Through helping students define their possible selves, show them how becoming an expert reader can help them achieve their life goals.

Effective implementation of a literacy initiative that includes interventions calls on teachers to do so as intended, with high fidelity.

Generating higher-order questions about text benefits students reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. Model this skill for students and provide practice and feedback.

Teach students to classify questions about a text as higher-order or lower-order questions before generating their own questions.

Learn how these supports of increasing intensity work for literacy education and why they are relevant to special education.

Create an improvement plan and follow it to student success when implementing a literacy initiative.

Teaching a word through explicit vocabulary instruction involves multiple steps to ensure deeper student understanding of essential words and increased reading comprehension.

Explicit vocabulary instruction should involve thoughtful selection of which words will be taught to ensure word learning is targeted and effective.

Small-group, skills-based literacy instruction is at the forefront of goal setting, feedback given to teachers, professional development, and measuring of success for the Sioux City Community School District as described in our second of a two-part blog post series.

The addition of quality teaching materials and support from the Iowa Reading Research Center led to common beneficial practices used by teachers across schools during implementation of small-group, skills-based literacy instruction at Sioux City Community School District.

Teaching students to identify the type of question asked about a text using the Question-Answer Relationship strategy helps them formulate answers more easily.

Positive, student-focused messaging about a literacy initiative delivered to potential audiences via various mediums can gain support for the initiative from important stakeholders.

A lack of comprehension and media literacy skills can lead a student to mistakenly use false information found on the web at school. Learn more about the problem and counteracting it with instruction and modeling.

Marketing and communications plans allow school systems to gain support needed for a successful literacy initiative. We discuss identifying potential audiences for such efforts.

When parents engage in meaningful oral conversations with children in the home, it can have a positive impact on their vocabulary skills and overall reading ability. Our tips can help foster more of these conversations.