Learning Opportunities

Target Audience: K-3 teachers, educational assistants and administrators are encouraged to attend.

Join us to investigate how the Layers of Reading Development aligns with the new ELAL curriculum and how these skills progress across the grades. In each session, we dive into the curricular skills and procedures that support each reading layer and the different forms of instruction that reinforce curriculum expectations. We will share examples that illustrate teaching for surface, deep, and transfer learning while exploring the principles of robust literacy pedagogy that drive our instruction for all the layers.

Session 1: Concepts of Print & Phonological Awareness

Let's investigate how print can be used for different purposes and the strategies that support students in attending to, discriminating, remembering, and manipulating sounds.

Session 2: Word Study 

This session will unpack our orthographic (spelling) system. We will examine the alphabetic, pattern, and meaning layers of English orthography, why we need to teach them, and the practices and lessons that support learning.

Session 3: Fluency

Are you looking for ways to increase your students' reading accuracy, rate, and prosody (expression)? Together we will look at the role of fluency in bridging word reading and reading comprehension and how different forms of fluency instruction support students' reading development.

Session 4: Vocabulary 

Academic vocabulary is a key factor in school success and beyond. This session will investigate the three tiers of vocabulary and explore powerful teaching strategies to create vocabulary-rich classrooms.

Session 5: Comprehension

How do children make sense of text? In this session, we will uncover a shift in understanding reading comprehension and look at students' processes and skills to deeply engage with a text.

Session 6: Collaborative Design Session

The final session will be a collaborative design session! You will leave the series with a bank of concept-based design plans integrating multiple subject areas. Using a lens of strong pedagogy, and what we have learned over the Layers of Reading, we will create lessons that embed the Knowledge, Understanding, Skills and Procedures from the ELAL curriculum to support all learners.