Welcome to the TEKS Guide, BETA, for reading language arts. The purpose of the TEKS Guide is to help teachers understand each student expectation in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and to provide valuable resources to support instruction. Bookmark us now and return often as we respond to your feedback, evolve, and grow.
For years, the field of reading education has been engaged in thinking about best practices. Explicit instruction in vocabulary, rereading and using digital textbooks to motivate children's reading are among some of these updated best practices. Those in the reading community are urged to consider best practices, and how we may promote their uses, with high fidelity in classroom instruction.
For the comprehension strategies, you can also see which strategies are best used before, during, and/or after reading (B/D/A). "Before" strategies activate students' prior knowledge and set a purpose for reading. "During" strategies help students make connections, monitor their understanding, generate questions, and stay focused.
How do we know how well our students are doing? It's important to take time regularly to assess their progress, so we can adjust instruction as needed and help ensure that no student slips through the cracks. As students progress from kindergarten through third grade, they should be steadily developing the skills they need to become proficient readers.
Find out how teachers can play to the strengths and shore up the weaknesses of English Language Learners in each of the Reading First content areas.
Kids who hear more words spoken at home learn more words and enter school with better vocabularies. This larger vocabulary pays off exponentially as a child progresses through school. It's never too soon to start talking to a baby - describing out loud everything that's going on around you.
Human brains are naturally wired to speak; they are not naturally wired to read and write. With teaching, children typically learn to read at about age 5 or 6 and need several years to master the skill.
Phonological awareness is a broad skill that includes identifying and manipulating units of oral language - parts such as words, syllables, and onsets and rimes. Children who have phonological awareness are able to identify and make oral rhymes, can clap out the number of syllables in a word, and can recognize words with the same initial sounds like 'money' and 'mother.'
Activities that stimulate phonemic awareness in preschool and elementary school children are one sure way to get a child ready for reading! Here are eight of them from expert Marilyn Jager Adams.
More resources: Roots of Reading (PBS Launching Young Readers series) Looking at Reading Interventions: Letter Names Print Awareness: Course Module Topics A-Z: Print Awareness Print awareness is a child's earliest introduction to literacy.
Children's knowledge of letter names and shapes is a strong predictor of their success in learning to read. Knowing letter names is strongly related to children's ability to remember the forms of written words and their ability to treat words as sequences of letters.
Phonics Resources - for Teachers by Tracy Harper | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for individual educators, schools and districts
More resources: Sounds and Symbols (PBS Launching Young Readers series) Looking at Reading Interventions Phonics: Online Module Target the Problem: Word Decoding and Phonics Phonics Apps Topics A-Z: Phonics and Decoding The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn the alphabetic principle - the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language - and that there is an organized, logical, and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
Integrating high-frequency words into phonics lessons allows students to make sense of spelling patterns for these words. To do this, high-frequency words need to be categorized according to whether they are spelled entirely regularly or not. This article describes how to "rethink" teaching of high-frequency words.
Rebecca, the words change, danger, manger, strange, grange, range, and angel show the effect of the Great Vowel Shift. All came into Middle English from French; Chaucer uses spellings like "chaunge" and "daunger", indicating a long vowel that would have sounded sort of like a nasal version of the vowel that stereotypical Bostonians use in "park" or "Harvard".
Syllable division rules show us how to break up a multi-syllable word into its syllable parts. There are six main syllable division "rules " to guide us. It all starts with the vowels. Find the vowels in the word. It helps to underline or highlight them.
Teacher question: Are there any resources that provide a list of morphemes to teach at each K-5 grade level? I have been looking for a definitive list of morphemes that is organized by grade level like the Fry sight word list.
When students engage in "word analysis" or "word study," they break words down into their smallest units of meaning - morphemes. Discover effective strategies for classroom word study, including the use of online tools, captioning, and embedded supports to differentiate instruction.
Fluency is the ability to read a text correctly and quickly. Find out what strategies are recommended to improve students' fluency and how to incorporate those strategies at home and at school. Refresh your fluency instruction! Try the Fluency module in our free, self-paced online course, Reading 101: A Guide to Teaching Reading and Writing.
Fluency by Tracy Harper | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for individual educators, schools and districts
Consider some excellent lesson models for teaching vocabulary, explaining idioms, fostering word consciousness, instruction for English Language Learners, and mnemonic strategies.
One reading researcher describes reading comprehension as the "essence of reading." Find out more about how to improve reading comprehension for all students - from young preschoolers to students who are struggling and children with learning disabilities. Refresh your reading comprehension instruction!
Click the "References" link above to hide these references. Anderson, R.C., & Freebody, P. (1981). Vocabulary knowledge. In J.T. Guthrie (Ed.), Comprehension and teaching: Research reviews (pp. 77-117). Newark DE: International Reading Association. Anderson, R.C., & Pearson, P.D. (1984). A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading. In P.D. Pearson, R.
More resources: Reading for Meaning (PBS Launching Young Readers series) Comprehension: Course Module Target the Problem: Comprehension Topics A-Z: Comprehension Strong readers think actively as they read. They use their experiences and knowledge of the world, vocabulary, language structure, and reading strategies to make sense of the text and know how to get the most out of it.
TEKS Comprehension Skills - Reading Comprehension Resources for Teachers by Tracy Harper | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for individual educators, schools and districts
Comprehension strategies are conscious plans - sets of steps that good readers use to make sense of text. Comprehension strategy instruction helps students become purposeful, active readers who are in control of their own reading comprehension. These seven strategies have research-based evidence for improving text comprehension.
Once upon a time, there was a grownup, a child, and a very good book. Goodnight room Goodnight moon Goodnight cow jumping over the moon Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown is a beloved children's bedtime story. Young children instantly relate to the struggle of the little bunny trying to get to sleep.
Expository text can be challenging to young readers because of the unfamiliar concepts and vocabulary it presents. Discover ways to help your students analyze expository text structures and pull apart the text to uncover the main idea and supporting details.
The text feature walk guides students in the reading of text features in order to access prior knowledge, make connections, and set a purpose for reading expository text. Results from a pilot study illustrate the benefits of using the strategy, and practical suggestions for implementation are offered.
Thoughtful. Careful. Precise. These are the words that should define our students as they provide evidence that supports text-dependent questions. Part 2 of our focus on evidence-based questions takes us into the world of informational text. It tends to be easier for students to find evidence to support their answers within informational text.
