Next steps?
Part 1 (ORF and MAZE)
Emerging/Developing
Instructional focus:
*Target fluency (RAZ, repeated reading, oral practice)
*Strengthen vocabulary and comprehension (RAZ, UFLI - high interest, accessible texts)
*Diagnostic follow-up for decoding, word recognition (UFLI)
Core competency connections:
*Communication: partner reading, echo reading (oral expression, listening, confidence)
*Critical and creative thinking: text topic choice, visualize/draw/act-out stories
*Personal and social responsibility: provide safe, trusting, encouraging settings to share reading aloud; set small, achievable goals with self-reflection; develop resilience and ownership of growth - small is all!
Developing/Proficient
Instructional focus:
*Wide reading opportunities including cross-curricular texts, vocabulary expansion
*Comprehension strategies: inferring, questioning, summarizing, connection-making
Core competency connections:
*Communication: small group literacy circles , focus on active listening, discussion, idea sharing
*Critical and creative thinking: create alternative endings, design inquiry questions, compare perspectives
*Personal and social responsibility: collaborative inquiry projects, reading journals (meta-cognition strategies)
Proficient/Extending
Instructional focus:
*Challenging texts (literary, informational, multi-perspective)
*Analysis, synthesis, inquiry projects
*Independent, co-designed projects, leadership roles
Core competency connections:
*Communication: lead a seminar/book club, create podcasts, digital stories
*Critical and creative thinking: Creative projects: multimedia responses, comparative essays, co-design inquiry projects
*Personal and social responsibility: Peer mentorship/leadership
***Reminder: DIBELS screener is just a starting point - core competencies contextualize literacy next steps so that growth is not only mechanical (fluency, vocabulary development, comprehension) but also social, cognitive and personal.
Next steps?
Part 2 (Written Response)
Areas assessed: Ideas and content; organization; voice and style; word choice; sentence fluency; conventions
Instructional Focus
-Strengthen foundational writing skills: sentence structure, paragraphing, spelling, and punctuation.
-Provide targeted mini-lessons on organizing ideas and supporting them with simple details.
-Offer graphic organizers, sentence starters, and modeled writing to scaffold independence.
-Prioritize oral rehearsal before writing to strengthen idea formation.
Core Competency Connections
Communication:
-Encourage students to share orally with peers before writing, practicing active listening and using feedback to revise.
Critical & Creative Thinking:
-Support brainstorming strategies (word webs, visuals, prompts) to expand ideas; encourage risk-taking in word choice.
Personal & Social Responsibility:
-Foster a growth mindset by setting small, achievable writing goals and celebrating progress, building confidence and resilience
-Strengthen complexity & depth
-Enhance transitions & coherence
-Elevate vocabulary and sentence variety
-Refinement process / multi-draft revisions
-Peer review with guided protocol
-Polish conventions
Communication:
-Author's chair
-Peer feedback
-Review published writing
Critical & Creative Thinking:
-Alternative organization of writing (moving paragraphs, reorder, different introduction styles)
-Encourage students to analyze the strength of their evidence: “Is this real, relevant, strong? Could you push it further?”
Personal & Social Responsibility:
-Students set a revision/edit target and self-assess after revision.
-Promote accountability: students maintain a revision log (version 1 → version 2 → version 3) and annotate what change they made and why
-Challenge with sophisticated elements: incorporate rhetorical strategies (counterargument, concession, parallelism, rhetorical questions) and layered structure (introduction with hook, embedded thesis, sophisticated conclusion)
-Depth of evidence and nuance: Encourage use of quotes, statistics, or external sources (if allowed), and analysis of implications, consequences, or opposing views
-Voice, style, and flair: Support experimentation with metaphor, varied tone, rhetorical devices, pacing, and narrative hooks
-Publishing opportunities & cross-genre work: Transform essays into speeches, opinion columns, blog posts, or multimedia formats (e.g. infographic + essay)
-Self-directed revision &-editing: Provide a menu of advanced revision options (e.g. examine cohesion, transitions across paragraphs, eliminate redundancy, strengthen diction) and let them choose which focus to apply
Communication:
-Encourage adapting writing for different audiences or mediums (e.g. letter-to-editor, blog, podcast script)
-Incorporate opportunities to present or defend their arguments orally, responding to audience questions
Critical & Creative Thinking:
-Evaluate multiple perspectives, synthesize source material, and propose original insights or solutions
-Reflect: “If I rewrote this with a different audience or purpose, what would change?”
Personal & Social Responsibility:
-Encourage students to publish or share their work beyond the classroom (school newsletter, local contest, community blog)
-Promote mentorship: pair students with peers in a “writing coach” role, guiding peers during revision cycles
Next steps?
Part 3 (Text Response)
Instructional Focus: Model “think-aloud” predictions while reading aloud; use visuals and sentence starters (“I think this will happen because…”). Encourage checking predictions after reading.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – share predictions orally
• Critical Thinking – identify one clue from the text that supports the prediction.
• Personal Responsibility – track accuracy of predictions in a reading log.
Instructional Focus: Teach students to highlight or sticky-note key ideas in short passages. Start with teacher-provided guiding questions.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – explain what part is important and why in simple terms.
• Critical Thinking – distinguish between “interesting” and “important.”
• Social Responsibility – share findings in small groups, listening to others’ choices.
