Intensifying Literacy Instruction: Essential Practices

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.

Literacy for All: Instructional Considerations for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities

Literacy is a set of skills that opens a world of possibilities for all students, including students with significant cognitive exceptionalities.  This PaTTAN webinar begins the discussion about what literacy instruction looks like for this group of students by discussing the definition of literacy, examining the research literature, and providing questions to help guide the…

Evidence-Based Assessment in the Science of Reading

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…

Teaching Text Structure

In this overview from Reading Rockets on teaching text structure, you’ll learn about the 5 most common text structures (narrative, descriptive, expository, procedural/instructional, and argumentative/persuasive) and their features and how to help students learn to identify and use text structures in their reading and writing. The article also provides downloadable printables that can be used…

Syntax: Somewhere between Words and Text

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…