Welcome back to those of you returning! Welcome to those of you who are new. I am the school’s reading coordinator, and as part of my work here, I publish a monthly newsletter to highlight important literacy and reading topics and practices. I also administer reading assessments to students when teachers suspect that there might be a reading problem involved. Additionally, I work with teachers in both full staff sessions and one-on-one appointments to design literacy rich curriculum, develop better assessments, promote reading strategies, and finally to foster environments of engagement. I also am available to visit classrooms to teach comprehension strategies and open up my own classroom for observations if you are interested in seeing a particular strategy employed in real life. Please feel free to come to me with questions or concerns you have related to literacy, reading, and / or engagement. I am here to help!
Each year, I identify a theme or topic as an area of focus for the monthly newsletters. Last year, the central focus was on building community within the classroom. This year, I am hoping to take on a few important topics. For starters, I would like to update everyone on the pending changes to our reading intervention that are the result of the newly passed READ Act. While this will not mean a significant alteration to most of your classrooms, it will be good to have an understanding of what these changes are and how you might be able to add or modify a few of your own practices to compliment what is being taught in the intervention courses.
The READ Act was signed into law in the spring of 2023, and it states that the goal of the legislation is to have every student at every grade (K-12) to be at or above grade level in reading. It specifically states that districts and schools must now exclusively use evidence-based reading instruction, which is code for moving away from balanced and whole language programs that have been traditionally used as part of reading instruction. The READ Act mandates a screening / assessment procedure for every student up until third grade, and for all students not at grade level after that using specific tools that have been approved by the state. The READ Act also mandates that all reading teachers and specialists will need to participate in Minnesota Department of Education approved professional development that centers reading instruction on six pillars of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and cultural and linguistic diversity.
At the high school level, this will have an impact on reading interventions, special education, and EL curriculum and classes. But it will not likely impact content area classes in significant ways-- especially here at AVHS where we already have systems in place to help on-level and co-taught teachers implement literacy and comprehension strategies.
Still, you will see a shift in some of the reading strategies that I will promote moving ahead. Previously, much of our emphasis at the high school level has been on the last two pillars: comprehension and cultural and linguistic diversity. However, as our data indicates, we have greater need now to address some of the earlier pillars like phonics, vocabulary and fluency.
So for this year especially, we will focus our attention on some of this terminology and ways we might be able to complement the instruction across the school day. As the year continues, I will grow the area of focus to include some of the cultural and racial elements that come to play out in our classrooms. It will be a year where we focus on both reading the word and the world! Each month, I like to include three, tangible practices that teachers can bring back to their classrooms. For this month, I’ll offer a few exercises that serve as “word play” and can compliment phonics instruction happening elsewhere.
Word Chunks: Our content areas introduce lots of interesting and complex words to our students. They provide an excellent opportunity to play with the phonics of the words without making it feel as though they are children. Put the focal word on the board and ask students to identify the chunks or syllables. Say the word and snap or clap on the syllables and have them tally them up. For example, the word “paradox” has three chunks: /par/ /a/ /dox/.
Word Parts: Next, ask them if they recognize any parts or words within the word. Linguistically, many of our words have a root plus an affix (which can either be a prefix at the beginning or a suffix at the end). In the case of paradox, they likely will not be able to pick out any word parts, but the word “paradoxical” is easily identifiable as an adjective because it ends in the suffix -al.
Origins: Words have amazing histories. A quick glance at etymoline.com will offer you lots of good information. It’s easy to see the interconnection of words once we see where they came from. For example, the word paradox comes from the Greek words of para-- “contrary to, beyond, alongside” and doxa-- “opinion”. It shares a root with other words like paralegal, paramount, paranoid, paranormal, and parable.
See the full newsletter here.