Heartland AEA Literacy Newsletter

The New Teacher Project (TNTP) published a guide on how to address unfinished student learning and strategies for accelerating growth. To accelerate students’ progress, system leaders and educators need to identify exactly what unfinished learning needs to be addressed, when, and how. We recommend identifying the content knowledge and skills your students might struggle with in their current grade level, and filling those potential gaps “just in time,” when the material occurs in the school year. This may feel like a radically different approach for some of your teachers and leaders. And in many ways, it is. Schools typically address gaps in content knowledge or proficiency by engaging in some form of remediation (or reteaching) around skills from previous years. While well-intentioned, this approach often means that students who fell behind never encounter the work of their grade, instead remaining trapped in a cycle of low-quality or below-grade level work. Accelerated learning requires that students consistently receive grade-level materials, tasks, and assignments, along with appropriate scaffolds that make the work accessible. More specifically, instead of sending students backwards to fill in all the potential gaps in their learning, leaders and teachers should focus on filling in only the most critical gaps—and not in isolation, but at the moment they’re needed. These “just in time” scaffolds address the necessary content knowledge and skills students need to engage in the most immediate work of the grade: the complex text they’re reading, the math unit they’re studying, the science experiment they’re conducting, or the historic time period they’re analyzing. While the goal here is to address unfinished learning, these concepts pull heavily from what we know about the science of learning. Many of the ideas and strategies outlined below adhere to the principles of interleaving, spaced practice, and retrieval practice, all highly effective, evidence-based strategies that help individuals learn more efficiently and retain information longer. identifying the content knowledge and skills your students might struggle with in their current grade level, and filling those potential gaps “just in time,” when the material occurs in the school year.

Big Ideas:

Grade level content is the academic priority

• Ensure that each student is receiving grade level instruction daily

Address inequities head-on

• Ensure that the students with the most unfinished learning have high quality instruction at all tiers (increase in amount of instruction and purposeful practice). Each tier of instruction has its own distinct level of intensity.
  

Addressing unfinished learning:

Understanding the demands of grade level material and content for this time of ye

• Curriculum Maps by Grade Level (K-3)

• High Priority Milestones For K-3 Reading Development

Identifying the most critical prerequisite skills and content knowledge students will need to access when they encounter it in universal instruction.

• Priority Instructional Content in ELA and Mathematics

• K-12 Vertical Progression for Iowa ELA Standards

Data-Based Decision Making

• Prioritize the most critical prerequisite skills and knowledge

• Diagnose unfinished student learning

• Adapt scope and sequence/pacing guidance to where educators might need to provide accelerated support

• Monitor student progress and adjust your supports for students and educators based on student results

TNTP (2020). Learning acceleration guide: Planning for acceleration in the 2020–2021 school year. Retrievedfrom: https://tntp.org/assets/covid-19-toolkit-resources.

The purpose of this document is to increase the capacity of practitioners and educational leaders to support a broad range of learners who need more literacy supports to become skilled readers and writers by identifying a set of essential practices that are research-supported and should be the focus of professional development.

For the next three issues of the Literacy S'MORE we will be highlighting the principles from this document, sample lesson plans, and videos modeling the practices. The practices are listed in priority order. The five essential practices are:

1. Knowledge and use of a learning progression for developing skilled readers and writers
2. Design and use of an evidence-based intervention platform as the foundation for effective intervention
3. On-going data-based decision making for providing and intensifying interventions
4. Adaptations to increase the instructional intensity of the intervention
5. Infrastructures (systems) to support students with severe and persistent literacy needs

Practice #1: Knowledge and use of a learning progression for developing skilled readers and writers.Teachers and interventionists primarily need to understand and act upon this
Essential Practice.

Knowledge and use of a learning progression for developing skilled readers and writers has been intentionally selected as the first practice because this is the first practice because this is the cornerstone for building a system that is supportive of a broad range of learners. A learning progression is defined as a "carefully sequenced set of building blocks that students must master en route to a more distal curricular aim. The building blocks consist of subskills and bodies of enabling knowledge." The absence of a learning progression "significantly affects the difficulty or ease students have with learning new skills."

1. Reading and writing are their own distinct but interconnected set of skills. It is important for educators to understand them as two unique skills clusters, so each is recognized as a valuable element to their instruction. However, mechanisms for integrating reading and writing are the ultimate goals.

2. The Simple View of Reading and Simple View of Writing are evidence-based models for understanding these two sets of skills.

3. Learning progressions that are anchored to these two models help inform a scope and sequence of instruction that is beneficial for all students but is critical for students with severe and persistent reading and writing needs.

St. Martin, K., Vaughn, S., Troia, G., Fien, & H., Coyne, M. (2020). Intensifying literacy instruction: Essential practices. Lansing, MI: MiMTSS Technical Assistance Center, Michigan Department of Education.

The term “Science of Reading” has been used more and more over the past several years but with varying meanings and misconceptions. On February 3, 2021 “The Science of Reading: A Defining Movement” – a coalition of educators, policymakers, education advocates, and academics – launched a common definition of the Science of Reading.

The Science of Reading is a vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing.This research has been conducted over the last five decades across the world, and it is derived from thousands of studies conducted in multiple languages. The science of reading has culminated in a preponderance of evidence to inform how proficient reading and writing develop; why some have difficulty; and how we can most effectively assess and teach and, therefore, improve student outcomes through prevention of and intervention for reading difficulties.

The Science of Reading is derived from researchers from multiple fields:

• cognitive psychology,

• communication sciences,

• developmental psychology,

• education,

• implementation science,

• linguistics,

• neuroscience,

• school psychology

Defining Movement. (2021, March 9). The science of reading: A defining guide. https://www.whatisthescienceofreading.org/science-of-reading-guide

Each month this newsletter will feature an article to help deepen our knowledge and application of the science of reading.

Reading fluency, the ability to read at an appropriate rate and with accuracy and proper expression, is essential to reading comprehension (Stevens, Walker, & Vaughn, 2017). When students read fluently, they can devote their limited cognitive resources to making meaning from text, rather than recognizing individual words (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). Therefore, it is important for teachers to implement research-based reading fluency instruction to improve students’ skills.

This Iowa Reading Research Center document includes a goal setting template and student reflection guide.

Comprehension Strategies for Grades 4-8

Course #: 189537

Credit: 1 LR Credit

Instructor: Emily Reynolds