Now more than ever, today's teachers are grappling with the question of how to reach struggling readers. While there are no quick fixes, thousands of teachers are combining the principles of differentiated instruction and guided reading with unparalleled success. Mixed in the right proportion, these popular strategies will help you build a balanced literary framework that gets results with even the most challenged learners.

Differentiated instruction tactics will help you understand how your students learn so you can teach in a way that makes sense to them. When you apply those tactics within the guided reading framework, which helps you lead students through new ways of approaching text, great things start to happen. The result is a classroom full of students who are able to negotiate increasingly challenging texts with unprecedented fluency.

This course is critical for today's educators, who often have to teach on the run with limited resources and unlimited demands on their time. Get ready to reach your readers with ease in no time flat!

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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 ever wished you had a good way to reach your struggling readers? If so, you're probably ready to discover the secret that thousands of teachers are already using to transform their reading instruction: differentiated instruction combined with guided reading. We'll take our first look at it in this lesson, and I'll explain how blending these techniques will help you build a balanced literary framework that helps your students negotiate a variety of texts with success.

Friday - Lesson 02

The first step in helping your students is getting to know who they are and how their minds work. In this lesson, you'll learn how to evaluate your students' readiness, interests, learning profiles, and social elements. Then you can use this information to drive meaningful, focused instruction that will help them see reading as a pleasure rather than a chore.

Week Two

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Assessment is at the heart of differentiated instruction because you have to know where your students are before you take them somewhere new. In today's lesson, learn how to plan quality pre-, ongoing, and summative assessments that will give you a clear picture of student learning. The best part of assessing students at multiple intervals is that you can tell what is working and what isn't, adjusting teaching strategies as you go.

Friday - Lesson 04

In this lesson, we'll discuss flexible groups, which are a mainstay in the differentiated classroom because they allow you to combine students for different reasons on different days. Sometimes you'll combine students based on interests and other times based on readiness or learning profile. However you use flexible groups, you'll appreciate the way this technique lets you accommodate a diversity of students.

Week Three

Wednesday - Lesson 05

When it comes to selecting the texts you'll teach, there are literally thousands of options. However, you can narrow them down considerably by understanding the criteria of good fiction and nonfiction texts. You'll be picking the right texts the first time after we finish this lesson.

Friday - Lesson 06

Did you know that a lot of the learning process hinges on what you do to prepare students before they actually start reading? That's what we'll discuss in this lesson. It's easy to just introduce a text and let students have at it, but if you plan the time before reading with activities that build anticipation and ground the text in prior learning, you'll be amazed by the results.

Week Four

Wednesday - Lesson 07

How students read a text is a highly personal matter, but in the classroom, you have to direct reading to get the greatest results. In this lesson, you'll learn how to teach students the right way to read, to comprehend what they've just read, and to make inferences. The ultimate goal is helping your students have truly meaningful interactions with the text, and I've got just the tricks to help you through.

Friday - Lesson 08

Does learning end when students put a book down? I hope not! The time to really help students process the text and extend their learning in new avenues is after students finish reading and have the chance to start thinking for themselves. Today, we'll go over the after-reading framework, where you'll teach students to turn information into ideas as they go beyond the text and into the world.

Week Five

Wednesday - Lesson 09

If you think of your classroom as a ladder, you'll realize that you have a lot of students on a lot of different rungs. In today's lesson, we'll explore tiering, which is a concept that helps you separate students based on their readiness, interests, or learning profiles. The trick is doing so without making students feel like they're more or less competent than others. Are you eager for the secrets? You'll master them in no time!

Friday - Lesson 10

What do you do with those extra 10 or 15 minutes at the end of a lesson or a school day? An increasingly popular idea is to anchor your students to the material they've learned by extending learning in new avenues. You can do this with games, writing prompts, or any number of other fun, creative activities. We'll explore lots of great ideas in today's lesson.

Week Six

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Your ultimate goal with the balanced literary framework is to create independent readers who are confident and capable of negotiating new texts with ease. In this lesson, you'll learn the basics of curriculum compacting, learning contracts, and individual projects, strategies to help your students transition to independence. You'll be amazed by how well students learn when they work more independently.

Friday - Lesson 12

We'll finish up the course in this lesson by discussing the foundation that you build for classroom learning. Your attitude is everything. (That almost bears repeating!) Beyond that, you need to be able to encourage struggling readers and help parents extend the learning at home. Once your foundation is strong, you'll notice that both students and parents take the initiative to build positive reading experiences.

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 Marsha Spears.

A veteran educator who has taught every grade but third, Marsha Spears has spent 35 years teaching students and training teachers. Spears earned a bachelor's and master's degree in educational administration with a specialty in curriculum and literacy development, training that would prepare her to take on the toughest of classrooms. And tough classrooms are where she made her mark, helping a wide variety of at-risk learners read with renewed confidence. Over the years, thousands of students and teachers have learned how easily they can incorporate Spears' reading techniques and activities into their daily routines.

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).

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