Learning Opportunities

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

Jan Burkins and Kari Yates, Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom is a book that has come forth through deeper inspection of how best to teach students to read. It focuses on utilizing current research, best practices and teacher decision-making to best meet the needs of students. 

We invite all educators, working with students at a K-3 level, who would like to dig deeper into Burkins and Yates’ book Shifting the Balance to join us. The goal of this collaborative community is to highlight the major shifts, share two high-yield instructional routines for each and engage in robust small group conversations about where you may want to shift your practice moving forward.

For this series, we will request that you read chapters in the book, prior to joining together for a discussion around each of the specific shifts. Recognizing that you lead busy lives, we understand if this is not possible therefore, we have embedded an instructional component to accompany each shift.  We will be recording the content pieces of each of the sessions and will share that link via email with registrants the day following the session.

Take-aways from this Book Collaborative Series: 

1. A better understanding of how explicit and systematic teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics can lay the foundation for the development and weaving together of all of the layers of reading. 
2. What explicit and systematic teaching of phonemic awareness and phonics looks like in your literacy blocks 
3. How to consistently cycle in reading and writing to compliment the explicit teaching of the foundation layers of reading