Reading: Featured Instructional Resources
Professional Development
Reading Instruction. A well-rounded, structured reading program consists of four components: alphabetics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The free professional development, resources, and lesson plan ideas below provide guidance to support instructors and tutors in implementing reading instruction.
Learning events on this page have been selected to be responsive to the requirements stated in Adult Education Director’s Memo #62-23 for current grantees. See also our Adults with {Dis}abilities page. More events will be added as they become available.
Foundations of Reading-Print Skills Online Course: This is a 6 week online facilitated course that focuses on the reading components of alphabetics and fluency. Participants in this course will leave with useful resources, a deeper understanding of how alphabetic skills and fluency affect comprehension, and experience contextualizing these skills into lessons. This course complements Foundations of Reading: Meaning Skills.
Foundations of Reading-Meaning Skills Online Course: This is a 6-week online facilitated course that focuses on the reading components of vocabulary and comprehension. Participants in this course will leave with useful resources, a deeper understanding of vocabulary and comprehension skills, and experience contextualizing these skills into lessons. This course complements Foundations of Reading: Print Skills; however, the Print Skills online course is not a prerequisite for this course.
Supporting Secondary English Learners Webinar Series
This interactive VDOE webinar series with Dr. Kate Kinsella is for secondary educators and leaders and will take place from 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on September 26, October 30, and November 15, 2023. In this VDOE webinar series, Dr. Kinsella will provide tools and supports for discourse, including productive student interactions, inclusive and accountable lesson discussions, attentive academic listening skills, and effective feedback contributions. All secondary educators and leaders who work with English Learners are invited to attend.
Disabilities and the Adult Learner Webinar Series, Session 2: Instructional strategies for working with adults with disabilities (October 10th, 2023, 1-2:30 PM): Disabilities can occur across the lifespan, affecting academic performance, work, and daily living. Individuals with disabilities can have challenges with learning but can exhibit strengths in some areas. This session will provide instructional strategies for working with adults with disabilities, with a focus on incorporating evidence-based strategies into reading instruction.
Purposeful Reading for English Language Learners Webinar Series: [Webinar series available upon request.] This webinar series is designed to present standards-based instruction for preparing ELLs for purposeful reading, engaging ELLs in purposeful reading, and extending purposeful reading for ELLs and is based on activities presented during the national Standards In Action 2.0 Summer 2021 training.
Contextualized Phonics Webinar: [Webinar available upon request.] This webinar presents strategies for contextualizing phonics instruction when working with multilingual learners who are building their literacy skills. During the webinar, we discuss the components of reading and alphabetics within the context of beginning literacy instruction based on concepts and information from the science of reading.
Teaching with the CCRS Key Shifts Webinar Series: [Webinar series available upon request.] This series of workshops is designed to provide evidence-based strategies for working with complexity, evidence, and knowledge. Each workshop focuses on a different English language arts/literacy key shift and encourages an interactive learning experience. Participants will engage in several activities they can take back to the classroom to help their learners interact with texts in a more meaningful way. The workshops are appropriate for anyone teaching reading, writing, or language skills, and last 90 minutes.
LINCS Teaching Adults to Read Self-Paced Courses: LINCS provides two self-paced courses: Teaching Beginning & Intermediate Readers and Teaching Advanced Readers. Each course provides users with background information, informative readings and resources, hands-on activities, and multi-media examples of recommended assessment and instructional strategies. Participants will explore the components of reading and research-based strategies for assessing and teaching both native English-speaking and multilingual adults how to read.
LINCS Making Sense of Spelling and Decoding: This evidence-based course of study is designed to teach adult learners to decode and spell words more accurately and fluently. It includes a teachers’ and administrators’ guide, thirty complete lesson plans, and a learner activity book.
Purposeful Reading for English Language Learners: This resource is generated from the VALRC Purposeful Reading for English Language Learners (ELLs) Spring 2022 webinar series. This webinar series was designed to present standards-based instruction for preparing ELLs for purposeful reading, engaging ELLs in purposeful reading, and extending purposeful reading for ELLs and is based on activities presented during the national Standards In Action 2.0 Summer 2021 training. For more ESOL-related resources, visit the ESOL Instructional Resource page.
College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS): This PDF provides a concise list of the reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language standards that apply across all CCRS levels. It also includes the anchors for foundational reading skills such as phonics and fluency. This resource provides a full description of each standard.
Reading Skills for Today’s Adults: These reading passages were specifically written for adults and designed to aid in building readers’ fluency and comprehension skills, this site provides leveled reading selections and research to help adult learners become better readers and more informed consumers, parents, employees, citizens, and community members. Each text is accompanied by audio, pre- and post- reading questions, and supplemental activities. There is a companion site for health care-related texts.
Marshall Leveled Reading Program: This website uses the texts from Reading Skills for Today’s Adults and provides a library of leveled readings in a variety of learner-friendly mobile applications, interactive supplements (including Quizlet vocabulary flash cards and Google Forms-based comprehension checks), and an arrangement of reading passages by College and Career Readiness (CCRS) level.
Teaching with The Change Agent: This resource includes two informative webinar recordings, for teaching with The Change Agent, an adult education online magazine. The Google Slide presentations provide information on how to access The Change Agent.
Newsela: This website provides daily news stories with adjustable reading levels that prompt learners to “read closely, think critically, and be worldly.”
CommonLit: This website is a free online learning platform that provides lesson plans and activities to support learners’ reading and writing skills using fiction and nonfiction texts.
For more information about current VALRC offerings, visit our Events page. To request a training that is not currently scheduled, email vdesk@vcu.edu.
For more resources related to reading instruction, please search VALRC’s reading resource bank.
If you would like to share a resource related to the Science of Reading with adult learners, please share here!