Description

Keys to Literacy is a professional development program designed to train teachers to provide content literacy instruction embedded in classroom instruction using existing reading and curriculum materials.  This professional development program is designed for all teachers grades K-3 and educators who provide support to struggling readers.

Features

This version of The Key Comprehension Routine (Primary Grades K-3) is a version of the program that enables schools to introduce a comprehension routine to students prior to entering intermediate and middle grades. Younger students are introduced and build common language for comprehension skills and develop meta-cognition (awareness of thinking) through the routine.

 

Initial training for teachers is two days and the training books are required.  The initial training may be blended online.  Follow up training for teachers is required at a minimum of four days.  It may include: review workshops, classroom observation and modeling, guided practice lesson development, small-group share sessions and consultation.  Professional Development for building coaches involves two-day coach training and a follow up consultation session.  Professional development for administration involves a two-hour workshop.

 

The online professional development course is aligned with the training book for The Key Comprehension Routine: Primary Grades. The course provides a self-guided opportunity to access training for educators who are not able to participate in live training. The course takes approximately 9.5 hours to complete and must be completed within eight weeks.

 

Starting in the primary grades, the Common Core Literacy Standards place significant emphasis on teaching increasingly complex comprehension skills for narrative and informational text. The Key Comprehension Routine provides instruction that all teachers can immediately use to teach these skills:

• Oral language: how to use oral language and a rich language environment in the classroom to improve listening comprehension, a necessary precursor for reading comprehension
• Text structure — sentences: how to analyze text for read aloud and reading that contains complex sentences and how to build syntactic awareness
• Text structure — paragraphs: how to use knowledge of paragraph structure to support comprehension
• Text structure: building awareness of the difference between narrative and informational structures
• Categorizing and main idea skills: expanding basic categorizing into main idea skills and identifying main ideas during read aloud and reading
• Top-down topic webs: introduction to a flexible, foundational graphic organizer to organize verbal or written information
• Two-column notes: introduction to a format that teaches the difference between main ideas and details
• Retell and summary: using retell to organize and describe the events from a story, and using basic summary to analyze text to identify the most important ideas
• Question generation: students learn that thinking can occur at different levels from easy to difficult through an introduction to question generation using Bloom’s Taxonomy

Research

Note- The research presented here is for the concepts taught in this Keys to Literacy professional development program, not the program itself.

Alvermann, D.E. & Moore, D. (1991). “Secondary school reading.” In R. Barr, M.L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, & P.D. Pearson (Eds.) Handbook of Reading Research 2 : 951-983. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Biancarosa, G., & Snow, C.E. (2004). Reading next: A vision for action and research in middle and high school literacy: A report from Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Block, C.C., & Lacinda, J. (2009). Comprehension instruction in kindergarten through grade three. In S.E. Israel & G.G. Duffy (Eds.). Handbook of research on reading comprehension. New York: Routledge.

Carlisle, J. & Rice, M. (2002). Improving reading comprehension: Research-based principles and practices. Baltimore: York Press.

Curtis, M.E., & Longo, A.M. (1999). When adolescents can’t read. Manchester, NH: Brookline Books.

Dewitz, P., Jones, J., & Leahy, S. (2009). Comprehension strategy instruction in core reading programs. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(2).

Duke, N. K., Pressley, M., & Hilden, K. (2004). Difficulties with reading comprehension. In C.A. Stone, E.R. Silliman, B.J. Ehren, & K. Apel (Eds.). Handbook of language and literacy: Development and disorders, 501-520. New York: Guilford Press.

Duke, N.K., & Pearson, P.D. (2002). Effective practices for developing reading comprehension. In A.E. Farstrup & S.J. Samuels (Eds.). What research has to say about reading comprehension, 3rd ed. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Gaskins, I.W. (1998). “There’s more to teaching at-risk and delayed readers than good reading instruction.” The Reading Teacher, 51(7), 534-547.

