Reading and Literacy
Guides and Toolkits
The six promising practices in afterschool for literacy identified in the Afterschool Training Toolkit are as follows: Book Discussion Groups and Literature Circles; Read Aloud; Story and Literature Dramatizations; Writing; Family Literacy Events; One-on-One and Small Group Tutoring. Each practice is built on youth development principles and research on effective literacy instruction. At their core, Afterschool Training Toolkit materials are designed to illustrate techniques and activities that leverage student curiosity to make literacy in afterschool both enjoyable and relevant. This guide provides professional development ideas for each of these practices.
The National Partnership for Quality Afterschool Learning developed this instructor’s guide to accompany its Afterschool Training Toolkit, a free online staff development tool. Both the guide and the toolkit materials are designed to give afterschool instructors the resources they need to build fun, innovative, and academically enriching activities that not only engage students, but extend their knowledge in new ways and increase academic achievement. For afterschool instructors, this guide offers the opportunity to enhance your teaching skills in literacy by seeing read alouds modeled and getting a chance to try them out in your classroom. Site directors and afterschool training coordinators can use this guide in combination with the toolkit to plan staff development in literacy instruction and create tailored training highlighting the best practices most appropriate to your sites.
The six promising practices in student achievement in literacy identified in the Afterschool Training Toolkit are as follows: Book Discussion Groups and Literature Circles; Read Aloud; Story and Literature Dramatizations; Writing; Family Literacy Events; One-on-One and Small-Group Tutoring. When used with the Afterschool Training Toolkit, the lessons in this instructor’s guide will help you master these promising practices. Once you become proficient at these practices, you should be able to use them to develop other literacy lessons.
Sub-category: Early Reading
This online toolkit provides resources for developing fun, innovative, and academically enriching activities for afterschool and expanded learning programs. The toolkit includes promising practices and sample lessons in the arts, literacy, math, science, technology, and homework help.
For use with the online Afterschool Training Toolkit, these free guides help instructors master research-based teaching techniques that engage students and improve academic achievement.
For use with the online Afterschool Training Toolkit, these free guides give program directors and site coordinators resources for leading professional development courses on building engaging afterschool activities.
This glossary of terms related to reading and reading instruction allows people to quickly and easily check terms as they encounter them.
This brief guide demonstrates how to use the Literacy Profile Folder effectively in the classroom.
This book provides a concise summary of the research findings related to how children learn to read. A graphical representation of the framework is provided to familiarize teachers with the cognitive elements that research has shown to be essential in learning to read.
Sub-category: Languages Other Than English
The LOTE CED Online professional Development Center includes five free self-guided professional development courses that help PreK-12 foreign language educators enhance their proficiency in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Languages Other Than English (TEKS for LOTE).
This document identifies pre-service teacher standards and provides guidelines for teacher training institutions
This document identifies in-service teacher standards and describes three models of professional development.
This document serves as a resource for Languages Other Than English (LOTE) teachers as they implement the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Languages Other Than English (TEKS for LOTE).
