Map out a weekly comprehension target skill

Kristina will kick off the morning with a yearlong vision of whole-class comprehension instruction. Within that vision, Kristina will provide participants with a suggested scaffold of skills from retelling to synthesizing that honors grade-level standards and best-practice instruction.

Armed with this big-picture understanding, the primary focus of this first morning is to learn the process for planning and teaching a single comprehension skill across an entire week.

During the morning session, Kristina will:

• Provide attendees a list of instructional points per comprehension skill.
• Model how to layer instruction of those points day after day to build students’ knowledge and know-how for each week’s target skill.
• Reveal this explicit instruction across a week of mini-lessons that each include the gradual release of responsibility (i.e., I do, We do, You do).

The afternoon will transition into work time. Participants will finalize their own week-by-week map of comprehension target skills. Then they will drill down the order of instructional points to roll out each day of the mini-lesson series. While working independently, teachers will have access to Kristina and her team to ask questions, seek feedback, and troubleshoot concerns.

The day will conclude with a recap of the yearlong vision for delivering whole-class comprehension instruction. Kristina will highlight the facets addressed within Day 1 and prepare participants for what’s coming on Day 2.

Add instructional time for text variety and writing-about-reading

Creating a yearlong map of comprehension target skills and explicit instruction is powerful. However, this alone is not enough. Missing from the day-one calendar are two essential pieces that are required in the standards and tested on state assessments.

Teachers must:

1. Apply reading instruction to a wide range of text types.
2. Assess student comprehension through their writing.

With this new understanding, Kristina will model how to take a second pass over each week’s comprehension skill in order to add these missing ingredients.

During the morning session, learn how to:

• Evaluate when each skill is best suited for literature versus informational text, print versus visual texts, and single versus multiple texts. Plot those decisions within the calendar.
• Teach students how to articulate their reader thinking in brief constructed responses and longer extended responses. Account for that instruction within the calendar.

The afternoon will again transition into work time. Participants will update their individual calendars to incorporate experiences with various text types and writing-about-reading instruction. While working independently, Kristina and her team will again be available to answer questions, provide feedback, and troubleshoot concerns.

The day will conclude with the last piece of this planning puzzle—a process for choosing just the right text to support each day’s mini-lesson.