Adolescent Literacy Solutions
This 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.
Get in touch
Contact CORE to learn more about how Adolescent Literacy Solutions can help you improve adolescent literacy teaching outcomes.
Meet Our Literacy Experts
Dr. Fineé E. Taylor has been an educational consultant for over 15 years and taught a range of elementary grades, served as an instructional coach, worked as an associate reading professor, and served as a Pre-K and Elementary Curriculum Supervisor.
Cris Goldy is a Senior Educational Services Manager with CORE. Cris provides services to schools, districts and agencies to support effective program implementation, multi-tiered systems of support, special education and special programs support, strategic improvement plans, instructional leadership, teacher development, training and coaching. Her specialties are administrative leadership, K-2 literacy, interventions and special education.
Dale Webster is CORE’s Vice President of Language & Literacy. He leads the Educational Services division and is responsible for the day-to-day operations, training, and quality control of CORE’s educational consulting and management staff. Dale brings 20 years of experience in teaching, professional development/technical assistance, research, state-level policy work and administration, and curriculum development to schools and districts across the country.
Garla Jalloh is an Educational Services Manager who specializes in secondary literacy. She finds great joy and fulfillment in supporting and building capacity in middle and high school educators so that they are equipped to provide equitable learning environments for their students, with a focus on literacy.
Dr. Carrie Thomas Beck is CORE’s Director of Literacy. She comes to CORE after working four years as the Dyslexia Specialist for the Oregon Department of Education (ODE). Carrie has led the development of a reading endorsement program at the university and spent five years at the university co-directing the Oregon Reading First Center, a federally funded center that partnered with ODE to provide technical support in the area of early literacy to fifty elementary schools throughout the state of Oregon.
Kristina Arcuri is an Educational Services Manager with CORE Learning. She is a former superintendent with 24 years of experience in the education sector, focused on driving growth and improving test scores by recruiting and maintaining high-quality staff. She is a decisive leader and analytical problem-solver with a solid track record of success.
Erica Hidalgo is a Senior Educational Services Manager with CORE. She was a classroom teacher in both Texas and New Mexico before serving as an elementary school principal and curriculum director. Prior to working with CORE, Erica served as a curriculum director where she planned and coordinated ongoing, job-embedded professional learning opportunities for administrators and teachers in both large urban and mid-sized rural school districts.
Thomas Acampora has over 15 years of experience working in and with schools to improve outcomes for students. He has led teams of educational professionals that worked with middle and high schools to improve graduation rates by creating powerful and nimble systems of student support, including small learning communities, early warning systems, positive behavior supports and restorative practices. He has managed and oversaw successful transformation plans that include a wide variety of partners and efforts at multiple schools across the country, ensuring coherent, effective, and sustained school improvement in the ABCs (Attendance, Behavior, Course Performance).
