Teaching Foundational Reading Skills Online Professional Learning Course

This professional learning course is organized around the recommendations of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade Practice Guide, published in July 2016 by the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse. The Practice Guide, developed by a panel of expert researchers and practitioners, provides educators with specific, research-based recommendations for effective teaching practices. It focuses on the foundational skills that enable students to read words, relate those words to their oral language, and read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to understand what they read.

Course Objectives

The course explores the Practice Guide’s four major research-based recommendations, with specific classroom how-tos to help educators effectively implement them with their students:

• Advance students’ speaking and listening language skills, including vocabulary knowledge and the use of inferential and narrative “academic” language.
• Develop students’ awareness of the segments of sounds in speech, and how sound segments link to letters.
• Teach students to decode words, analyze words parts, and write and recognize words.
• Support students’ development of reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension through reading connected text.