Literacy professional learning for school leaders and teachers

You may have devoured the books, listened to the podcasts and followed the science of reading discussions in Facebook groups. Yet the classroom question remains: Which practices will make the greatest impact on my students’ reading and writing, and how do I fit them all in?

Perhaps you’ve begun implementing structured literacy but aren’t seeing the progress you expected. Perhaps your reading and writing lessons are each well planned, but the connection between them still feels unclear.

In this practical session, we will start with the essentials of the literacy block, then discuss the importance of more ‘eyes on text’ through daily reading of complex texts, written responses, sentence instruction and text-level writing. You’ll see how scaffolded choral reading can help students access and revisit a demanding text through repeated reading approaches and queries, and how that same text can become a worked example when you teach students to write.

The aim is to take the confusion out of planning: what to teach, how the parts connect, what to prioritise and what you may be able to let go.

Make complex texts part of the daily literacy block

We’ll look at why students need regular, supported opportunities to read complex texts, and how scaffolded choral reading can give them access to the language, ideas and text structures they will later discuss and write about. You’ll also see the research showing that when all students read complex texts, including those with much lower reading accuracy, they make significant gains in reading accuracy and fluency.

Build comprehension through knowledge, discussion and writing

Explore how background knowledge helps students understand what they read, and practical ways to connect students to that knowledge. We’ll examine comprehension monitoring, how readers build a mental model of a text, and how to support students with inference, summarising and getting the gist routines.

You’ll learn how to use interspersed queries during reading, including Questioning the Author (QtA). We’ll also look at examples of written responses to reading that can be used to improve students’ comprehension of what they are reading.

Plan the move into sentence and text-level writing

Learn how to link different genres to your rich texts and knowledge-rich units. We’ll examine an example of a linked reading and writing scope and sequence that identifies the rich text, genre and writing focus, as well as the sentence and grammar and punctuation level focus so the connection is visible in your planning.

You’ll also receive a brief introduction to Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) as an approach to teaching text-level writing. SRSD has repeatedly demonstrated significant, strong effects in research on text level writing instruction and executive function. We will look at what the approach involves, how it can connect to reading and knowledge-rich units, and real case studies showing its impact on students’ writing.

Use assessment to decide what comes next

Learn how to assess reading comprehension in relation to the texts and knowledge-rich units students have actually studied, and use what you learn to make better instructional decisions for teaching and learning and end of semester reporting.

Throughout the workshop, we’ll return to the questions teachers are juggling:

What is essential in a structured literacy block?

Which approaches make the greatest impact? How do I know?

And what can I let go?

This session is ideal for teachers and literacy leaders who already have some background in structured literacy, but:

• Aren’t seeing the impact on student reading or writing that they expected;
• Are unsure how to fit the essential practices into the time available; or
• Want a clearer, more practical way to link reading and writing.

Predominantly Year 2 to 6 teachers and leaders, although all are welcome

Your registration includes two 90-minute follow-up online group coaching sessions. You’ll have time to trial some of the routines with your students, notice what happens, and return for advice, discussion and answers to the questions that arise in practice. Coaching dates and joining details will be provided to participants.