Pre-K

Kindergarten

Grade 1

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 6

Grade 7

Grade 9

Grade 10

Grade 11

Access

Recruiting Interest

• Give students choice in what they read and write. 
• Use literature circles in which students choose a text from a list.
• Provide a list of prompts for students or let them pick their own topic for writing.

Perception

• When using digital text, make sure students know how to navigate it (e.g., enlarge text, play audio, click image).
• When using a textbook or print text, find a digital version for students who might need one.

Physical Action

• Allow students to respond with different rates, times, and tools.
• Work with your IT and special education departments to provide specialized tools for students who need them.

• Use texts and writing activities that are relevant to the students in your classroom.
• Create consistent classroom routines.
• Know students and eliminate distractions.
• Post anchor charts, cues, and routines.
• Include all students in class discussions and other activities.

• Provide images, graphs, etc. to increase comprehension of text.
• When using an audio text, provide a series or images or a transcript for students to more easily follow along.
• When showing a video or presenting a slideshow, activate closed captions so that your words are also on the screen.
• When creating a document, make sure the text is easy to read and accessible (e.g., simple, unembellished, clear).

Build

Sustaining Effort & Persistence

• Make sure students understand their learning goal.
• Provide different levels of complexity in assignments and activities so that all students are challenged.
• Adjust resources, scaffolds, and tools.

Language & Symbols

• Provide definitions for idioms, archaic expressions, dialect, and slang.
• Use images, icons, and symbols to teach vocabulary.
• Present key concepts in more than one mode (e.g., illustrations, video, manipulative, etc.)

Expression & Communication

• Allow students to compose in various modes, such as text, speech, drawing, film, music, dance, sculpture, and video, as explained on the Multimodal Literacies page.

• Create opportunities for peer collaboration.
• For discussion, students can meet with a partner or in small groups.
• Students read a common text with a partner or small group.
• Students meet in groups to provide feedback on their writing.
• Provide mastery-oriented feedback regarding students skills in reading and writing.
• Feedback should be timely, specific, and frequent.
• Feedback should be focused on individual effort and improvement toward a learning goal.

• Show students how words are made up of prefixes, suffixes, and Greek and Latin roots (e.g., root family clusters, word webs).
• Preteach the most critical words to help students comprehend a passage.
• Show students how words work together to form a sentence and how sentences work together to form a paragraph.
• Use a concept map to show students how ideas in a text are linked.
• Allow students to draft their writing by using text-to-speech.
• Attend to the needs of students with limited English proficiency (e.g., Spanish).
• Make key information available in their first language.
• Provide electronic translation tools.
• Show alphabet text in multimodal forms.

• Teachers and students can use social media and digital spaces (e.g., Flipgrid, Jamboard, Padlet, Google Docs) to collaborate, discuss, and present information.
• Allow students to prewrite with story webs, outlining tools, and other concept graphic organizers.
• Provide sentence starters, sentence frames, and/or sentence strips to help students compose.
• Allows students to draft by using text-to-speech and voice recording.
• Share examples of good writing by published authors, former students, and yourself, and coach students to identify good writing traits in the mentor text.
• Provide students timely, focused feedback on their writing so that they can revise before the final draft.
• Remove scaffolded support as students increasingly show independence.

Internalize

Self Regulation

• Guide students in setting realistic learning and behavioral goals.
• Provide guides, rubrics, and/or checklists for students to track their progress toward their goals.

Comprehension

• Provide background knowledge or help students activate prior knowledge.
• Show, explain, and discuss good and bad examples of writing (e.g., sentences, paragraphs, essays).

Executive Function

• Encourage students to pause and reflect on their thinking and work toward a goal.
• Work with students to make both short-term and long-term goals toward a learning target or a project.

• Provide strategies for students dealing with setbacks, anxiety, and frustrations around reading, writing, speaking in front of others, etc.
• Let students know they can see a counselor to speak about any of their intense emotions.

• Provide graphic organizers for students to track their comprehension or analysis of a text or to plan a piece of writing.
• Model routines and think-aloud to show students how to comprehend a text.
• Allow students to choose what they read and write to showcase certain skills.
• Provide specific instructions for each step of a major project.
• Break large components of learning into smaller phases, activities, lessons, etc.
• Provide anchor charts, templates, checklists, and other organizers so that students can apply their learning.
• Provide opportunities for students to apply their learning in new situations.
• Teach mnemonic devices to maximize student learning.

• Provide graphic organizers to help students manage information (e.g. Venn diagrams, concept maps, mind maps, note-taking guides, writing templates).
• Encourage students to keep track of the number of pages or books read on a graph or chart.
• Allow students to reflect on their growth as a writer through a collection of their writing in a physical or digital portfolio.
• Empower students to ask for specific feedback on their writing from their peers, teacher, or others.
• Provide mentor texts that have been labeled with comments about what the writer did well.
• Students monitor their own progress in reading and writing through a teacher-provided checklist or rubric.
• Group students in small groups and coach them to provide helpful feedback to one another about their writing.