The Teaching Improvement Project

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’.
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Reading
The State Of Reading Today
The Science of Reading (SoR)
The Big 6 or 5 Pillars of Reading
How the brain learns to read
Ehri’s Stages of Reading Development and understand the process of Orthographic Mapping and the Alphabetic Principle.
Key Reading Frameworks (Simple View of Reading & Scarborough’s Reading Rope)
The Key Components of Structured Literacy
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.
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Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness
Research – Why phonemic awareness is a critical component of instruction.
Phonological and Phonemic Awareness Skills
The importance of clear and precise phoneme articulation
Lesson Planning and Structure
How Does Phonics Fit In?
The English Orthography, Australian English, Standard Australian English (SAE0.
The Alphabetic Principle, The Alphabetic Code, & Alphabetic Code Charts
4 types of phonics instruction – synthetic, analogy, embedded, analytic
Structured Synthetic Phonics – Teaching the word level reading through a systematic, explicit code-based instruction
Sight Word Lexicons, High Frequency Words and How to teach them!
The relationship of reading, spelling and writing
The characteristics of high-quality instructional materials
Decodable Texts and when to move on from decodables
How to assess, screen and use student data to inform teaching
Glossary of Terms
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.
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The Essential Components of Reading Fluency
Evidence based fluency instruction and strategies to support fluency acquisition
Assessing, Screening and Monitoring Fluency
Reading disfluency and struggling readers
Other Resources, Research and Further Professional Learning
Module 4 – Oral Language & Vocabulary
In this module you will learn how vocabulary develops, and how evidenced based vocabulary instruction can support language comprehension.
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How oral language development is the foundation of vocabulary development
Vocabulary Instruction: Why is it so important
Evidence Based Vocabulary Instruction – direct, explicit, effective
How to screen, monitor and assess oral language and vocabulary
How do we bet support our struggling readers – Vocabulary Instruction
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.
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Meaning Creation, Mental models and Schemas
The Subskills of Language Comprehension
Comprehension Strategies
Reference List, Resources and Glossary
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.
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The Reading Writing Connection & High Yield Instructional Strategies
What causes poor comprehension?
Classroom Routines & Lower and Upper Literacy Block examples
Response to Intervention (RTI) & Multitiered Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS)
Monitoring Student Development and Measuring Success
How to Teach Reading
About Lesson

Comprehension Strategies

https://education.ufl.edu/patterson/files/2020/10/Willingham-ComprehensionStrategies.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1yEU9bduLzKllw3SQd3qOQoZ_k18nPrpaLBpKymVmb4SCNRwnLkA_5NhA_aem_touoopaAvkXC7cPuC_HvdA

Read the following article by Daniel T Willingham (Cognitive Scientist) and then consider your approach to teaching reading comprehension strategies. Will you adjust your practice? Why

How We Learn – Ask the Cognitive Scientist

Commonly used strategies include

The Novice to Expert

Why Explicit Instruction?

Explicit instruction expert, Dr. Anita Archer provides the rationale and overview of explicit instruction and its benefit to students.

https://youtu.be/i-qNpFtcynI?si=DpXH_FnFp-Equh-_

Teach new knowledge to the Novice, explicitly.

  • Lesson Intention/ Success Criteria – Explain the strategy and the purpose of the strategy,
  • Model the strategy within the selected context (I DO)
  • Provide guided practice with scaffolding and corrective feedback (WE DO)
  • Allow for independent practice within connected context (Repeated and spaced opportunities for practice) (YOU DO)
  • Increase the intensity of this instruction for students who have trouble learning one or more of the strategies?

Link to Research 

Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert

 

Comprehension Instruction & Strategy Instruction Within Content Learning

Comprehension instruction should focus on the cognitive processes involved in reading:

  • vocabulary,
  • knowledge building,
  • inference making,
  • comprehension monitoring,
  • text structure
  • exploring literary devices.

Students need to be engaged in high quality discussions about texts, and teachers should model how to flexibly use strategies, which are guided by purpose and context.

Instructional Considerations:

  • Teaching in a topic, or theme across subject areas (to build shared background knowledge)
  • Low variance curriculum
  • Knowledge rich curriculum
  • Using semantic organisation activities
  • Align fiction and non-fiction texts with the topic and theme
  • Syntax and sentence-level writing and speaking
  • Narrative and story telling
  • Concept Knowledge
  • Vocabulary knowledge and word relationships
  • Word Choice (e.g. Word clines / Word ladders / Word gradients/ Semantic gradient). A graded sequence of words arranged in a continuum, increases vocabulary breadth and depth.
  • Modal Words
  • Grammar/ Punctuation

Strategy instruction (e.g., predication, question generation, summarization, etc.) 

Strategy Instruction should be taught explicitly. The teacher models using the strategy within a variety of carefully selected texts. Students are guided through the application of the strategy and provided with repeated and spaced opportunities to practice. Processes known to enhance comprehension places greater emphasis on directly teaching the mental processes used to gain meaning from text.

Content focused instruction engages students in the reading process through active, ongoing discussion about the text being read. These procedures assist students in instantaneously building a mental construction of text while reading.

(Kamil, 2004; NICHD, 2000; Pressley, 2003; Wilkinson & Son, 2011)

Extra Comprehension Resources

Blogs

Tim Shannahan Are We Teaching Reading Comprehension Part II — 6 Things Every Teacher Should Know 

Videos

Text Structure

Video 1: Inferential Language, Read Aloud & Discussion (REL Southeast) https://youtu.be/JshNkNrblkA?si=vrK61qRFLIaduWhs

Video 2: Inferential Language, Read Aloud & Discussion (REL Southeast) https://youtu.be/g39Fw3B7waw?si=5Os_H_gYfY-tKkgW

Teaching for how students learn: Videos of practice | Australian Education Research Organisation

Video 4: Narrative Language, Prediction (REL Southeast)

Video 5: Narrative Language, Retell (REL Southeast)

https://youtu.be/Ue6eTIfI59Y?si=JXrHv4JIa0F1-6mX

Podcasts

  • Melissa & Lori love literacy
  • Chalk & Talk
  • Shanahan on Literacy
  • Sold A Story
  • Literacy Talks
  • Knowledge for Teachers
  • Structured Literacy Podcast  
  • Pedagogy Non Grata
  • Knowledge Matters
  • Edview 360

Reading and Writing Relationship

Fluency

Comprehension

 

 

 

 

 

 

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