The Up the Ladder Reading units are designed for upper-grade and middle school readers who may have missed some foundational instruction or might not have experienced a workshop-style classroom. These units provide children opportunities to engage in repeated successful practice and to move rapidly along a gradually increasing progression of challenges. The Up the Ladder Units:
begin with the clear expectation that students are in charge of their own reading lives;
stress agency and independence across sessions;
teach students to recognize and select a just-right book, to notice and flag parts of the text while reading, and to engage in conversations around the texts they are reading;
help students build essential skills such as fluency, envisioning, prediction, making deeper inferences, and finding main ideas.
Units of Study
There are two Up the Ladder Reading units, each containing 20–22 sessions. Up The Ladder Reading: Fiction is designed for grades 3 and up. Up The Ladder Reading: Nonfiction is intended for grades 4 through 6.
Trade Book Packs
The two Up the Ladder reading units include trade books for read-aloud to model effective reading strategies.
Up the Ladder Reading: Nonfiction trade book pack:
Mummies (National Geographic Kids) by Elizabeth Carney
Beastly Tales: Yeti, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster by Malcolm Yorke
Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine & a Miracle by Major Brian Dennis, Kirby Larson, and Mary Nethery
Up the Ladder Reading: Fiction trade book pack:
The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin
Hot Day on Abbott Avenue by Karen English
Online Resources
Include downloadable charts, paper-choice templates, samples of student work, student checklists, links to digital texts, and provides QR code links at point-of-use within each minilesson with demonstration videos featuring Staff Developers.