Professional Development

Smart Start: Arkansas's K-4 Initiative - Effective Literacy for Grades 2-4

Grade Levels

2-4
Special Education K-12

Approved Areas of Professional Development

Assessment
Building a Collaborative Learning Community
Cognitive Research
Content
Instructional Strategies
Principles of Learning/Developmental Stages
Standards/Frameworks/Curriculum Alignment

Description

Effective Literacy for Grades 2-4 is a two-year professional development opportunity offered by the Arkansas Department of Education and the state's education service cooperatives. It is designed to assist teachers in grades 2-4 and K-12 special education in the implementation of a comprehensive literacy program by increasing their knowledge and skills in research-based, developmentally appropriate instructional practices. It focuses on teaching students along a continuum of literacy learning progressions, using an assessment system to inform systematic and explicit instruction, choosing instructional strategies proven to prevent or remediate reading failure, and utilizing evidence-based practices for classroom management.

This professional development opportunity is aligned to the Common Core State Standards, the state's English language arts framework, and research findings provided by the National Reading Panel Report.

Training Schedule

Year I	Content
Three day initial summer institute	Overview of comprehensive literacy, literacy assessment system, literacy block, reading workshop, writing workshop
Two sessions in the fall semester	Literacy processing system, learning stages and behaviors in the literacy developmental continuum, familiar reading, reading workshop, the mid- to late-transitional learner: word study, read aloud, vocabulary instruction, writing workshop
Two sessions in the spring semester	Genre study in the reading and writing workshops, aligning data to the literacy developmental continuum, site-based observation training in a classroom
Year 2	Content
Three-day summer institute	The fluent learner: familiar reading, reading aloud, word study, reading workshop, writing workshop
One sessions in the fall semester	Comprehension strategies
One session in the spring semester	Site-based observation training in the classroom

Research

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, DHHS (2001). Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Available from http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/publications/researchread.htm.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Available from http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org/publications/publications.htm

Professional Texts

Bringing Words to Life by Beck et al. (978-1572307537)
The Fluent Reader, by Rasinski (978-0439332088)
Guiding Readers and Writers Grades 3-6, by Fountas and Pinnell (978-0325003108)
Is That A Fact? Teaching Nonfiction Writing, K-3, by Tony Stead (978-1571103314)
Strategies That Work, 2nd edition, by, Harvey and Goudvis (978-1571104816)
Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency; Thinking, Talking, and Writing About Reading, K-8, by Fountas and Pinnell (978-0325003085)
Teaching for Deep Comprehension, by Dorn and Soffos (978-1571104038)
Teaching Reading Sourcebook, 2nd Edition, by Honig, Diamond and Gutlohn (978-1571284575)
Words Their Way, Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction, 4th Edition, by Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton and Johnston (978-0132239684)
Writing Workshop: Working Through The Hard Parts (and They’re All Hard Parts) by Katie Wood Ray (978-0814113172)

For more information please contact:

Literacy specialists at your local education service cooperative.