Reading Institute

Dates: Monday, June 24 - Thursday, June 27, 2024

Time: 11:00 AM - 4:00 PM ET

Location: Virtual

Grades: K-5 teachers, coaches, and administrators

Cost: $850

The Reading Institute will begin with inspirational keynote addresses by world-renowned speakers and will end with optional choice workshops on an array of topics including RTI, leading effective book clubs, responsible use of screeners, reigniting a love of reading, helping readers transfer phonics to continual texts, and preparation for state assessments. 

Grades K-2 Offerings

As a primary-level teacher or coach, you will spend mornings in small grade-specific primary groups that support you in teaching a logical sequential curriculum integrating findings from the Science of Reading with best practices in teaching oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, comprehension, fluency and vocabulary. Alternatively, you may choose to spend the morning in a cross-grade group studying revisions to the K-2 curriculum, best practice methods, and implications of new research.   

In morning sections, kindergarten educators will learn to:

• Support children as they learn to engage joyfully in literacy.

• Help students secure and draw upon their phonological awareness and phonics knowledge, as they progress from emergent to beginning reading.

• Use screeners and other assessments to identify student progress and need.

• Support students in developing a bank of sight words, orthographically mapping high-frequency words, in order to build automaticity over time.

• Use read aloud, inquiry, and class discussions to support oral language, comprehension and content knowledge.

In morning sections, first grade educators will learn to:

• Create a community of engaged readers who can read with sufficient independence to allow for small groups that accelerate reading progress.

• Help readers develop along Ehri’s phases of reading development.

• Provide students with a balanced reading diet, including decodable books, trade books, and cross-genre text sets in a wide range of formats.

• Tap the power of shared reading, interactive writing, and read aloud to support students as they move along a logical progression of word recognition and language comprehension skills.

• Use the methods from the new Units of Study, including explicit demonstration, responsive coaching, and gradual release, to support readers within their zone of proximal development.

In morning sections, second grade educators will learn to: 

• Teach a sequence of units that strengthens foundational skills so readers can decode longer, more complex words with proficiency and develop word automaticity.

• Help students read across multiple texts on a topic to support knowledge generation, vocabulary acquisition, and critical thinking skills.

• Support students with synthesizing longer and more complex texts across read aloud, shared reading, whole group, and small group lessons.

• Use techniques for helping readers to develop stronger fluency and to lift the volume of reading.

In the morning sections, the cross-grade K-2 educators will learn to: 

• Grasp the big picture storylines and progressions that undergird the new Units of Study.

• Draw on the rich trove of insights that the Science of Reading offers, including research on decodable texts, orthographic mapping, vocabulary, and knowledge generation.

• Use decodable readers and a range of other texts, including text sets, to support phonic decoding, sight vocabulary, semantic vocabulary, syntax, and knowledge building.

• Harness the power of screeners, PA and decoding assessments to lead assessment-based small groups that accelerate readers’ progress along Ehri’s stages of reading.

The afternoon sections will support assessment-based small groups that move readers along continuums of skills development. In these sections, educators will learn to:

• Tap the power of Supporting All Readers, which contains over 240 small groups conferences and tools that facilitate quick easy and powerful small groups.

• Use methods to design and lead especially high-leverage small groups.

• Effectively use decodable books (provided to you) in your small groups.

• Use an assessment tool (provided to you) to support and track your students’ progress up the levels.

Grades 3-5 Offerings

As an upper grade educator, you can choose three tracks of study. These sections bring together close-knit groups of colleagues from across the world and provide both state-of-the-art instruction and opportunities for invention and exploration. 

Track 1: Narrative Reading Skills

In this section, educators will learn to:

• Support students with part-to-whole thinking, author’s craft analysis, synthesis, perspective, and critical reading.

• Use Units of Study, small groups, and book clubs to support students’ progress along a ladder of skill development.

• Become adept at supporting a progression of writing about reading that ranges from flagging to writing to tackle complex real-world challenges.

• Lead text-based discussions using diverse, high interest, complex texts.

• Use AI to customize resources and teaching plans for your students.

Track 2: Close Reading and Text-Based Writing about Reading

In this section, educators will learn to:

• Engage students in text-based critical reading as they dig into authentic, real-world projects.

• Help students read critically, noting the biases and assumptions behind different sources, and develop organized systems for learning from the texts.

• Weave foundational reading and writing skill development– including preparation for state assessments– into a curriculum that engages readers in work with the widest possible variety of texts.

• Help students to develop the essential reading skills required for text-based discussions and writing, as well as for answering text-dependent questions.

Track 3: Building a Culture of Reading

In this section, educators will learn to:

• Build their students’ reading skills. When students have authors and genres they love, regard reading as sociable, and engage in a volume of high-interest reading, their skills sky-rocket. 

• Discover ways to refresh their classroom structures and routines to develop student-centered learning environments that tap into students’ motivations and energy and build a culturally and linguistically responsive and inclusive reading community.

• Discover irresistible texts and ways to use classroom libraries to promote those texts.

• Identify ways to embed collaborative and culminating projects, performances, and celebrations – including partner discussion, book clubs, and readers’ theater – into classroom rituals and routines.

Track 4: Foundational Reading Skills

In this section, educators will learn to:

• Support below benchmark readers with rigorous, high-quality instruction which promotes automatic and accurate word reading skills, as well as comprehension .

• Recognize various tiers of assessment systems for identifying student progress and need around phonological awareness, phonics, word recognition, fluency and comprehension.

• Develop a better understanding of the power of screener tools and other early reading assessments in determining how to match readers with appropriate high-interest, diverse, decodable texts.

• Study reading skills and writing samples with a focus on revealing nuanced reading behaviors that identify what students know and need in terms of foundational skills.

• Use well loved K-2 tools that can breathe new life into upper grade small groups. 

Track 5: The Essential Structures and Methods of Reading Workshop

In this section, educators will learn to:

• Use a research-based approach to organizing a reading classroom that accelerates all readers’ progress and supports deep engagement in reading.

• Tap the power of Up the Ladder Reading: Fiction/Nonfiction and/or grade-specific Units of Study in order to provide students with explicit instruction in research-based skills.

• Support students with practical, time-tested responsive methods of teaching and assessing.

• Develop a repertoire of helpful resources, including access to student friendly charts, tools, bibliographies and to digital libraries .

• Prepare students for state assessments, using access to a free compendium of short tests.

Track 6: Assessment Based Small Groups

In this section, educators will learn to:

• Use assessments effectively in order to support and track students’ progress up the levels.

• Become comfortable with a handful of especially high leverage, easy-to-use, replicable methods for leading small groups.

• Gain insights in the standards-based skills that pose special challenges for readers and work to develop pathways of progress that lead to success.

• Teach in accessible ways to scaffold student progress, and to gradually release those scaffolds.

• Develop a toolkit to support a wide range of learners, using charts, learning progressions, practice texts, and student work.

Track 7: Nonfiction Reading 

In this section, educators will learn to:

• Curate and develop text sets to support growing knowledge about specific topics that engage students.

• Dive into the essential skills and key standards for nonfiction reading, including summary, central idea, perspective, and cross-text synthesis.

• Explore ways to embed vocabulary instruction and usage into nonfiction reading units and content area units of study.

• Use systems to support students with talk, note-taking, and writing about reading, and learn ways to use digital tools to strengthen this work.