Planning Effective Writing Assessments

This blog post by Joan Sedita of Keys to Literacy highlights the research behind creating specific product goals in writing, emphasizing that providing students with specific guidance on the task, audience, and purpose. A WAG template (Writing Assignment Guide) is provided, as well as completed […]

High Frequency Word Grids (UFLI Aligned)

This is a set of fluency grids including words from the UFLI Irregular Words and the High-Frequency Dolch and Fry Word Lists that are aligned with the UFLI scope and sequence. They can be used for a whole group, small group, partner, or independent to […]

Explicit Vocabulary Instruction

Even as students enter kindergarten, there are huge differences in their individual vocabularies. If we are to narrow the achievement gap that students from different economic levels exhibit in the upper grades, we must provide systematic, robust explicit vocabulary instruction in the primary grades. One […]

Concept Sorts

Concept sorts introduce students to the vocabulary or ideas of a new topic or text. Students are presented a list of terms or concepts and have to determine how they are related by placing them into  different categories. When used before reading, concept sorts provide an opportunity for […]

Teaching Morphology: Resource Kit

This is a comprehensive guide for morphology instruction – it explains the layers of the English language, walks through a suggested sequence of instruction, and includes sample lesson templates complete with word sums and matrices.

Vocabulary Word Maps

A word map is a graphic organizer that supports connections among vocabulary and ideas. This resource from TextProject provides Word Maps for core vocabulary – the most important words in written English. Three types of words maps are available for the core vocabulary: synonyms, morphology, […]

Student Phonics Activities

A team of researchers and teachers at FCRR collected ideas and created activities for students at stations or centres. These phonics activities are designed for students to practice, demonstrate, and extend their learning of what has already been taught, sometimes with teacher assistance and sometimes […]

Talk Moves

Talk moves are sentence starters that students use to join a class discussion – they encourage both academic thinking and social connectedness.

Barrier Games

Barrier games are fantastic resources to support a child’s speech and language skills. There are many benefits from using barrier games with a child such as developing: listening skills, oral language skills, social language skills, clear talking and understanding of concepts. They are great for […]

ONlit Guiding Principles

These are the key ideas and principles guiding the ONlit team’s work. We hope they might be helpful for you, as well, as we collectively work toward shifting systems to allow all children realize their right to learn to read.