As part of my current role as Elementary EAL Coordinator at our international school, I administer screeners and dynamic assessments for our students across grades one through five to determine their most pressing remedial reading needs. I address those needs through a series of game-like routines grounded in the Science of Reading (SoR) and through guided reading and rereading. These interventions help learners develop the phonemic awareness and fluency so critical to reading success. Vocabulary instruction, crucial for EALs, is woven throughout. As part of this role, I also support classroom teachers in establishing routines and centres to help students develop phonemic awareness and to maximise classroom time with eyes on print.
My passion for seeing learners unlock the reading code has led me to pursue a Reading Specialist qualification through the Ontario College of Teachers. I will complete the final part of this qualification in April 2026. Read a portion of my reflections on the learning in this course in my Reading Course Journal.
Reading is foundational to every other area of the curriculum. I place a high value on starting students off right with their reading skills, with the recognition that the complex processes involved in reading do not happen naturally and must be explicitly taught. Despite the hurdles of the reading process, the vast majority of students (approximately 95%, according to Fletcher & Vaughan) are capable of learning to read when this explicit instruction is given.
In addition to providing the phonics-based instruction necessary to learn to decode letters and sounds to make meaning, foundational to my approach to teaching reading is creating a culture of reading and a love of learning in my classroom. As a result, my students read more and are more excited about reading. Students talk to each other about books, write about what they’re reading, and create a “book buzz” that pervades the classroom, encouraging even “reluctant” readers to join in.
In spring 2023, my grade four Literacy and Social Studies students were tested using the MAP test to measure their growth during the 2022-2023 school year and their improvement since the MAP test taken in October 2022. The following is a chart showing students’ growth, revealing that all students experienced high achievement, and more than half the class had high growth. Similar growth was experienced during the 2023-2024 school year, but MAP unfortunately discontinued their four-quadrant growth chart.
Upper Elementary Lesson Plans
I create lesson plans in PowerPoint/Google Slides with detailed steps that serve as reminders to me and clear direction for students. I incorporate daily routines that sneak learning into the little moments I share with students during a lesson, such as the Vocabulary Word of the Day routine. Lesson objectives and the standards to which my school expects me to align are clearly outlined so students understand where we are on our learning path. (When these slides are used in a class, I eliminate the cover slide so the first slide the students see is the daily agenda.)
Lower Elementary Lesson Plans
These lessons, aimed at grade 2 students and using Ontario curriculum expectations, include a morning meeting (with greeting, sharing, activity, and daily message), reading focused foundational skill(s), oral language practice opportunities throughout, reading fluency practice, vocabulary and morphology instruction, reading comprehension, targeted small group instruction, as well as writing (orthography) and syntax instruction. As with the upper elementary lessons, above, they are in the PowerPoint/Google Slides format I use daily in my classes for clarity. In addition to the agenda being included on the first slide, I provide a posted visual schedule for students.
Lower Elementary Weekly Plan
Here is a one-week plan I created for a Literacy block focusing on Reading skills at the lower elementary level (early Grade 2)
from which three of the lessons are sampled above.
Click on the image below to expand.
Lower Elementary Caregiver Resources
I have created a Padlet with resources for caregivers to help children extend their learning at home in the areas of the Five Pillars of Reading.
Additional Resources
The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise by Dan Gemeinhart
