During this five-day institute, you'll take an in-depth look at how to use small group differentiated instruction to support readers in the primary, intermediate, and middle grades.

Learn how a variety of small-group lesson structures provide opportunities for teaching and learning that support readers’ development of oral language, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, content knowledge, and comprehension. You will deepen your understanding of the reading process and learn how to group students strategically to create meaningful teaching and learning opportunities that meet the diverse needs of all learners, including multilingual students. You will examine how to: assess students' strengths and needs as readers; form flexible groups; analyze and select appropriate texts for your students; and plan small group lessons that differentiate instruction to address the needs of each reader within a group.

Course Outcomes

• Build knowledge of reading as a complex process that includes building students’ understandings and use of: phonics and word recognition, phonological awareness, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary and background knowledge, and oral language development.
• Observe, assess, and analyze students’ reading behaviors to plan for instruction.
• Use ten text characteristics to analyze a variety of text types to consider the supports and challenges the texts offer to readers.
• Select appropriate texts and design instruction to build students’ reading competencies through successful reading experiences and thinking and talking about texts in a small group.
• Learn how to group students flexibly for instruction based on assessment data.
• Plan to teach for word solving, fluency, and comprehending using a variety of small group lesson structures including focus lessons, book clubs, and guided reading.
• Examine how the structures of small group lessons create purposeful opportunities for teaching and learning, with attention given to the needs of multilingual learners.