•  the Weekly | 1.4

     

  • For Your Hands: Activating the Reading Brain

    From (Louisa Moats, Ed.D.; Janet Macpherson, Ph.D.; Beverly Weiser, Ph.D.)

    Where do educators start when vetting instructional literacy strategies for students at least two years behind in reading skills? Reading experts have agreed on the most important elements of adolescent literacy instruction. A successful intervention must:
    • Be driven by continuous formative assessments and progress- monitoring data
    • Provide explicit instruction in literacy-related foundational skills
    • Honor the students’ entering skill levels without insulting their
    age or interests
    • Include a focus on higher-level thinking to promote engagement
    • Teach the structure and functions of language and provide opportunities for extended discussion of text meaning and interpretation
    • Use direct, systematic lessons organized by a logical scope and sequence
    • Teach word-analysis techniques
    • Provide opportunities for students to build fluency through
    practice and repeated readings
    • Directly preteach critical vocabulary that is essential to reading new text
    • Explicitly teach comprehension-monitoring techniques
    • Carefully scaffold instruction to help the student become more
    independent
    • Provide choice to students to increase motivation and active engagement, and to instill student accountability
    • Involve students in peer-mediated learning

     

  • For Your Heart: Why Leaders Must Create in Crisis (Erwin McManus)

    This video is about 16 minutes long. His story is important for the overall message, so don't click away.

  • For Your Head: Re-Focus - Intentional Reading Strategy Instruction
    From More than phonics: How to boost comprehension for early readers by Sarah Schwartz,

         Matthews [MO] is in a small, rural county, where the majority of students receive free and reduced- price lunch. [Angie] Hanlin said that a lot of books, even for young readers, assume life experience her students don’t have. So teachers build on the knowledge that students do have. For example, Hanlin said, students might not know the word 'cathedral.' But they do know the word 'church.'
         "It’s important to do this kind of planning ahead," said Tanya Wright, an associate professor of education at Michigan State University, who studies oral language, vocabulary, and knowledge development.
         "Before a teacher reads a text to or with students, she needs to read it herself," Wright said. "You’re going to know where you need to stop, where you need to explain." Ahead of time, teachers should plan child-friendly definitions, or figure out how they might use props or movements to demonstrate the word...
         “A coherent unit of study also provides opportunities for teaching comprehension," said [Gina] Cervetti, the University of Michigan professor. "You can’t really reason about things in very sophisticated ways unless you know something about them," she said.
         "Students should have the opportunity to discuss questions that are open-ended, without a single answer, during read-alouds," said Wright. "If we’re telling kids to think quietly and only be listeners and not participants in the read-aloud, then that’s not optimal for their learning."

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