Core Reading Program
 
Core Reading Program, Houghton Mifflin, Reading provides the basis for instruction and connects meaningfully to supplemental materials. The core reading program provides a coherent design that includes explicit instructional strategies, coordinated instructional sequences, and ample practice opportunities. Utilizing the core reading program is a portion of the allocated, protected, uninterrupted two-hour block of time for literacy instruction. Accommodations in both pace and level may be required to meet the instructional needs of advanced and gifted students.
 
Supplemental materials
 
In-class grouping strategies (guided reading) are in use and include explicit instruction to small groups of students at the same reading level. Student placement in groups is flexible and leveled text provided by and included in the Houghton Mifflin CCRP collection, along with other leveled texts will be used to instruct these groups.
 
There is active student engagement in a variety of reading-based activities that connect to the five essential elements of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension). Supplemental materials for advanced and gifted students may include materials that accelerate and enrich with a higher degree of complexity and abstraction. To support initial instruction provided using Houghton Mifflin CCRP, schools will utilize FCRR favorably reviewed supplemental programs that address the students’ needs during differentiated instructional time: QuickReads - is a program for 2nd through 4th graders that is specifically designed to improve students’ fluency, and has strong comprehension, vocabulary and background knowledge elements as well. The prescribed lesson format includes 3 reading of the same passage within an instructional period of approximately 15 minutes.
 
Elements of Reading: Vocabulary - is an oral vocabulary instructional program designed for kindergarten through 3rd graders. While the program is designed to be taught with the whole class by the regular classroom teacher, teachers may utilize the program for small group instruction.
 
Intervention programs for struggling readers
 
The FCRR research-based intervention program Voyager Passport will be utilized with all Tier 3 students and with struggling readers for whom previous interventions have not worked. Instruction using this material will occur during the differentiated instructional time within the 2-3 hour literacy instructional time.
 
Early Success – is an intervention program designed for 1st and 2nd graders who are below grade level. The daily lessons are patterned after a 3 step model: rereading for fluency, reading a new book, and working with words and sentences.
 
Soar to Success – is an intervention for 3rd through 8th graders who are reading below grade level. Two primary goals of this intervention are: to accelerate students’ reading ability, and to help students to quickly and easily apply the comprehension and decoding strategies they have learned to other content area texts.
 
Voyager Passport – is an intervention for kindergarten – 3rd graders who encounter reading difficulty and are performing below grade level. The goal of Voyager Passport is to accelerate students’ reading growth to be commensurate with grade-level expectations. Designed to supplement the CCRP, the program can be delivered by a trained teacher, or paraprofessional.
 
Earobics – provides students help in developing the foundational skills to become successful readers. The primary goals of this program are to give teachers effective strategies for teaching reading and to give students practice developing skills not found in the CCRP through the combined use of software, teacher directed activities, manipulatives and books.
 
Materials and programs, including educational software, to provide additional support in reading growth for all children. Educational software must supplement and not supplant instruction by a highly qualified instructor.
 
In order to address the needs of students reading below, at and above grade level, additional materials will be utilized within the two-hour instructional block. These materials will be selected based upon appropriateness related to needs and ease of integration of use with the core comprehensive reading program (Houghton Mifflin, Reading).
 
Materials that build intrinsic motivation to read versus extrinsic motivation are recommended. Extrinsically motivating materials should not limit student access to text.
 
Schools will continue to utilize the Accelerated Reader (AR) program to motivate independent reading and assist in monitoring the levels of text and amount of student reading. Accelerated Reader is utilized to assist students in locating text that is within their independent reading level (ZPD) but will not limit students to the only reading AR texts. Media Specialists and classroom teachers, with support from the reading coaches through professional development, will be trained in the effective elements of independent reading, including selection of texts. Additionally, classrooms will actively utilize the leveled libraries.