Developed by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell
Effective teaching begins with assessment and focuses on the strengths and needs of individual children. All teachers need to learn how to teach the lowest achieving children well, and to learn how to use behavioral evidence to document their growth. Drawing from Fountas and Pinnell's book, When Readers Struggle, this seminar will address the range of difficulties that interfere with literacy learning in the primary grades.
Beginning with the reading behaviors of proficient readers, participants will learn how to observe and analyze the critical behaviors that keep lower achieving readers from initiating and problem-solving successfully as they read. By understanding reading behaviors and how to respond with language that supports the reader's development, teachers will learn to plan multiple layers of intervention to assure reading success. Seminar participants will learn how to use When Readers Struggle as a comprehensive and practical resource to support effective teaching of low achieving readers.
Course goals:
- To understand the reading and writing processes and how they change over time
- To learn the variety of factors that contribute to reading difficulties
- To develop effective practices for supporting low achieving readers in the classroom and in small-group supplementary teaching
- To understand the role of leveled texts in supporting readers' progress
- To learn the Leveled Literacy Intervention lesson framework for small group supplementary intervention
- To develop strategies for teaching for, prompting for, and reinforcing effective reading and writing behaviors including word analysis and comprehension.
