Background Information
What is Read It Again-PreK!
Read It Again-PreK! is a practitioner-friendly, scientifically based (hotlink to the 'Scientific Support' page), and relevant curricular supplement designed to develop and strengthen young children's early foundations in language and literacy. By practitioner-friendly, we mean that it is a program that can be readily and easily implemented by early education professionals working in a range of settings. It needs few materials for implementation and all lesson plans and implementation notes can be downloaded at no-cost from the internet. With these materials, plans, and notes in hand, we know Read It Again-PreK! can be readily used by professionals because it was developed through a two-year collaborative effort in which researchers worked very closely with early childhood educators, state-level policy-makers, and speech-language pathologists. By scientifically based, we mean that its development drew upon research findings from the fields of developmental psychology, reading development and disabilities, early childhood education, and speech-language pathology - research findings that identify the specific language and literacy skills most strongly predictive of children's later reading success. By relevant, we mean that the instructional objectives and practices are well aligned with state and national language and literacy standards relevant to early childhood programs and are consistent with best practice guidelines concerning how to support the language and literacy development of young children through systematic instruction.
How can I access Read It Again-PreK! materials?
Read It Again-PreK! is a free resource available to early childhood educators and allied professionals who want to bring recent research findings regarding language and literacy instruction into their classrooms or clinics. At www.myreaditagain.com, professionals can download the entire Read It Again-PreK! curricular supplement, to include introductory content, lesson plans, implementation notes, and pupil progress-monitoring checklists. Additionally, resources are available for free to help professionals use the Read It Again-PreK! curricular supplement in the way it was intended, including a self-study workbook with supplemental videos for analysis. Importantly, all of these materials are provided at no cost to the early childhood community for its use. The only costs borne by Read It Again-PreK! users is the purchase of a small set of commercial storybooks that are needed for implementing lessons.
How is Read It Again-PreK! designed?
Read It Again-PreK! provides a systematic, explicit, and flexible approach to building children's skills in four key areas of language and literacy:
- Vocabulary
- Narrative
- Phonological awareness
- Print knowledge
These four areas of language and literacy development are considered important foundations to later reading success. To ensure that sufficient attention is given to these four areas of development, Read It Again-PreK! features a systematic progression of objectives to organize instruction over an academic year (roughly 30 week of instruction). Its design features two weekly lessons, each approximately 20-30 minutes in duration, to be implemented using whole-class, small-group, or even one-on-one instruction. The lessons can be delivered at any time of the day and on any day of the week, and can be modified to meet the needs of children at a variety of points in their language and literacy development.
Read It Again-PreK! was purposefully designed to make it amenable to a wide range of teaching approaches, program configurations, and curricular frameworks. Featuring only two brief lessons each week, Read It Again-PreK! can be readily integrated into virtually any classroom or program configuration. In other words, Read It Again-PreK! is designed to supplement - not to replace - an educator's usual methods of instruction or curricular choices. Read It Again-PreK! is a curricular supplement designed to foster children's skills in highly important areas of language and literacy development - areas that provide a foundation for academic success.
Read It Again-PreK! makes it easy to systematically, but flexibly, teach important language and literacy skills to young children. The different components of Read It Again-PreK! Implementation Manual are described below
Lessons and Storybooks.
We have designed the Read It Again-PreK! lessons to be easily implemented by professionals. In Read It Again-PreK!, a storybook is used to organize each lesson as a context to build children's language and literacy skills, while at the same time exposing them to high-quality literature. Given the importance of repeated use of storybooks to children's learning, Read It Again-PreK! recycles a relatively small set of titles that are commercially available for purchase.
Each lesson has two activities designed to address a specific language (narrative or vocabulary) and literacy (print knowledge or phonological awareness) learning objective. The activities are presented in straightforward language with a clear sequence for instruction. Each lesson includes measurable learning objectives, an explicit description of activities for implementation, and suggestions for language the educator may use in delivering the activities. In most cases, any additional materials needed for implementation are included. Although educators can certainly adapt the suggested language of the Read It Again-PreK! activities to fit their own teaching style, the explicit instructions and model lessons make Read It Again-PreK! easy to implement in any classroom.
Learners' Ladders for Differentiated Instruction.
Each lesson is accompanied by an important tool for differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all children in a classroom. These "Learners' Ladders" provide teachers with specific scaffolding strategies to use with children who find a given lesson either too easy or too difficult. When a lesson is too easy for a child, strategies are offered that promote children's higher-order understanding about the lesson and help them generalize their learning beyond the lesson itself. When a lesson is too hard, strategies are provided that encourage children to successfully participate in activities and move gradually toward independence. Learners' Ladders provide teachers specific examples of how to apply these scaffolding strategies to one of the learning objectives within each lesson. Teachers and clinicians are able apply the illustrated techniques and/or expand the techniques to a different objective or lesson, as may be needed to meet the needs of their students.
Implementation Notes for Teacher Reflection.
Each lesson has an accompanying Implementation Note, where teachers can record key information about the lesson, such as children's engagement, the length of time it took, and the level of support children may have needed for success. Creating a simple snapshot of each lesson provides teachers an easy way of reflecting on their instruction and classroom to guide their planning. Teachers can review these notes each week to consider strategies or scaffolds they might introduce.
Progress Monitoring.
A progress monitoring tool specific to the Read It Again-PreK! program is included and provides teachers a means of more formally rating children's skills on each of the learning objectives within the program. Teachers can use this to chart children's progress in order to inform their instruction.