Welcome 2015 and Happy New Year!

As educators, we feel like our yearly clock begins in August and we celebrate mid-year rather than a new year. Currently, we have around five months to make our end of the year count. So what does that mean for you? For us as ARI regional staff that means we continue supporting and guiding teachers, districts, and students toward college and career readiness. 


With that being said, ARI regional staff attended Foundations for Beginning Reading training in December of 2014. The original ARI Beginning Reading modules have been updated and revised with some additional research, videos, and connections to the college and career ready standards. While in the training, I could not help myself  thinking about how all educators could benefit from retooling their own learning with these new and improved modules. 


                     

Recently, I had the opportunity to learn alongside four great educators in our region, specifically Tuscaloosa County. We only had time to do an in-depth dive to the Phonics module. This is an area of focus for them and we thought this would give us our biggest bang for our buck with the time we had together. It was a wonderful learning opportunity. We wrapped up our morning of learning with a 3-2-1 strategy. Participants were asked to share 3 pieces of new learning and 2 phonics instructional practices they would take back to their classroom. I wanted to share some of their ideas to inspire others about the importance of explicit and systematic phonics instruction. 

Quotes from participants:

"I learned how to better create a balanced literacy program to promote reading." 

"I learned it takes struggling readers 40 exposures to learn a new word." 

"I learned how to explicitly teach a phonics lesson especially in kindergarten."

"I learned exactly how the phonics progression works." 



The following are some of the ideas from today's learning that teachers will take back to their classrooms: 

"I will incorporate the letter tiles in small group instruction." 

"I will try and always give them a chance to connect their learning with a writing activity."

"I will begin using the letter blocks for sounds." 

"I would like to purchase a white board for my small group instruction." 

If any of you think you could benefit from a retooling of any of these components: the conceptual framework, intervention, assessment, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, oral language and vocabulary, and comprehension please let your ARI contact know and we can set up a time with your school. Thanks again to the participants for a great session of learning!