This spiral-bound book is a collection of formal and informal assessments covering phonological awareness, phonics, decoding and word recognition, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, including the CORE Phonics Survey, often recommended as a diagnostic tool to be used after universal screening to help identify gaps. Assessments […]
Keen to learn more about using assessment to drive structured literacy in your classroom? Catch up with our Next STEPSÂ Summer Book Study. Resources related to this ONlit event series, hosted by Jordan Sloan, can be found here. Each session in the series tackles a foundational […]
Modeled after Core Knowledge Language Arts units, this language and social studies unit is designed for use in Canadian kindergarten and Grade 1 classrooms. The unit is comprised of 10 lessons, each about an Important Canadian, with a teacher read-aloud document and accompanying slideshow for […]
Vocabulary knowledge must be intentionally nurtured to ensure that students are ready for the greater vocabulary demands of reading complex texts and writing multi-paragraph essays, but we need to pay attention to cracks in the foundation and scaffold our lessons accordingly, or it all falls […]
Levelled Literacy Intervention (LLI) is a commonly used literacy intervention grounded in the ineffective three-cueing approach to reading instruction. In 2022, the Ontario Human Rights Commission found that LLI is ineffective, both from external research on its effectiveness and boards’ own data on student outcomes. […]
Thank you to Greater Essex County DSB for generously sharing this spreadsheet! It contains sets of texts aligned with content from the 4 frames (kindergarten), social studies and science curricula (grades 1 – 6), and history and geography curricula (grades 7 and 8). These […]
In this video, Dr. Anita Archer models an explicit vocabulary lesson with older students. Note how Dr. Archer involves active participation: students are engaged throughout. Note also the high level of teacher-student interaction. See if you can count the number of “serve and return” interactions!
Teaching vocabulary is a key element of the revised Language curriculum that stretches across all grade levels. Effective vocabulary instruction is crucial for developing students’ reading comprehension and writing skills. One engaging way to teach vocabulary nuances is through the Shades of Meaning activity, which […]
REWARDS is a research-validated, specialized reading intervention program designed for students in junior, intermediate and senior grades. There are three YouTube videos for different versions of the program: REWARDS Intermediate, REWARDS Secondary, and REWARDS Social Studies.
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 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 […]
In this activity from FCRR, students use a web graphic to identify multiple meanings of target vocabulary words.
