Pathways to Literacy workshops arm teachers with practical skills to teach each individual child to read. These workshops cover the core skills that are most applicable to pressing needs and leverage existing strengths. Our reading toolkit includes:

• Education in oral language, phonological/phonemic awareness, phonics/spelling, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing.
• Expertise in assessing each child and implementing appropriate interventions.
• Knowledge of where a child should be on a reading developmental continuum.
• Expertise in using multiple strategies and creative classroom techniques to help individual students improve reading proficiency.

The Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) are a set of standardized, individually administered measures of early literacy development. They are designed to be short (one minute) fluency measures used to regularly monitor the development of pre-reading and early reading skills. HILL offers two DIBELS workshops, which can be brought to your school staff.

Approach

Our approach is aligned with the National Reading Panel's findings, and with the federal "No Child Left Behind" priorities. All workshops emphasize the connection between spoken language and written language. We instruct teachers in the development stages of reading, so they become expert at diagnosing and prescribing next steps for individual students.

Format

Workshops can be scheduled individually, in a two-day format, or within an entire series format that can be scheduled over a one- to two-year period. We train a community of teachers at your school and provide a variety of instructional methods using a hands-on approach to deal with real classroom issues. We integrate theory and education with energizing and engaging group activities. Our focus on immediate transfer of knowledge to the classroom provides teachers with activities and approaches they can use the next day.

HILL also offers customized courses by mixing and matching existing topics from our standard courses list. If your school has intensive literacy improvement needs, our School-Wide Literacy Audit / Assessment / Action Planning, which provides a snapshot of how reading and writing are taught through all of your grades, may be an optimal starting point, because it provides recommendations and approaches specifically targeted to your strengths and challenges.