At Springs Charter Schools, lives are transformed when parents are given a choice and a say in their child's education. Devin, who overcomes ADHD every single day, is nothing less than thriving since entering Springs Charter Schools over 10 years ago. Hear his mother Christina's story! 

Question: How do you make opportunities to listen to students read aloud regularly and measure reading fluency?

Answer: The personalized learning assignments focused on mastery were all embedded in my grade-level Canvas course and my instructional strategies morphed and improved over the couple of years I taught for Venture. 

One of the first things I did and easiest thing you can do (regardless of whether you teach on campus or online) is to provide a benchmark reading passage as a Canvas assignment and require an audio or video file as submission. Students can read aloud and you can monitor their progress much more frequently than you could finding time in your busy day to listen to them all read. I had my students advancing through more complex reading assignments weekly.

Then, I found Google Fluency Tutor and it made scoring student’s reading and monitoring progress so much better! Completing Running Records was quick and easy and students could set goals and work towards mastery. I assigned passages based on Student’s Lexile level and even created assignments for sight words, and phonics. Watch a Short Overview here (4 min.). I can’t recommend it enough!

Question: How do you make sure students have enough reading practice within their Zone of Proximal development?

Answer: I used Epic Books. It was free for teachers and has over 40,000 books, audiobooks & learning videos. I would assign specific books I wanted students to read based on our content. I would also assign a specific number of minutes be spent free reading based on their reading level and the reporting feature would allow me to see what books they read and how many minutes were spent reading.  Watch this 2 minute video of me explaining to students how to find books on Epic based on their Lexile level. 

Question: How do you monitor students’ progress with phonics and sight words?

Answer: I created assessments for students for each of the 100 words. And then I created a Pathway in Canvas. Assignments were opened to students based on identified area of need and mastery. Learning was personalized for students. They worked at their own pace, tracked their progress, reported out on their progress weekly, and worked towards mastery of grade-level standards. Click here to watch a video I made for parents explaining how the Pathway worked (4:24 min.). You can also watch this 5 minute video I made explaining to students how to self-assess and track their own readiness to take the mastery assessment.  I also created a Pathway for phonics rules and required students to achieve mastery before advancing to the net skill. Watch this short 3 minute video to see me describe that Pathway. 

Question: How did you teach spelling so that it was personalized and allowed students to work towards mastery?

Answer: I used a program called Phonetic Zoo through Institute for Excellence in Writing. Although I don’t care for their writing program, I loved the spelling program because it is rules based. Students are working independently at their own pace and only moving onto the next lesson after they are able to demonstrate mastery. Click here to watch a short video of me explaining how it worked (5:45). 

Question: Do you have any recommendations for scaffolding learning for online students who are struggling?

Answer: Yes! I created lessons for students that were always scaffolded. I recorded myself reading the material and I also included the text. Students had the option to read the material independently, or click to hear it read aloud and follow along.  

Question: What do you consider to be rigorous instruction in reading?

Answer: Reading fluency involves Phrasing, Expression, Accuracy, and Rate and each must be taught explicitly and assessed. Click here to watch a short video describing how I taught those skills to my students. You have access to those lessons and many resources for teaching reading in the TTSW: Teaching Fluency course. Of course, I also made sure my students were involved in a literature circle and reading novels of choice in addition to their reading instruction.