Teaching Reading

Hours: 24 / Access Length: 180 Days / Delivery: Online, Self-Paced

Course Overview:

Review the skills you will need to pass the Instructional Paraprofessional's exam as you explore ways creative ways to present reading skills to students. We will learn ways to help students become excited about reading. We will explore ways to present reading skills to student at all grade levels and ways to improve the assessment of reading skills. This course is applicable to teachers as well as instructional paraprofessionals.

Course Outline:

Lesson 1: Getting Started

In this lesson we are going to set the stage for the course by realizing that there are many scientific claims to being the best way to teach Reading but when it comes down to it, the best way is what works for us and for our students. Throughout the course we will be exploring different ways to improve our teaching, but these will be a new set of tools that you can pick and choose from as you are teaching.

Lesson 2: Bonding and Sharing

In this lesson we will explore ways we can bond with our students and share with them our reading lives. We will look at ways we can learn more about our students and their reading habits while sharing our stories and reading habits with them. This will provide a way for our students to see us as real people and help them to develop trust in us.

Lesson 3: Teach with a Sense of Urgency

In this lesson we are going to introduce the Optimal Learning Model for teaching reading. The goal of this model is to move our students from dependence on us to being independent learners. We will see how what we have discussed so far will help us to create an environment conducive to learning with this model.

Lesson 4: Getting Ready

Working with your students to create a classroom library is a good way to get the excited about reading. Helping them to pick books that are appropriate for them will help them to succeed and improve at reading. In this lesson we will explore guidelines for creating a classroom library and for helping our students choose books to read. We'll also look at how to help students become independent readers and work on skills for partnered reading.

Lesson 5: Assessing Reading

In this lesson we are going to take a look at including reading assessment as a part of our teaching process. We are going to look at performing reading conferences regularly with students. Even when we have to give students standardized tests we can prepare students by asking them questions about their reading that they will encounter on the exam.

Lesson 6: Teaching Comprehension

In this lesson we are going to explore techniques for helping our students improve their reading comprehension. We will see that it is important to teach comprehension as a part of the process of teaching students how to read and that it should be included with all reading activities.

Lesson 7: Shared Reading

In this lesson we are going explore shared reading as a way to teach students to read and to improve reading comprehension. We will see how reading allowed can be used with various kinds of texts and at all grade levels.

Lesson 8: Guided Reading

In this lesson we are going to explore guided reading. In guided reading we move the students closer to being independent readers. We'll see how guided reading differs from shared reading and look at ways we can implement it in our classrooms.

Lesson 9: Making the Most of Your Time

In this lesson we look at ways we can make the most of our time in the classroom and out of the classroom. We will look at ways to give our students more time with reading in the classroom. We will remain effective teachers if we make time for our own interests and for professional development. We'll look at ways we can keep our teaching skills sharp.

Lesson 10: Putting it All Together

In this lesson we are going to look back at what we have learned in this course and create an artifact for our portfolios.

All necessary materials are included.

System Requirements:

Internet Connectivity Requirements:

• Cable, Fiber, DSL, or LEO Satellite (i.e. Starlink) internet with speeds of at least 10mb/sec download and 5mb/sec upload are recommended for the best experience.

NOTE: While cellular hotspots may allow access to our courses, users may experience connectivity issues by trying to access our learning management system.  This is due to the potential high download and upload latency of cellular connections.   Therefore, it is not recommended that students use a cellular hotspot as their primary way of accessing their courses.

Hardware Requirements:

• CPU: 1 GHz or higher
• RAM: 4 GB or higher
• Resolution: 1280 x 720 or higher.  1920x1080 resolution is recommended for the best experience.
• Speakers / Headphones
• Microphone for Webinar or Live Online sessions.

Operating System Requirements:

• Windows 7 or higher.
• Mac OSX 10 or higher.
• Latest Chrome OS
• Latest Linux Distributions
  

NOTE: While we understand that our courses can be viewed on Android and iPhone devices, we do not recommend the use of these devices for our courses. The size of these devices do not provide a good learning environment for students taking online or live online based courses.

Web Browser Requirements:

• Latest Google Chrome is recommended for the best experience.
• Latest Mozilla FireFox
• Latest Microsoft Edge
• Latest Apple Safari

Basic Software Requirements (These are recommendations of software to use):

• Office suite software (Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or LibreOffice)
• PDF reader program (Adobe Reader, FoxIt)
• Courses may require other software that is described in the above course outline.