Target Audience: Gr 5-9 instructional leaders, pre-service teachers and teachers are encouraged to attend.
Join Michelle and Miriam for a professional learning series digging into the Layers of Reading development for Middle School Students. Together, we will unpack the research around reading instruction in Jr High, and look at the essential role of disciplinary literacy to support the reading journeys of your students. We will share many strategies and tools that you can carry into your classrooms to support the reading development for all of your learners.
Session 1: We begin with an overview of the Layers of Reading Development graphic, and the interconnection between the layers, and the Guiding Principles. We then will look at the foundational role of Phonological Awareness, and how to support PA into junior high.
Session 2: In this session, our target will be Tier 2 academic vocabulary words, one of the biggest indicators of success in school from grade 4 through post-secondary education. We will examine why this is an essential element of instruction, how to address morphology instruction with vocabulary work, and the highly effective strategies we can use in middle school and across the disciplines.
Session 3: In this session, our target will be Tier 2 academic vocabulary words, one of the biggest indicators of success in school from grade 4 through post-secondary education. We will look at why this is an essential element of instruction, including morphology, and what this can look like in middle school, across the disciplines.
Session 4: We will look at the essential role of fluency, specifically prosody and phrasing, in developing secondary students’ reading abilities. This session will look at how to structure and plan for fluency practice through both ELA texts and within the content areas. We will talk about deep and wide reading, and ways to structure fluency practice through the lens of differentiation and meeting the wide range of needs in your classroom
Session 5: In our final session together, we will bring everything together through the concept of Fluent Comprehension, the goal of reading. This learning is driven through how we make sense of text, based on our background knowledge and experiences, leveraging student strengths. We will look to ways in which we can support all students to deeply understand text, including text across the disciplines