You’ve seen those hacks about how to improve a boxed cake mix so it tastes like it’s homemade.
You know, add milk instead of water, swap the oil for butter.
Boxed cake mixes are fine, but they aren’t great.
Boxed reading programs are fine, but they aren’t great.
You are capable of greatness.
Use these five hacks to improve any reading curriculum.
1. Study the vertical alignment.
Before you teach the focus standard, read how the standard changes across grade levels so you know how to better differentiate for your students. Sometimes reading programs will shorten or abbreviate the standard, and I’ve seen this lead to misunderstandings.
Reading programs will offer on grade level lessons, but research is showing that COVID has increased the learning gap. Classrooms are going to have many students above or below grade level, so at least read the vertical alignment for two grade levels below and above.
2. Add in supplemental texts.
A quality reading program will be organized by topics or units, where students spend time reading multiple texts on related topics, concepts, or ideas. This is how you authentically build background knowledge and vocabulary while increasing the likelihood that students will retain information. If your curriculum is a bunch of unrelated excerpts, it’s like trying to bake a cake in a colander. Not a lot is going to stick.
Once your curriculum is organized around an anchor text, you can add in supplemental news articles, poems, or short stories to help build connections and create choice, interest, and relevance.
3. Use engaging strategies.
Think beyond a worksheet or graphic organizer. Find ways to get students reading, writing, speaking, and listening. If everyone groans when you tell them to pull out their workbook, it’s time to mix it up.
Here are some of my favorite strategies:
- summary bar graph
- hexagonal thinking
- Socratic seminar
- gallery walk
- written discussion (silent discussion)
Here are 5 more strategies to try from Edutopia.
4. Ask AI
Go get a free account for ChatGPT. Ask it for lesson ideas for the focus standard and text you are using next week. If you don’t like those ideas, keep prompting it so it can refine the results.
Time to jump on the AI bandwagon, because it’s going to change everything. I’d be surprised if the creators of reading programs aren’t using it already.
If we aren’t using it in our classroom and teaching students how to use it, we are preparing for them for a world that no longer exists.
5. Weave in social and emotional skills.
Because we live in a time where students no longer depend on someone older and wiser for information, it’s important to incorporate the skills a computer cannot teach them: social and emotional skills.
If you’ve been thinking that student behavior has been… different… since COVID, you are not alone. Research is showing a major increase in social and emotional problems in students (and all of us) over the past three years.
Pull out your Social and Personal Competencies (TN) or your SEL Standards (MS) and see how you can fit them into the literacy lessons you’re already teaching. When you cover theme (RL standard 2) and character relationships (RL standard 3) see if you can take it one step further and relate it to social and emotional learning.
Want to stay in the loop? Subscribe so you don’t miss my weekly post.
Leave a Reply