videos. This will provide a good overview of what is available from this important new resource. Participants will receive a list of all the videos with a summary of their content.
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Session 2 – Linda will model how to use one video for professional development. Participants will be given a study guide to use for watching the video. The study guide will include the assessments that were given to the student so that Linda could determine the student’s needs. It will also have questions to guide participants as they watch and discuss the video. The first time participants watch the video, they will look for positive aspects of the teaching, and discussion will follow. The second time watching the video, participants will look for ways the teaching could be improved, with discussion following. The discussion will end with ideas for incorporating lessons from the video into small group or classroom instruction. The goal of this session is for participants to experience professional development using the videos, which are available for free at ReadingRockets.org, and to be able to take the professional development back to their schools.
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This presentation explains the features of Structured Literacy (SL) interventions, how these features differ from other, commonly used approaches to literacy instruction, and why SL is especially valuable for students with reading difficulties. Features of SL approaches that are contrasted with non-SL approaches include the type of phonics instruction that is provided, the approach to teaching spelling, types of texts used for children’s reading, and teaching of higher-level literacy skills such as syntax. Then, working in small groups in Zoom breakout rooms, participants apply what they have learned about planning more in-depth SL intervention, using two case examples from the morning session on reading profiles. For participants interested in this session on Structured Literacy, attendance at the morning session on reading profiles would be very helpful but is not essential.
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In a busy practice like ours, where pre-, interim- and post-testing is a constant occurrence, we get to see vast amounts of spelling and reading errors. Over time, these can be examined to reveal trends that directly reflect what is happening in schools. It is even possible sometimes to correctly predict the actual reading program a child is having at school based on their error patterns alone.
In this session, Lyn Stone shows multiple examples of the mistakes children make when taught using balanced literacy. She also contrasts them with errors by children who have had higher quality instruction and shows the difference that intervention and advocacy can make for all children.
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The language you use when you're talking about language is vitally important, yet inaccuracies and variations in education are widespread. Some examples: digraphs, diphthongs, blending, sight words, irregular words, phonics, systematic, synthetic - varied definitions abound throughout education. It’s not enough to have them properly defined in glossaries here and there. We need to keep acceptable and accepted usage at the forefront of dialogue with teachers, administrators, policy makers, and students.
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The purpose of this session is to describe how to use instructional routines to enhance the delivery of your core reading instruction in a multi-tiered system of Tier 1 and Tier 2 support. Systematic strategies and teaching routines designed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of reading instruction in kindergarten, first, and second grade will be described and will be directly relevant to practitioners implementing multi-tiered systems and response to intervention models. By the end of this session, participants will understand how (a) using teaching routines can enhance current core reading instruction, and (b) how aligning Tier 1 and Tier 2 reading instruction can lead to higher student reading outcomes.
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Children need to learn to read and spell and they need to be physically active; bringing movement into code-based instruction and practice is a win-win! Referring to her internationally acclaimed Ladder of Reading, Nancy will briefly explain why we need to connect these two research silos. She’ll then show ways to weave movement into reading and spelling instruction and practice, presenting examples of code-based movements that can be used in the classroom and in the home. Attendees will discover how easy, effective, and FUN it can be to weave skill-based movements into lessons and practice. Addressed will be the learning needs of children with exceptionalities, including dyslexia, gifted, ADHD and DCD.
Disclosure: Some of the examples presented will be from Nancy’s book Secret Code Actions™.
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Orthographic mapping processes and phonics knowledge are essential to efficient word learning. Dr. Stollar will discuss patterns in Acadience Reading K-6 (formerly called DIBELS Next) data that indicate a student may need support in these essential skills. Dr. Hall will then present and demonstrate evidence-based approaches to activating orthographic mapping and teaching decoding, with an emphasis on reaching the level of automatic word recognition that facilitates reading comprehension. Learn how to get the most out of your universal screening data and maximize the effectiveness of your intervention.
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Designing and facilitating meaningful classroom talk is essential for secondary English learners to develop more extended and sophisticated language use, while simultaneously learning subject matter. This session will address the components of the Scarborough Rope and connect them to the role of social interaction in language and literacy development, while exploring student interactions focusing on quality learning opportunities.
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We know that phonemic awareness is necessary for reading. We know that students learn more when they are engaged. What if we combined that kind of learning into 3D instruction? Add a new level to any phonemic awareness or Structured Literacy lesson by teaching in three dimensions. Phonemic objects aren’t just for teaching initial consonant sounds anymore. Learn how to teach blending, segmenting, manipulating, and substituting—phonemic proficiency needed for success in orthographic mapping.
