This document summarizes five key priorities in intensifying literacy practices for students who struggle: knowledge and use of a learning progression, designing and using an evidence-based intervention platform, ongoing data-based decision-making, adapting to increase the intensity of intervention, and infrastructures (systems) to support students with severe and persistent literacy needs.
This article is a starting point for understanding how assessment for learning plays a critical role in informing and driving instruction in literacy. This read provides information about evidence-based assessment practices, including screening, diagnostic, and progress monitoring. This article will help develop an understanding of a comprehensive assessment system and how educators can use the data…
In this Reading Rockets article, you will learn how to implement a research-based strategy to improve reading comprehension by focusing on text structures. The authors use the Text Structure Strategy (TSS) to explore the text structures of comparison, cause and effect, problem and solution, sequence, and description and how hierarchical text structures are usually a…
In this Reading Rockets article, the authors outline critical literacy and how to achieve this in your K-3 classroom using high-quality read alouds and provide a step-by-step model using an actual book.
In this 2-page handout from Achieve the Core, you will learn all about text sets: what they are, why they are important, where to source some, and how to build your own.
In this International Dyslexia Association Perspectives article, Nancy Chapel Eberhardt discusses instructional practices to teach grammar and syntax with a focus that will increase the reader’s understanding of complex texts. This article will give educators examples of how to use a Function-Based Instructional Approach in their classrooms, including sentence expansion, using because but so, and…
In this International Dyslexia Association Perspectives article, Kate Cain explores the topic of reading comprehension and how language skills develop. The article explains how vocabulary acquisition, understanding of sentence structure and how sentences work together, the ability to infer and integrate information, and building a mental model of the text’s meaning while you are reading…
In this International Dyslexia Association Perspectives article, authors Jane Oakhill and Kate Cain explore the factors supporting reading comprehension beyond basic decoding and suggest critical skills that should form the core of literacy instruction and interventions to support poor reading comprehension. The article outlines which skills are critical, such as teaching specific vocabulary words, how to…
In this Reading Rockets article, Daniel Willingham explores the topic of critical thinking and how to foster metacognitive skills in the classroom. Willingham notes that background knowledge plays a role in critical thinking and understanding the surface structure of problems. He provides evidence-based strategies, such as promoting thinking within a particular domain to bring everyday…
In this Knowledge Matters Campaign article, Daniel Willingham explores the factors that lead to critical thinking skills, noting that background, or domain knowledge, plays a key factor. Willingham notes, “background knowledge is absolutely integral to effectively deploying important cognitive processes,” suggesting that facts that are taught need to be meaningful, can be learned incidentally and…
In this column for American Educator, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham defines critical thinking and provides strategies for fostering thinking in the everyday classroom. Willingham defines critical thinking in three ways stating it must be: novel, self-directed and effective and that it is the third attribute that makes it difficult as what constitutes effective thinking varies…
In this Occasional Paper Series from Education Future Frontier, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham takes a deep dive into the science behind teaching critical thinking and offers strategies such as understanding the domain knowledge required for understanding, creating conditions for transferable skills, and understanding the structure of the problem, to help students gain and use critical…
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