Instructional Focus: Explicitly teach common features (headings, captions, diagrams). Use scavenger hunts in texts to locate and explain features.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – practice describing what a feature tells the reader.
• Critical Thinking – match features to their purpose (e.g., a diagram explains how).
• Personal Responsibility – apply features when creating their own simple text.
Instructional Focus: Pre-teach high-frequency and content words using visuals and word maps. Reinforce with games.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – use new vocabulary orally in partner talk.
• Creative Thinking – draw or act out word meanings.
• Personal Responsibility – keep a personal word journal.
Instructional Focus: “Text clue + what I know = inference.” Use short, familiar passages.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – explain inference using sentence stems (“I think… because…”).
• Critical Thinking – practice with pictures before moving to text.
• Personal Responsibility – self-monitor by underlining the clue that helped.
Instructional Focus: Begin with simple “agree/disagree” statements and practice justifying opinions with one piece of text evidence.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – practice stating an opinion clearly.
• Critical Thinking – ask, “What is the author trying to tell me?”
• Social Responsibility – listen respectfully when others disagree.
Instructional Focus: Use sentence starters to connect text to self, text, or world (“This reminds me of…”).
Core Competencies:
• Communication – share connections in conversation
• Creative Thinking – draw connections visually (e.g., text-to-self webs).
• Personal Responsibility – reflect on how the text influenced their feelings or ideas.
Instructional Focus: Encourage students to refine predictions as they read and to cite multiple text clues.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – present predictions with evidence.
• Critical Thinking – adjust predictions when new information arises.
• Personal Responsibility – set a goal to check predictions at key points.
Instructional Focus: Sort details into “main ideas” vs. “supporting.”
Core Competencies:
• Communication – share summaries in orally in conversation with a partner or small group.
• Critical Thinking – justify why something is central.
• Personal Responsibility – monitor comprehension using sticky-note summaries.
Instructional Focus: Analyze how text features support comprehension in informational texts. Compare multiple features.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – explain how a feature supports understanding.
• Critical Thinking – evaluate which feature was most helpful.
• Personal Responsibility – apply text features intentionally in their own informational writing.
Instructional Focus: Teach strategies for figuring out word meaning (context clues, prefixes, suffixes).
Core Competencies:
• Communication – use new vocabulary accurately in speaking/writing.
• Critical Thinking – compare multiple meanings of a word.
• Personal Responsibility – add examples and visuals to their personal word journal.
Instructional Focus: Move to layered inferences (character feelings, motives). Provide scaffolds for citing evidence.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – frame inferences using “The text says… I think….”
• Critical Thinking – analyze how inference deepens understanding.
• Personal Responsibility – reflect on accuracy of inference after reading more.
Instructional Focus: Introduce author’s purpose, perspective, and bias. Use guided questions: “What is the author’s goal? Whose voice is missing?”
Core Competencies:
• Communication – explain opinions supported by two pieces of evidence.
• Critical Thinking – evaluate effectiveness of author’s argument.
• Social Responsibility – consider fairness and inclusivity in author’s choices.
Instructional Focus: Encourage deeper connections (beyond personal) to societal issues, themes, or other texts.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – share thoughtful reflections in group discussions.
• Creative Thinking – create a visual or written response connecting text to broader themes.
• Personal Responsibility – reflect on how the text influences their perspective or choices.
Instructional Focus: Encourage nuanced predictions that consider multiple possible outcomes, subplots, or author style.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – articulate complex, layered predictions.
• Critical Thinking – weigh probabilities and justify with multiple text clues.
• Personal Responsibility – mentor peers by modeling predictive reasoning.
Instructional Focus: Teach synthesis: pulling together important ideas across sections or texts.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – present synthesized summaries in polished formats (oral, written, multimedia).
• Critical Thinking – evaluate why an author included certain details and excluded others.
• Personal Responsibility – take initiative in leading group summarizing tasks.
Instructional Focus: Analyze how text features position readers or influence interpretation (bias in charts, persuasive use of visuals).
Core Competencies:
• Communication – explain subtle effects of features on meaning.
• Critical Thinking – critique effectiveness and suggest alternatives.
• Social Responsibility – question whose voices are amplified or omitted.
Instructional Focus: Focus on nuance, figurative language, and discipline-specific vocabulary. Explore etymology and connotation.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – adapt vocabulary use for formal and creative purposes.
• Critical Thinking – analyze how word choice shapes tone or bias.
• Personal Responsibility – model rich vocabulary use in discussions and writing.
Instructional Focus: Develop complex inferences about themes, symbolism, and author’s worldview.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – express inferences in extended responses with multiple layers of evidence.
• Critical Thinking – interrogate assumptions and ambiguities in the text.
• Social Responsibility – consider how texts shape identity, culture, or justice issues.
Instructional Focus: Engage in comparative analysis of texts; critique rhetorical strategies, perspective, and representation.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – present analyses in essays, debates, or multimedia.
• Critical Thinking – synthesize ideas across texts and perspectives.
• Social Responsibility – use critical analysis to challenge stereotypes or amplify marginalized perspectives.
Instructional Focus: Extend connections to global, ethical, or philosophical contexts; encourage reflective writing on implications.
Core Competencies:
• Communication – publish reflections in authentic forums (blogs, letters).
• Creative Thinking – generate new perspectives or solutions inspired by text.
• Personal Responsibility – use insights from text to take action (service, advocacy, peer leadership).