Evidence-Based Strategies

Elkonin Boxes

Phonological/Phonemic Awareness Strategy:

Helps students (K-2) segment individual phonemes in words.

Phoneme Substitution Activities

Phonological/Phonemic Awareness Strategy:

Builds awareness of how changing sounds changes meaning (e.g., "cat" → "cap").

Oral Blending

Phonological/Phonemic Awareness Strategy:

Combine sounds

e.g.

• /c/ /a/ /t/ = cat

Segmenting

Phonological/Phonemic Awareness Strategy:

Breakwords

e.g.

• dog = /d/ /o/ /g/

Rhyming Games/Songs

Phonological/Phonemic Awareness Strategy:

Enhances ability to hear and manipulate sounds in spoken words.

Alliteration activities

Phonological/Phonemic Awareness Strategy:

help students recognize and produce initial sounds, building phonological awareness and supporting early reading skills.

• Students say their name with an adjective or verb that shares the same first sound.
  🟢 Example: “Dancing Dana” or “Jumping Jack”

Repeated Reading

Fluency strategies:

Builds speed, accuracy, and prosody.

Choral Reading

Fluency strategies:

Supports less fluent readers by reading in unison with others.

Echo Reading

Fluency strategies:

Teacher models fluent reading, and students imitate.

Partner Reading

Fluency strategies:

Take turns reading

Timed Reading

Fluency strategies:

Track words per minute (WPM)

Frayer Model

Vocabulary Strategies:

Develops deep word knowledge through definition, characteristics, examples, and non-examples. (grades 3-12)

Context Clues

Vocabulary Strategies:

Using surrounding words for meaning

Multi-exposures

Vocabulary Strategies:

Students build vocabulary and comprehension by encountering words or concepts multiple times in varied contexts.

Semantic Mapping

Vocabulary Strategies:

Helps to visualize word relationships and meanings.

Tiered Vocabulary Instruction

Reading Comprehension Strategies:

Targets high-utility academic words (Tier 2) for better comprehension

Think-Alouds

Reading Comprehension Strategies:

Models metacognitive strategies to monitor understanding..

• (Thinking while reading)

Reciprocal Teaching

Reading Comprehension Strategies:

Teaches students to summarize, question, clarify, and predict in groups.

Graphic Organizers

Reading Comprehension Strategies:

Helps organize ideas, identify main ideas, and summarize.

Text-Dependent Questions

Reading Comprehension Strategies:

Require students to use evidence from the text to answer questions, promoting close reading and deeper comprehension.

Print-rich enviornment

Early Literacy Instruction Strategies:

Promotes print awareness, letter recognition, and a love of reading using labels, word walls, charts, books, and student writing that help children connect spoken and written language.

Interactive Read-Alouds

Early Literacy Instruction Strategies:

Teacher reads a text aloud with intentional pauses for discussion, predictions, and vocabulary support.
🎯 Purpose: Builds listening comprehension, oral language, and critical thinking.

Shared Reading

Early Literacy Instruction Strategies:

Teacher and students read a text together, often from a big book or projected text.
🎯 Purpose: Models fluent reading and supports word recognition and comprehension.

Literacy Centers

Early Literacy Instruction Strategies:

Small-group or independent stations focused on reading, writing, phonics, and vocabulary.
🎯 Purpose: Encourages hands-on practice, differentiation, and engagement in foundational skills

Guided Reading

Early Literacy Instruction Strategies:

Small groups reading texts at their instructional level with teacher support.
🎯 Builds decoding, fluency, and comprehension.

Phonological Awareness Games

Early Literacy Instruction Strategies:

Rhyming, clapping syllables, identifying beginning sounds.
🎯 Develops sound manipulation and listening skills.

Running Records

Assessment and Data Use Strategies

Monitors fluency, error types, self-correction and comprehension levels when child reads aloud.

Exit Slips

Assessment and Data Use Strategies

Checks for understanding at the end of a lesson.

Formative Assessment

Assessment and Data Use Strategies

Ongoing checks during instruction (e.g., exit tickets, observations).
🎯 Purpose: Informs instructional decisions and student support in real time.

Summative Assessment

Assessment and Data Use Strategies

Evaluation at the end of a unit or term (e.g., end-of-year test, final project).
🎯 Purpose: Measures mastery of skills and informs accountability/reporting

Progress Monitoring

Assessment and Data Use Strategies

Regular, frequent assessment of a student’s skills to evaluate growth over time.
🎯 Purpose: Determines whether interventions are effective or need adjusting.

Miscue Analysis

Assessment and Data Use Strategies

Examines the types of errors a student makes while reading aloud (insertions, omissions, substitutions).
🎯 Purpose: Identifies reading strategies and areas of need in decoding or comprehension.

DIBELS / Progress Monitoring

Assessment and Data Use Strategies

A set of short fluency and literacy assessments is used regularly to monitor student growth. Tracks growth and targets instruction using brief, regular checks.

DIBELS

(Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills)

A set of short, timed assessments used to measure early literacy skills such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and comprehension in K–6 students.

• Monitor reading development

• Identify students needing intervention

• Track progress over time

Importance of Phonemic Awareness

Hearing and working with individual sounds (phonemes) in words is critical for sounding out and blending words when learning to spell and read.

Importance of Phonics

It helps students decode unfamiliar words when reading and supports accurate spelling.

Importance of Fluency

allows readers to spend less energy decoding and more on understanding the text.

Importance of Vocabulary

A strong vocabulary supports reading comprehension; students can't understand what they can't define.

Importance of Reading Comprehension

The ultimate goal of reading is Understanding and interpreting what is read.

Importance of Phonological Awareness

The ability to recognize and manipulate sounds in spoken language (rhymes, syllables, onset, rimes)

Builds the foundation for decoding and spelling.

Importance of Effective ELL Approaches

Visual Supports

Effective ELL Approaches:

Use of images, charts, and graphic organizers to aid understanding.

Modeling & Sentence Frames

Effective ELL Approaches:

Demonstrate language and provide sentence starters.

Example: The teacher says, “I predict the character will… because…”

Interactive Activities

Effective ELL Approaches:

Promote peer interaction to build language.
Example: Students participate in a Think-Pair-Share activity, discussing a question with a partner before sharing with the class.

Culturally Responsive Teaching

Effective ELL Approaches:

Connect instruction to students’ cultural backgrounds and experiences.