ELA (English Language Arts)

The science of reading emphasizes the importance of teaching phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension explicitly and systematically. In District 10 teachers use evidence based instructional practices to help students develop these critical reading skills. Here are some of the ways the science of reading lives in District 10: teaching phonics explicitly and systematically, building vocabulary and background knowledge routines, teaching phonemic awareness, replacing predictable texts with decodable texts, and explicit modeling of comprehension strategies through think alouds.

The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum is a systematic program of daily lesson plans that provide a high level of explicit modeling and student engagement. Each level of the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum focuses on six to eight phonemic awareness skills, along with additional activities to develop letter and sound recognition, introduce the phoneme-grapheme connection and extended language awareness.

The Heggerty Curriculum includes explicit instruction in the following phonological and phonemic awareness skills:

• Rhyming
• Initial Phoneme Isolation
• Blending
• Isolating final and medial phonemes (sounds)
• Segmenting
• Adding Phonemes
• Deleting Phonemes
• Substituting Phonemes

Heggerty supports our Pre-K-2 students in becoming automatic decoders of print. Heggerty provides students with consistent and repeated instruction and this transfers to develop a student's decoding and encoding skills.

Fundations provides all students with a foundation for reading and spelling. It is delivered to all students in K-2 classrooms in schools that use the program. Fundations instruction emphasizes phonemic awareness, phonics, high frequency words, fluency, vocabulary, handwriting, and spelling. Fundations provides specific measurable student learning objectives which are aligned to the New York State College and Career readiness standards. Fundations lessons provide students with multiple opportunities for meaningful practice with concepts, skills, and strategies. The purpose of Fundations is to provide a truly strong and secure foundation for reading success, with FUN!

Many of our elementary schools in CSD10 are utilizing HMH’s Into Reading program. In order to support this work, we have disseminated the Into Reading training resources crafted by grade.

We have also been working to support schools based on expressed needs. Through ongoing training and consistent modeling/coaching, we are striving for the best possible implementation of the program. We are establishing lab sites that all schools can visit and learn from promising practices at the building level. Finally, we’ve allotted time that schools will be able to share the structures they’ve put in place to engage families, and support teachers and students.

Acadience is an assessment tool utilized in our schools for Kindergarten through second grade. Acadience Reading equips educators with research-based tools that identify exactly where students are struggling so they can receive instructional support and get back on track.

i-Ready programs support every learner on their path toward grade-level success. By connecting to actionable, intuitive data, teachers know where to focus and students become more capable and engaged. Independent, evidence-based review verifies the program’s alignment to standards and research-based practices that help teachers deliver the explicit, systematic foundational skills instruction rooted in the Science of Reading.

Ready Common Core Reading’s rigorous yet supportive content is proven to make today’s demanding standards reachable for all students. This ELA program has complex, authentic texts that engage students in opportunities to practice close reading strategies across a variety of genres and formats.

Ready Common Core Reading instruction uses a consistent Read, Think, Talk, Write model in which teacher-led discussion and small group collaboration are central to student achievement. Lessons scaffold to build students’ confidence as they develop important critical thinking and analytical skills. Through ELA instruction, students are immediately engaged by the variety of real-world source texts, from ELA books to literature and poetry to blogs and news articles.

Ready Common Core Reading supports students and teachers with a wealth of on- and off-grade level resources. The ELA reading program:

• Develops skills and strategies for ELA reading comprehension
• Supports a balance of on-grade level and differentiated instruction
• Provides in-the-moment teacher support to guide teachers and help them build students’ reading habits
• Connects instruction to the Common Core State Standards across K–8 for a coherent path within and across grades