Facilitate dynamic learning of literacy standards with teacher-driven lessons
What does effective literacy instruction look like?
Quality Instruction
The magic is in the details. Our teacher-driven lessons are pedagogically sound and research-based from start to finish. Students are challenged and supported the entire lesson which leads to higher engagement and accelerated learning.
- deliver impactful Tier 1 support for RTI and MTSS.
- promote Universal Design for Learning by providing highly structured instruction with diverse ways for students to express new knowledge and understanding.
- accelerate learning with predictable learning routines, so students can focus on what to learn and not how to learn.
- ensure students receive explicit instruction in grade-level standards.
- motivate students with flexible grouping and student-centered activities.
Differentiation for All Students
Our lessons allow educators to address individual strengths and challenges, promoting deeper engagement and understanding. By accommodating various skill levels and interests, students are empowered to develop their literacy skills more effectively and confidently.
- support vocabulary and language development with various wordplay activities and individually constructed dictionaries.
- increase access for various student groups with text summaries, leveled texts, and text-to-speech.
- confidently deliver designated and integrated language standards with our English Language Connections.
- enrich learning with our Take it up a notch" opportunities that challenge students to go beyond the standards.
- promote academic language development with sentence frames that guide students to think in complex ways.
- easily facilitate pair and small group discussions about text with embedded Pause and Discuss prompts.
Recursive Literacy Routines
Recursive literacy routines establish a structured framework for continuous skill development. By revisiting learning strategies and essential literacy skills regularly, students solidify their understanding and build confidence in their abilities.
- create confidence in students as they rehearse predictable routines that help them develop new knowledge.
- encourage metacognitive awareness, enabling students to reflect on their learning progress.
- provide embedded support for all learners.
- elevate the multiple intelligences in the classroom (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and linguistic-verbal).
- establish effective routines for analyzing prompts, vocabulary knowledge, comprehension reading routines, and writing and speaking routines.
Transferable Skills
Our teacher-driven lessons focus on explicitly teaching essential literacy skills and standards. The grade-level reading, speaking, writing, and collaborative skills taught in our lessons can transfer to other classes and lead to future academic success.
- vertically align reading, speaking, and writing standardsto ensure students are building critical skills at each grade level.
- strengthen students' ability to breakdown complex texts and write about them in sophisticated ways.
- develop analytical and critical thinking skills essential for text-dependent writing tasks.
- rehearse and master a research-based reading and writing process that can be used for various academic tasks.
Our Impactful Instructional Practices
High Expectations
Setting high expectations with the appropriate support is critical for engagement, growth, and confidence.
Cognitive Learning
Students can use a strategy independently and strategically when they learn how, when, and why to use it.
Spiraled Instruction
Rehearse skills and gradually increase complexity, accelerating learning through repetition and practice.
Step-by-Step Teacher Guides
Each lesson carefully guides the facilitation of active learning routines with step-by-step instructions, so teachers feel confident as they deliver powerful literacy lessons. Teacher moves are explicitly stated and strategies for increasing engagement and access for all students are embedded throughout the lesson.
Routine-based Learning
Our recursive learning routines build community among learners and provide structure, allowing students to predict what comes next, reducing anxiety while increasing focus. Each routine provides clear and explicit instructions so students feel confident during each step in the process, cultivating independence and responsibility as they learn to manage their own learning processes. Our routines cater to diverse learning styles through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic methods, aligning with UDL principles to support accessibility and engagement for diverse learners' needs and abilities.
Thoughtful Vocabulary Instruction
Each lesson delivers a word-rich experience that teaches essential, grade-level vocabulary in context. Students begin each lesson learning critical concepts that are critical to the meaning of the text. Through various vocabulary activities like visual representations, skits, and wordplay, students explore and learn new words. Then, students have an opportunity to support their own learning by identifying unfamiliar words in the text they are reading. Our language dictionary defines each unfamiliar word in context and provides additional information to help students understand not only the meaning of the word but also how the word is used.
Assign Single Lessons or Units
Teachers have the flexibility to assign single lessons or themed units.
Assigning a lesson to a class is a snap! Teachers can preview the standards and outcomes for the lesson, review the skills that will be taught, and go through the pre-reading, during reading, and post reading activities. If a teacher wants to teach the lesson, all they have to do is click "Assign to Class."
Students will see the lesson in their Assignments list.
Our Lessons Have 8 Key Teacher Moves!
Lesson Essentials
Each lesson provides a clear text summary, an essential question (EQ), Lexile reading level, and options for customizing support like turning on embedded discussion questions and text-leveling.
Get Ready to Read
Each lesson begins with a prompt that students analyze. The prompt explains what students should be focused on while reading; and it can be used for text-dependent writing practice and instruction.
Build Vocabulary
There are numerous opportunities to build vocabulary in each lesson. During this step in the process, students study critical concepts and "play" with various grade-level vocabulary words from the text.
Make Predictions
Complete this step before or after our vocabulary activities. Students study the image at the top of the article, read the first and last paragraphs, and make a prediction about the text's topic and structure
Comprehension
Once students mark their prompts, explore vocabulary, and make predictions, they are ready to start a reading comprehsion routine. Our comprehension routines are highly structured and engaging.
Analysis
Most of our lessons have analytical routines called Reading for Deeper Meaning. These routines ask students to go beyond what an author says and look closely at what an author does in a text.
Review
There are opportunities in each lesson to review key components. There are vocabulary review activities, comprehension questions that we recommend doing in groups, and summary activites.
Reading to Write
Each lesson offers post-reading activities that teach specific writing skills like integrating sources and a text-dependent writing assignment that follows a standards-based process...that we grade!