GRADUATE Course: Reading Across the Curriculum
| Average Ratings | |
|---|---|
| Five Stars | |
“I was pleased with all of the new resources and ideas that I will be able to bring into the classroom for teaching reading. Thanks!”
“This course has provided a solid tool to allow children the ability to self monitor and control their reading comprehension.”
1 Graduate Credit
- Grading: A-F
- Materials: Included in the course fee!
- Graduate Credit: 1 Graduate Credit
- Instruction Mode: Self-paced, Asynchronous (Online Class)
- Time Frame: Enroll and start any time
Course Description:
This course on Reading Across the Curriculum is a self-paced online course with instructor interaction.
Reading and comprehension are essential skills required for academic growth and professional excellence in all fields, and are vital for smooth functioning in daily life. Developing one’s students to be successful readers is thus an important goal for an educator. Often when students struggle within a specific subject matter, it is because of poor reading instruction and underdeveloped reading skills. This 3-part online PD course package has been designed to enable teachers to promote students’ reading capabilities by meeting specific learning needs.
In the first part, Quality Teacher Network reading specialist Sue Klund presents research-based and classroom proven reading instruction techniques that can be used across all content areas and grade levels to improve student achievement. The section equips teachers to become better instructors by motivating students to read more, and improve reading comprehension.
The second part focuses on situations where students may find certain text tough to read and comprehend. Students may come across vocabulary, phrases and writing styles that they find difficult to read. How can teachers help students read and comprehend tough text, developing them into strong readers? To answer this, teachers are presented with practical strategies for tackling tough text, with a focus on the Reading Comprehension Checklist. This checklist, to be used with nonfiction texts, integrates research-based reading strategies and is found to be successful across all subject areas.
In the third section, teachers are introduced to the guided reading strategy as a practical, yet powerful way to impact their students’ learning. Teachers will be provided with a strong rationale showing why this strategy is something they should invest in, followed by an insight into the details of the process. Taking this further, teachers are presented with specific strategies that they can use to make the most of the reading process, at its various stages, and for different kinds of students.
Each of the three sections contains a rich bank of resources, activities and tips that teachers can immediately take with them and integrate into their reading instruction.
Objectives & Outcomes:
As a result of successful participation in SECTION A Reading Across the Curriculum, students should be able to:
- Understand the basics of developing reading skills and the nature of the ‘reading’ skill
- Trace language development in the early years and the implications of different levels of daily language exposure
- Use reading assessments to assess students’ phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension
- Categorize reading assessments and evaluate their suitability for varying students at accurate levels
- Incorporate new lesson formats to replace the traditional ones, including pre-reading elements to strengthen students’ understanding of the text
- Make the actual reading process interactive and thorough by using reading guides, visual imagery, inquiry charts, questions and promoting word comprehension
- Extend the life of the text beyond the lesson through post reading, vocabulary and fluency strategies to ensure all students learn to read meaningfully
- Scaffold a textbook to support varying reading levels and use different books, on a common topic or learning objective to meet differing needs
- Use Question-Answer Relationships (QARS) as a way to teach students about various questions that arise while reading a text, and ways to answer them
As a result of successful participation in SECTION B Tackling Tough Text, students should be able to:
- Understand the importance of building students’ self-efficacy to ensure learning.
- Explore the need for appropriate background knowledge and reading strategies for successful student comprehension.
- Examine strategies for teaching reading comprehension.
- Go beyond traditional teaching models toward participatory literary practices.
- Identify the prerequisites to facilitate reading comprehension in the classroom.
- Explore the roadmap to activate students’ background knowledge, to ensure an internalization of the reading comprehension process.
- Examine the value of pre-reading in making stronger readers, and how to label and analyze the questions that accompany the text.
- Use the Reading Comprehension Checklist as a resource to enhance student comprehension.
As a result of successful participation in SECTION C Guided Reading, students should be able to:
- Use guided reading to promote balanced literacy, group interaction, effective evaluation from elementary to high school.
- Adopt practical ways to successfully implement guided reading, and its processes for different kinds of learners, and subjects.
- Provide Differentiated Instruction, through Levelled Text and Activities.
- Promote Guided reading for ALL students, focusing on how teachers can accommodate different learners in guided reading, including English Language Learners and students with Complex Communication Needs; along with specific accommodations while introducing the strategy for students with special needs.
- Implement procedures in a flexible manner, depending on the stage of guided reading students are at, and their age and reading levels.
- Set up a reading room and building a classroom library for choice reading and stay organized while implementing guided reading.
- Assess Guided Reading through Running Records and other creative strategies.
- Use Technology Effectively to enhance guided reading, as well as apps that can be used to support this strategy with a short description of each.
Special Instructions:
After completing the course, you will be directed to the university for registration.
The course met my needs.
This was my first course with PLB and I've already enrolled in the next course. The content was very up to date and classroom appropriate. I took away a lot of information to use in my school. The course was also easy to navigate. And, class tech support was fast and helpful.
I really enjoyed the course I took. It refreshed my memory on different reading techniques. I liked the way it was set up and found the read aloud feature to be valuable.
I enjoyed this class, appreciated all of the content (even if it wasn't completely new to me) and feel like the material I learned will help me be a better teacher. Thank you.
Enjoyed this course! Loved the self-paced opportunity! Customer service was prompt, friendly, and efficient.
Great course! Easy to use, vast amount of useful information to apply.
I'm thankful for this option to renew my FL teaching certificate at my own pacing.
This was a great course that gave me a lot of new material and information that will be useful in my classroom.