The Literacy Series

Offers the perspectives of leading researchers for critical aspects of literacy—the role of district/school culture in supporting early literacy, effective comprehension strategies, the recommendations of the National Reading Panel, strategies to prevent reading failure, and the importance of teacher preparation. The online modules include:

• Early Reading Success, Edward Kame’enui
  Focuses on four principles for early reading success and the cultures of schools and districts needed to support these. This module stresses the factors that contribute to early school success.

• Comprehension and Vocabulary Development, Isabel Beck
  Uses the Text Talk project to illustrate ways teachers can use children’s literature to help the youngsters make sense of the text. This module emphasizes the use of both contextualized and decontextualized language to promote comprehension.

• Effective Comprehension Instruction, Michael Pressley
  Examines the key components of effective literacy instruction and the research base for these. This module emphasizes structures in reading programs that help support the development of comprehension.

• Methods to Teach Children to Read, Sally Shaywitz
  Focuses on the work of the National Reading Panel and their report, Teaching Children to Read. This module emphasizes research-based strategies that define effective instruction.

• Preventing Reading Failures, Reid Lyon
  Poses reading failure as a public health issue and examines strategies to prevent reading failure in students. This module emphasizes the importance of well-trained teachers in preventing reading failure.

• Reading Instruction and the Importance of Teacher Preparation, Louisa Moats
  Examines the connection between teacher professional development and effective reading and language arts instruction. This module emphasizes how effective instruction is informed by deep understanding of reading development.

Promotes seminal ideas that inform teaching and learning of literacy. The three noted researchers featured focus on addressing the challenges that teachers often face in shaping effective literacy instruction: the impact of dyslexia, using the structure of language to promote literacy teaching and learning, and both the assets and constraints of teacher-centered and student-centered learning. The online modules include:

• Book Review: Overcoming Dyslexia, Sally Shaywitz
  Explores the biological basis for dyslexia and other reading problems and offers concrete ways to diagnose reading problems and specific strategies for helping teachers support students with dyslexia to help them become effective readers. This module emphasizes a number of accommodations teachers can make to help students with reading problems.

• Book Review: Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers, Louisa Moats
  Focuses on the key aspects of language structure that teachers can use to inform their work. This book review stresses the sound system of speech and language, the structure of words, spelling, the study of meaning in language, and syntax.

• Book Review: The Academic Achievement Challenge: What Really Works in Classroom, Jeanne Chall
  Highlights the debate over teacher-centered and student-centered classrooms by providing an analysis of the benefits and constraints of both and stressing the importance, regardless of approach, of aligning the instructional design of a lesson with the expected student outcomes.

Promotes improved student outcomes in secondary language arts by providing research-based strategies for teachers to use to improve their practice relative to core high school language arts content. The online modules included are:

• Teaching Vocabulary (Project CORE: English Language Arts)
  Highlights specific ways teachers can improve and deepen instruction in vocabulary. This module also offers specific strategies to improve teachers’ instructional practice.

• Providing Text Evidence (Project CORE: English Language Arts)
  Focuses on improving instruction in key content that includes improving student performance in making inferences, generalizations, and conclusions with text evidence. This module emphasizes the development of strategies to improve teachers’ instructional practice.

• Analyzing Text Structures (Project CORE: English Language Arts)
  Enables teachers to improve their strategies in supporting student analysis of expository text structures. As with the prior CORE modules, this also provides specific strategies to improve teachers’ instructional practice.