The Role of Library Media Specialists in Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI) schools Presented By Christine Spear Rechelle Anders

The Alabama Reading Initiative What is it? An ongoing professional development opportunity for a total school faculty. It is a research-based extensive training program to show teachers how to achieve high levels of literacy for all of their students.

How can Library Media Specialists Support ARI? Know The Research Understand What Good Reading Is Model Skillful Reading

Know The Research

Current training of the ARI is based on the Report Of The National Reading Panel (NRP) and Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read in which key skills are identified as being essential to reading achievement. Put Reading First is a summary of the NRP report and provides discussion of the five essential components of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

These materials are published by the National Institute for literacy and are available to you at no cost from or call

Understand What Good Reading Is

“Those who wish to teach reading well need to understand just what good reading is.” Michael Pressley

Good Readers are Accurate –Say words correctly Automatic –Recognize words instantly Fluent –Read connected text with ease and minimal effort –Read with appropriate speed, phrasing, and expression

Good Readers Actively Build Meaning –Ongoing effort to construct meaning –Using background knowledge to understand what is read –Using comprehension strategies such as predicting, questioning, and visualizing to help make sense of text.

Good Readers Self-regulate –Knowing whether or not the text is “making sense” –Addressing problems as they emerge –Choosing to be actively involved before, during, and after reading

Model Skillful Reading

Instructional Procedures Think-Aloud Teacher models the types of behaviors good readers are engaged in as they read Read-Aloud Teacher models how fluent readers read and reflect on what is read

Think-Alouds Teacher Models for students the thought processes that take place when material is read Teacher verbalizes his/her thoughts while reading orally. Students see how the mind can respond to thinking through trouble spots and constructing meaning from text

How are Think-Alouds helpful? Require the reader to slow down and to reflect on how they are understanding and interpreting text Assist the reader with summarizing the growing meanings they make while reading Require the reader to employ “fix-up strategies” when problems occur

Modeling a Think-Aloud Teacher Does/Students Watch Teacher Does/Students Help Students Do/Teacher Helps (from Chapter 4 of Improving Comprehension with Think-Aloud Strategies by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D.)

Read-Alouds Can be used for a variety of instructional purposes (e.g., for comprehension instruction or to model fluent reading) Can be implemented with different types of genres Can be used to motivate students to read

A Demonstration Lesson In the demonstration lesson, a media specialist provides direct vocabulary instruction using a read aloud

Instructional Decisions that give focus to the lesson Emphasis is on Vocabulary Instruction Emphasis is on words that appear in a wide variety of texts and provide mature language users with precise ways to refer to familiar ideas Uses narrative that features experiences and concepts that are familiar to students Vocabulary instruction is planned for after reading

References National Reading Panel, Teaching Children To Read: An Evidenced-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading And It’s Implications For Reading Instruction-Reports of the Subgroups ( Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children To Read: Kindergarten Through Grade 3