Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could be proactive in helping our struggling readers? Well, we can! In this six-week course, you'll learn response to intervention (RTI) strategies that ensure the struggling readers in your classroom get the help and education they need. RTI is research based and gives us a strategic plan to bring tiered interventions to our students, at their reading level and with their unique challenges in mind. Helping them with phonics, fluency, vocabulary mastery, comprehension, and writing, these intervention strategies tackle the toughest literacy problems with flexibility and creativity.

During our time together, you'll discover tools like Elkonin Boxes, alphabetic arcs, Bloom's Taxonomy, and new and exciting graphic organizers. Whether you're working with struggling readers in kindergarten or 12th grade, you'll find that these strategies work with a full 80% of students, without the need for special pull-outs or extra IEP intervention. Why? Because RTI gets to the root of the problem—quickly!

If you're eager to learn the right ways to help your struggling readers make steady progress throughout the year, you'll find that this course gives you the power to teach flexibly and creatively, without the need for extra training in literacy or fluency. As an added bonus, there's nothing quite like helping students discover the pleasures of reading!

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Syllabus:

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when the lesson is released, but you must complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

A new section of each course starts on the second or third Wednesday of each month. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week One

Wednesday - Lesson 01

Have you been searching for ways to help your struggling readers? Well, wonder no more. Response to intervention is here to help! In today's lesson, we'll explore how response to intervention uses research-based and tiered strategies to help students overcome roadblocks to literacy. You'll discover how these strategies will help you meet your adequate yearly progress goals.

Friday - Lesson 02

Response to intervention is based on a problem-solving model, which means that we get to be scientists while we're teaching reading. We begin by giving students a universal screening, deciding which intervention tier will be most helpful, trying several strategies, and then tweaking as necessary. Of course, we're also constantly evaluating how well our plan is working and whether students could benefit from more or less support. You'll learn about this powerful model today!

Week Two

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Did you know that most adults aren't sure just what phonemic awareness is? You definitely won't be one of them after today's fun lesson on the smallest units of sound a word can be divided into. First, we'll talk about how to identify phonemes (/c/a/t/), and then we'll look at how Elkonin Boxes and alphabetic arcs help students build phonemic awareness for simple and complex words.

Friday - Lesson 04

Phonemic awareness is the key to phonics instruction, so today we'll continue our journey by building a bridge between the two. When we teach students phonics, we're helping them understand the relationship between the word's sounds and the letters that represent them. Soon you'll be able to teach your students to parse words into their individual sounds and letters and then put them back together to spell new words.

Week Three

Wednesday - Lesson 05

When we read, we do it pretty automatically, without pausing to decode as we go. While you and I might take this for granted, it's an experience that's completely foreign to most struggling readers. So in this lesson, we'll talk about how to help struggling readers build fluency with direct and indirect approaches. This will help them learn to read with more automaticity.

Friday - Lesson 06

Have you ever sat down to read a thermodynamics text just for fun? Probably not! Most of us prefer to read text with words we know. But for many of our students, that means only a handful of texts will fit the bill. What's the solution? Helping students build three tiers of vocabulary, from the common sight words on up to complicated words with prefixes and suffixes. You'll learn how to do that in today's lesson.

Week Four

Wednesday - Lesson 07

Today we're going to tackle comprehension by engaging students where they are so they can build a bridge to where they're going. We'll cover several powerful comprehension strategies, like Making Connections and Bloom’s Taxonomy. With a little practice and a lot of coaching, your struggling readers will be making meaning in no time!

Friday - Lesson 08

Get ready to meet a powerful strategy to help students who are struggling with content area reading! Have you heard of SQ3R? With such a complicated name, it looks like it belongs in science fiction, but it can actually help students decode ordinary math, science, social studies, and language arts text. In this lesson, you'll discover how to survey, question, read, recite, and review.

Week Five

Wednesday - Lesson 09

Do any of your students suffer from Blank Page Syndrome when it's time to write? In today's lesson, we'll counter this difficult problem with some creative and fun ways to take the monotony out of putting ideas on paper. Get ready for Doodles to Details, brainstorming, quick writes, and more!

Friday - Lesson 10

Perhaps you've already found a strategy you love, but you want to tweak it a little bit to better meet your students' needs. Well, that's what differentiation is all about—adding some extra spice to the classroom. Today you'll learn how to tailor powerful response to intervention strategies to different students' learning styles, multiplying the choices you can offer your students.

Week Six

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Are you eager to turn your school into a professional learning community? Me too! In this lesson, we'll delve into how to collaborate effectively, exploring how you can use teamwork to build a more cohesive classroom and create more meaningful learning experiences. If you've been wondering just what goes into a strong team and how to get one started at your school, don't worry—you'll soon have all the answers!

Friday - Lesson 12

While we can perform literacy miracles at school if given enough time, ultimately, we need to involve parents if we want our efforts to last. So for our final lesson, we'll discuss some smart strategies for getting parents onboard. We'll look at the best ways to communicate, share, and answer any questions that come up in the process.

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Wendell Christensen .

A veteran educator, Wendell Christensen has worked with students and teachers to combat illiteracy one child at a time. Currently a classroom teacher and a literacy curriculum designer for districts across the country, Wendell believes that with the right mix of encouragement, intervention strategies, and support, every child can learn to read. His passion is helping teachers see that response to intervention's research-based strategies and flexible curriculum can help a full 80% of struggling readers right in the classroom, without the need for special pull-outs or IEPs.

Requirements:

Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).

Student Reviews:

Reviews coming soon! Please check back next month.