Effective Instruction for Middle School Students

Content Area Instructional Routines to Support Academic Literacy

The content of this Academy is organized into three units with individual modules.

Unit 1: Overview of Schoolwide Intervention
Module / Title
1 / A Schoolwide Approach to Reading Intervention
2 / Effective Instruction
Unit 2: Vocabulary Instructional Routines
1 / Selecting Words
2 / Pronouncing and Defining Words
3 / Generating Examples and Nonexamples
Unit 3: Comprehension Instructional Routines
1 / Building Background Knowledge with Anticipation-Reaction Guides
2 / Identifying Main Ideas in Text
3 / Writing Summaries

UNIT 1, Module 1: Schoolwide Approach to Reading Intervention

Key Elements:

  • Adequate time for instruction
  • Research-validated instructional practices

Goals:

  • All students will be able to read and learn from academic text
  • All students will be motivated to engage in reading for many different purposes.

Tiered Approach:

Tier III – Intensive Intervention – Students with severe reading difficulties

Tier II – Strategic Intervention – Students with reading difficulties that cannot be addressed in Tier I

Tier I – Content Area Comprehension and Vocabulary Instructional Routines – All students

Foundation – Safe and PositiveSchool Climate, Instructional Leadership, Effective Instruction

UNIT 1, Module 2: Effective Instruction

Key Elements:

  • Using instructional practices that foster student engagement through active involvement
  • Adapting content area instruction for students with reading difficulties
  • Applying a framework for scaffolding instruction

Adapting instruction means intentionally changing something about instruction so that all students have a greater chance to master important lesson objectives.

Adaptation Framework:

Instructional Content – skills and concepts that are the focus of teaching and learning (Objectives)

Delivery of Instruction – procedures and routines used to implement instructional activities

Instructional Activities – lessons used to teach and reinforce skills and concepts

Materials – materials that are used to teach and reinforce skills and concepts

Fostering Engagement:

  • Clear objectives
  • Real-world interactions
  • An abundance of interesting texts
  • Direct strategy instruction
  • Support for student choice and self-determination
  • Collaboration support

Benefits of Grouping

  • Grouping or pairing provides more opportunities for all students to participate in instructional dialogues and to develop the language and content of the course.
  • Grouping and pairing is particularly important for English language learners.

Types of Grouping:

  • Think-Pair-Share
  • Tell-Help-Check
  • Generate-Share

Explicit Instruction

Provide

  • A clear statement of the objective
  • Modeling or demonstration
  • Clear, understandable explanation
  • Examples and nonexamples
  • Clear feedback

Clarify

  • How new concepts relate to what has already been learned
  • How new concepts fit into the “big picture” of the topic of study

Explicit Instruction – three steps

I Do

Model/think aloud

WE Do

Guided practice

YOU Do

Monitored independent practice

UNIT 2, Module 1: Selecting Words

Types of Vocabulary

  • Common Words
  • Academic Words
  • Content-specific Words

Preteach the Academic and Content-specific Words

  • New words not common to oral language
  • Mature or more precise labels for concepts already under the student’s control
  • Abstract words and words not easily pictured
  • Words that require background knowledge for concept development
  • Multiple-meaning words

UNIT 2, Module 2: Vocabulary Instructional Routines

Brief RoutineExpanded Routine

1. Selecting the words to teach1. Selecting the words to teach

2, Pronouncing and defining2. Pronouncing and defining

the words the words

  1. Generating examples and

nonexamples

UNIT 2, Module 3: Generating Examples and Nonexamples

Frayer Model

Definition / Characteristics
Examples / Nonexamples

Making Examples and Nonexamples Useful

  • Closely related to topic and
  • characteristics
  • Synonyms and antonyms
  • Concrete
  • Personally or culturally relevant

UNIT 3, Module 1: Building Background Knowledge with Anticipation-Reaction Guides

Agree / Disagree / Statement / Evidence / Page #

Anticipation-Reaction Guide Preparation

  • Review the text and identify four or five important concepts or themes.
  • Form opinion statements about the concepts or themes:
  • NOT true/false statements of facts
  • No expectation for one right answer
  • Create the Guide
  • Statements
  • Agree/disagree lines
  • place to record evidence and page numbers while reading

UNIT 3, Module 2: Identifying Main Ideas in Text

Main Idea Instructional Routine

  1. Complete the previewing routine.
  2. Identify the main ideas of each paragraph.
  3. Record important details related to the main ideas.
  4. Compose a Main Idea of the Section statement.

Utilize a Notes Log Template

Topic/Title / Pages
Main Idea / Notes
Main Idea of the Section
Summary

UNIT 3, Module 3: Writing Summaries

Summarization Instructional Routine

  1. List
  2. Underline
  3. Combine
  4. Number
  5. Write
  6. Edit

Utilize a Notes Log Template

Topic/Title / Pages
Main Idea / Notes
Main Idea of the Section
Summary