Topic: Daily Lit Bit

Through interactive read-aloud, students can expand their knowledge and vocabulary through listening and talking.

When you read to a group over time, every text makes it possible for them to share ideas and get to know other people and places in the context of a pleasurable experience.

The goal of guided reading is not for students to just read “this book” or understand a single text, but – with expert teaching – to create learning that is generative and that can be applied across texts.

A system for taking running records at selected intervals is essential to effective teaching in guided reading lessons.

During interactive read-aloud, students are meant to listen to the story, not try to decode words and attend to punctuation.

Guided reading leads to the independent reading that builds students' effective processing system.

No matter how well you plan and structure learning tasks, it’s the one-on-one interactions that inform the power and effectiveness in your teaching.

With guided reading students learn how to engage in every facet of the reading process at their instructional level and take their reading power to all literacy contexts.

Reading aloud is an essential foundation of a good language and literacy system.

Exciting and beautifully crafted books stir children's imagination and enhance their language and knowledge of stories.

Take the time to reflect on your teaching. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of self-reflection and professional development is the talk and problem solving that takes place between colleagues as a result.

Observation of literacy behaviors should drive your next teaching moves.

By connecting learning across instructional contexts, you ensure that children generalize the principle to the texts that they’re reading and writing and find authentic application for their learning.

We believe that well-planned and organized explicit teaching of language principles is critical, but that effective lessons must also contain an element of inquiry.

During phonics, spelling, and word study lessons, the teacher provides short, explicit instruction to help children learn about and efficiently use sounds, letters, and words.

Poems provide children with an authentic opportunity to apply their knowledge of letter/sound relationships and word patterns and parts.

When observing students through phonics and word work, you are noticing what the student knows about the phonetic rules of English and how they work.

Meeting a word in different contexts strengthens students' understanding of it.