Workshops

This workshop will include:

• What is a Structured Literacy approach?
• The importance of Science of Reading (SOR) and Science of Learning (SOL)
• The importance of phonemic awareness
• How to use a scope and sequence
• What are decodable books?
• A Structured Literacy lesson plan – elements of a lesson – junior and senior
• Assessment, data collection and reporting
• Orthographic Mapping.

At this workshop you will:

• Gain knowledge about the patterns and generalisations of the English language
• Be provided with the resources, practical learning experiences and knowledge to be able to teach these patterns in a structured literacy way
• Practice and apply the knowledge gained and receive feedback
• Make resources to use immediately in the classroom
• Have plenty of opportunity to ask questions about the patterns to the presenters

Understanding and teaching fluency and morphology supported by practical exercises and an exploration into the Language Comprehension strands of Scarborough’s Rope.

• Fluency: what is it, how to teach it, how to assess it and some practical ways to integrate it into your classroom.
• Morphology: what is it, why teach it, key terminology and some practical exercises to teach morphology in Years 1-8.
• Language Comprehension: review of our two guiding models – Simple View of Reading and Scarborough’s Rope and explore the Language Comprehension strands (background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning and literary knowledge).
• Gain practical activities you can immediately use in your education setting that covers the decoding and language comprehension sides of the rope.

This workshop will explore Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s book, The Writing Revolution (TWR) and Joan Sedita’s book The Writing Rope.

Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler’s book, The Writing Revolution (TWR) and Joan Sedita’s book The Writing Rope both look at writing instruction that rests on explicit, carefully sequenced instruction, building from sentences to compositions. The author’s describe a writing instruction that is designed to be adapted to and embedded in the content being taught in any subject area and at any level.

Over this two day workshop we will take a detailed look into the strategies described in TWR approach and The Writing Rope – focusing on sentence level, paragraph level and composition (multiple paragraphs). Practical examples will be given of how these could be used during classroom and intervention instruction, and how each strategy can be differentiated.

This workshop will give you practical knowledge, ideas, resources and lesson plans so you can immediately implement the 7 instruction principles we cover back into your setting supporting your students to become proficient writers, readers and critical thinkers.

Note: This workshop is not teaching a writing programme, rather TWR provides a common, coherent approach to writing instruction, increased reading fluency, improved reading comprehension and builds background knowledge. This approach is “to advance thinking through writing” and as a result it successfully builds up many areas of student’s literacy knowledge.

• Module 1: Science of Reading: Scarborough’s Reading Rope, The Simple View of Reading, how the brain learns to read, Response to Intervention model, disciplinary literacy
• Module 2: Science of Learning: explicit instruction: engagement norms & TAPPLE, cognitive load theory, spaced, interleaved, retrieval practice
• Module 3: Word Recognition: Decoding, Phonemic Awareness, Letter/Sound Relationship, Orthographic Mapping

• Module 4: Language comprehension, building background knowledge, explicitly teaching vocabulary/morphology and inferencing
• Module 5: Writing Part 1 – Syntax level activities: oral and written practice
• Module 6: Writing Part 2 – Paragraph and multiple paragraph structures
• Module 7: Fluency: what is it, why is it important and how we can incorporate it in our lessons
• Module 8: Next Steps – where to from here?