How to Teach Reading - The Teaching Improvement Project

About Course

This course, “How to Teach Reading,” will equip educators with a deep understanding of the foundational principles and key developmental stages involved in children’s reading acquisition, focusing on the science of reading to provide effective strategies for teaching phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, ultimately empowering teachers to guide their students towards becoming confident and proficient readers.

Key Areas of Focus:

The Science of Reading:

Exploring the neurological basis of reading, including the critical role of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension as interconnected components of reading development.

Developmental Stages:

Examining the progression of reading skills from early pre-reading behaviors like letter recognition to decoding multisyllabic words and comprehending complex texts.

Phonemic Awareness:

Deepening understanding of how to explicitly teach students to identify and manipulate individual sounds within words, a crucial foundation for decoding.

Phonics Instruction:

Exploring the systematic approach to teaching letter-sound correspondences and decoding strategies to enable students to sound out unfamiliar words.

Vocabulary knowledge:

Explore the importance of vocabulary instruction and unpack effective methods for enriching students’ vocabulary knowledge through explicit instruction, context clues, and rich literature.

Fluency Development:

Strategies to promote smooth and accurate reading with appropriate pace and expression, building confidence and comprehension.

Foster comprehension skills:

Explore the complexity of the comprehensions stand of the Simple View of Reading, and various comprehension strategies to help deepen students’ understanding of text.

Course Objectives:

Identify key components of the science of reading: and explain how they relate to each other in the reading process.
Develop a comprehensive understanding of phonemic awareness: and its essential role in early reading development.
Implement effective phonics instruction: to teach letter-sound correspondences and decoding skills.
Design engaging activities to build reading fluency: and improve comprehension strategies.
Analyze student reading behaviors: to identify areas of need and tailor instruction accordingly.
Select appropriate reading materials: that align with students’ developmental levels and interests.

Who Should Engage in This Course:

Early Years and Primary school teachers (K-7), Special education teachers, Literacy coaches, Pre-school and early childhood educators, and Administrators interested in supporting literacy initiatives.

By the end of this course, participants will be equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively teach children how to read, fostering a strong foundation for lifelong literacy success.

Are you ready to embark on this journey to become an effective reading teacher? Let’s begin!

Course Content

Module 1 Reading an Introduction – The Big Picture.
‘Reading has the power to change lives. It plays an essential role in learning, securing a job and being an active and engaged member of society. Reading provides us with information, knowledge, and makes us aware of people and places beyond our immediate circles. Learning foundational reading skills supports wellbeing and can translate to a love of reading and literature. As so much of our world rapidly changes around us, learning to read remains one of the most essential outcomes of schooling’. (Education Queensland, 2023. Reading Position Statement.) What Will You Learn? In this module you will explore how reading has been taught in the past and what research and evidence has informed current recommended teaching models. You will explore the complexities of learning to read. Why learning to read is difficult and the impact that low levels of literacy have on society. What the Big 6 or 5 Pillars (National Reading Panel) How the brain learns to read (Stanilas DeHaene) Ehri’s Stages of Reading Development and understand the process of Orthographic Mapping and the Alphabetic Principle. Self Teaching (David Share) Key Reading Frameworks – The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tumner), Scarborough’s Reading Rope (Hollis Scarborough), and The Four Part Processing Model (Seidenberg and McClelland) The key components of Structured Literacy and how this differs from previous approaches to teaching reading. At the conclusion of this unit of work we will dive deep into the teaching of reading through the lens of the Simple View of Reading’.

Module 2 – The Foundational Skills: Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness & Phonics
In this module you will learn about the foundational word recognition skills of Scarborough’s Reading Rope and why their acquisition to a level of automaticity is essential to becoming a skilled reader. You will learn about the phonological and orthographical processing systems, how they develop and how they should be taught and assessed.

Module 3 – Reading Fluency
In this module you will explore the often overlooked but vital role that fluency plays in the development of a skilled reader.

Module 4 – Oral Language & Vocabulary
In this module you will learn how vocabulary develops, and how evidenced based vocabulary instruction can support language comprehension.

Module 5 – Comprehension: The Skilled Reader
In this module you will explore the complex nature of the comprehension strand of Scarborough’s Reading Rope and build your understanding of the essential components required for skilled reading development.

Module 6 – Putting It Altogether: When Reading Science Meets Practice
In this module you will learn how a structured literacy approach to the teaching of reading can fit into a literacy block and how it can be supported across all Key Learning Areas (KLA’s). You will learn how and when different forms of assessment and screeners can be used to inform, monitor and measure student success.

About Course

Course Content

Module 3 – Reading Fluency In this module you will explore the often overlooked but vital role that fluency plays in the development of a skilled reader.

Module 4 – Oral Language & Vocabulary In this module you will learn how vocabulary develops, and how evidenced based vocabulary instruction can support language comprehension.

Module 5 – Comprehension: The Skilled Reader In this module you will explore the complex nature of the comprehension strand of Scarborough’s Reading Rope and build your understanding of the essential components required for skilled reading development.

Module 3 – Reading Fluency
In this module you will explore the often overlooked but vital role that fluency plays in the development of a skilled reader.

Module 4 – Oral Language & Vocabulary
In this module you will learn how vocabulary develops, and how evidenced based vocabulary instruction can support language comprehension.

Module 5 – Comprehension: The Skilled Reader
In this module you will explore the complex nature of the comprehension strand of Scarborough’s Reading Rope and build your understanding of the essential components required for skilled reading development.