Adolescent Literacy Solutions

Our two-part workshop series equips educators with the knowledge of the science of reading and the instructional skills necessary to accelerate underperforming students.

About Adolescent Literacy Solutions

Many middle and high school students who have not mastered foundational reading skills or who are fluent readers but still experience comprehension difficulties may struggle to meet the rigorous expectations of college and career standards. This two-part series equips educators with the knowledge and skills necessary to accelerate students’ reading proficiency in a differentiated manner.

CORE’s Adolescent Vocabulary and Comprehension courses address the needs of all learners to equitably access and excel in high-quality tier 1 instruction. Our Decoding and Fluency courses provide intensive intervention-focused practices for educators with students who experience fluency challenges.

For more information, download our flyer.

Participant Outcomes:

Learn evidence-based reading practices for adolescent students who experience fluency and/or comprehension challenges.

Leave with lesson models for all five components of reading instruction.

Apply instructional practices to your own classroom texts.

Academic Literacy Series: Adolescent Vocabulary and Comprehension Strategies and Text Structures

This two-day course focuses on preparing educators to develop vocabulary knowledge for middle and high school students and teach comprehension strategies that work for both literary and informational text. These sessions are appropriate for English teachers and teachers of intervention, multilingual learners, especially when implementing instruction aligned to the state standards. Each day may be taken separately.

Participants learn and practice evidence-based methods to directly teach important content vocabulary, teach students to figure out unknown words using contextual and morphemic analysis skills, and engage in fun and stimulating activities that foster “word consciousness.” Participants will receive more than 30 sample lesson models with easy application to classroom text in any academic content area.

Participant Outcomes:

Understand the current research on vocabulary development.
Know effective techniques for teaching specific words.
Know effective strategies for teaching students to figure out unfamiliar words while reading.

Participants learn about current, validated research in comprehension instruction. Participants receive in-depth instruction in selected instructional techniques that have broad application in both narrative and informational text at all grade levels. Examples of these techniques include an emphasis on question techniques, recognizing informational text structures, helping students understand internet sources, identifying the main idea, summarizing, and making inferences.

Participant Outcomes:

Understand seminal research on text comprehension.
Apply a set of strategies to your own text.
Understand different text structures and their signal words.

Participants will use a Comprehension Instruction booklet, Participant Resource Guide, and Vocabulary Handbook, and a Participant Resource Guide.

NOTE: If all 4 days/16 sessions of Adolescent Literacy Solutions are taken, both the Academic Literacy Series and the Intensive Intervention series, the Teaching Reading Sourcebook replaces the Vocabulary Handbook and the Comprehension Instruction booklet.

Intensive Intervention Series: Decoding Instruction and Fluency Development for Adolescents

Many middle and high school teachers have not had the preparation needed to teach struggling adolescent readers. This 2 day course will provide a starting point and foundational information about the science of reading to make informed instructional decisions for students with reading difficulties, and to gain understanding of decoding instruction and fluency development. This series is appropriate for 6-12 Intervention teachers, multilingual learner teachers, special education teachers, English teachers, reading teachers, and coaches.

The topics covered in these sessions include an overview of the Science of Reading, basic linguistics, phonics with an emphasis on multisyllabic word instruction.

Participant Outcomes:

Understand the concept of phonemic awareness as the underpinning of learning to decode.
Learn specific ways to teach phonics and high frequency words and why phonics instruction is vital for students who have not mastered foundational reading skills.
Practice ways to teach students to recognize multisyllabic words.

These sessions focus on instructional methods, based on the science of reading, for teaching students to become fluent readers and spotlights the relationship between fluency and comprehension. Highlights include specific techniques to increase time on text and promote rereading: readers theater, active learning, and repeated reading.

Participant Outcomes:

Understand the concept of fluency and its importance to reading achievement.
Learn methods and tools for fluency assessment.
Learn strategies for building reading fluency

Participants will use a Participant Resource Guide, Teaching Reading Sourcebook, Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures, online access to two CORE instructional videos: Blending Routines and Foundational Skills.