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This session provides an engaging discussion on best practices for literacy instruction in the autistic support classroom. Through case profiles and video examples, presenters provide recommendations for assessments, curriculum materials, and instructional strategies to meet students’ needs.
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According to research, English learners spend less than 2% of their school day in meaningful oral interactions. English learners need to productively engage in classroom discourse and express their thinking related to content-learning goals. This session will connect the components of the Scarborough Rope, the principles of language development, and the framework for oral production for English learners at the elementary level.
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See the Sound - Visual Phonics© is a system of 51 unique hand prompts and symbols that represent the sounds of English without the ambiguity of English orthography. Included are the sounds commonly referred to as vowels, consonants, diphthongs and digraphs. The See the Sound - Visual Phonics© strategy is most appropriate for anyone who works with students who are struggling in their beginning reading and writing development, auditory discrimination abilities, and speech production abilities (e.g. struggling students in the general education classroom, students who are in special education, who are deaf and hard of hearing, bilingual). This session is an introduction to Visual Phonics©. Participants will have a hands-on introduction to a few of the sound prompts, review validating research, and view video of the strategy being implemented in a variety of settings and age ranges of students. Due to the brevity of the session, participants will not be qualified to use See the Sound - Visual Phonics© in instruction, however, information on how to receive the full training will be shared.
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Do your students have diverse learning needs? Of course they do! Learner variability is the rule, not the exception. Join us for an overview of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Framework and get started in applying it to develop your students into expert learners. We will identify potential barriers that inhibit learning and brainstorm ideas for designing instruction to reduce or eliminate those barriers as we address engagement, representation of content, and student action & expression.
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Designing and facilitating meaningful classroom talk is essential for secondary English learners to develop more extended and sophisticated language use, while simultaneously learning subject matter. This session will address the components of the Scarborough Rope and connect them to the role of social interaction in language and literacy development, while exploring student interactions focusing on quality learning opportunities.
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As we understand the impact of trauma on child development, the importance of reading and language becomes even more clear. Learn to see the special place reading and language hold and how we can leverage them to respond to trauma and stress.
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Recent world events have challenged many educators to discover new ways to provide literacy instruction. How can we continue to provide hands-on, multisensory, science-based reading instruction if we can no longer be face-to-face with our students? Speakers will share easy, successful implementation strategies using Zoom, Loom, document cameras, and smartphones.
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For students with dyslexia, systematic multi-sensory linguistic instruction following the Orton-Gillingham approach has been shown in research to be the most effective for remediation. While the OG approach has traditionally been 1-1 model, the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners has embraced a Classroom Educator model, in the hopes of providing more educators with the tools to provide a greater number of dyslexic students with effective instruction. The challenge becomes how to best provide that instruction in a small group environment. The utilization of technology (Smartboards, iPads, apps and websites) can make the OG classroom instruction a multi-sensory process that is engaging while maintaining the essence of what makes the OG approach so beneficial for dyslexic students. A Classroom Educator Certified Chief Technology Integrator from The Southport School will share how to include technology as an instructive and assistive tool following the traditional OG approach in the small classroom setting. Focus is about individualizing instruction, review, and practice, while incorporating multi-modal tools to manipulate language, making it more concrete, following the constructs of UDL.
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The utilization of technology (Interactive screens, iPads, apps, and websites) can make reading instruction (decoding/encoding, fluency, and comprehension) a multi-sensory process that is engaging and explicit while maintaining the individualization and diagnostic-prescriptive aspects of the lesson. It can support the organizational challenges for necessary lesson materials that can occur when working with multiple students at once, while also allowing for ease of differentiation within a small group format. Additionally, educational technology can provide ways for the teacher to collect work samples and data from multiple students simultaneously and allow for individualized feedback. The session will focus on the use of various tools that can support differentiated and individualized engagement during various components of reading instruction.
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Join in to learn about Google extensions and web-based tools to support reading in a virtual environment. Specific focus will be placed on free tools that students can use to increase accessibility of online reading material.
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During the 2019-20 school year, a team at Easterly Parkway Elementary in State College, PA ventured into a major change in curriculum in order to better provide supports for the unique population of students at the school using Enhanced Core Reading Instruction (ECRI). During the implementation this year, the team encountered many challenges and successes, including the shift to virtual learning. This session reviews the story of one of our district's eight elementary schools' shift to provide research-proven instruction to students in both the classroom and online.
This session will review the essential connections of speech to print and demonstrate techniques to solidify those connections with students using manipulatives and virtual tools. We will explore resources to support students with phonemic awareness, basic phonics, and decodable text reading.