Graham, S. & Hebert, M. (2010). Writing to read: Evidence for how writing can improve reading. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). Writing next: Effective strategies to improve writing of adolescents in middle and high schools – A report to Carnegie Corporation of New York. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Greenleaf, C. & Schoenbach, R. (2004). Building capacity for the responsive teaching of reading in the academic disciplines: Strategic inquiry designs for middle and high school teachers’ professional development. In D. Strickland & M.L. Kamil (Eds.), Improving reading achievement through professional development, pp. 97-127. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers.

Heller, R., & Greenleaf, C. (2007). Literacy instruction in the content areas: Getting to the core of middle and high school improvement. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

Kamil, M.L., Borman, G.D., Dole, J., Kral, C.C., Salinger, T., & Torgesen, J. (2008). Improving adolescent literacy: Effective classroom and intervention practices: A Practice Guide (NCEE #2008-4027). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc.

Lieberman, A., & Wood, D. 92002). The National Writing Project. Educational Leadership 59: 40-43.

Meltzer, J., Smith, N.C., & Clark, H. (2003). Adolescent literacy resources: Linking research and practice. Providence, RI: Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Pearson, P.D., & Duke, N.K. (2002). Comprehension instruction in the primary grades. In C.C. Block & M. Pressley (Eds.). Comprehension instruction: Research-based best practices. New York: The Guilford Press.

Pearson, P.E., & Gallagher, M.C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8, 317-344.

Peverly, S.T., Ramaswamy, V., Brown, C., Sumowski, J., Alidoost, M., & Garner, J. (2007). What predicts skill in lecture note taking? Journal of Educational Psychology, 99, 167-180.

Pressley, M. (2000). What should comprehension instruction be the instruction of? In M. Kamil, Mosenthal, P., Pearson, P.D. & Barr, R. (Eds.), Handbook of reading research 3: 545-561. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Pilonieta, P., & Medina, A.L. (2009). Reciprocal teaching for the primary grades: We can do it, too! Reading Rockets Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/40008.

Reutzel, D.R., Smith, J.A., & Fawson, P.C. (2005). An evaluation of two approaches for teaching reading comprehension strategies in the primary years using science information/texts. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 20(3), 276-305.

Shanahan, T. (2006). Relations among oral language, reading, and writing development. In C.A. MacArthur, & S. Graham, J. Fitzgerald (Eds.). Handbook of writing research. New York: Guilford Press.

Shanahan, T., Callison, K., Carriere, C., Duke, N.K., Pearson, P.D., Schatschneider, C., & Torgesen, J. (2010). Improving reading comprehension in kindergarten through 3rd grade: A practice guide (NCEE 2010-4038). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from whatworks.ed.gov/publications/practice guides.

Snow, C. (2002). (Chair). RAND reading study group: Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Stotsky, S. (2001). “Writing: The royal road to reading comprehension.” In S. Brody (ed.), Teaching reading: Language, letters, and thought. Milford, NH: LARC Publishing.

Research Summary

CAUTION: The following summary was prepared by the program developers and may contain bias

Keys to Literacy Research Summary

Related Resources

Webinars & Videos

Worksheets & Templates

Available Training

Four implementation options are available: full onsite support, blended online/onsite, licensed level I train the teacher, and self-guided.

 

Initial training for teachers is two days and the training books are required.  The initial training may be blended online.  Follow up training for teachers is required at a minimum of four days.  It may include: review workshops, classroom observation and modeling, guided practice lesson development, small-group share sessions and consultation.  Professional Development for building coaches involves two-day coach training and a follow up consultation session.  Professional development for administration involves a two-hour workshop.

 The online professional development course is aligned with the training book for The Key Comprehension Routine: Primary Grades. The course provides a self-guided opportunity to access training for educators who are not able to participate in live training. The course takes approximately 9.5 hours to complete and must be completed within eight weeks.