CONT924: Teaching Students With Complex Literacy Needs
How can schools ensure that all students—especially those at risk of or experiencing literacy difficulties—will learn to read and write? As a classroom teacher or interventionist, how can you respond to the unique needs of students with literacy challenges or specific disabilities that impact their literacy learning? In this course, you’ll deepen your knowledge and understanding of evidence-based practices in teaching foundational skills through structured literacy approaches. You’ll consider both instruction and intervention through the lens of a multi-tiered support system that emphasizes solution seeking and collective responsibility for student outcomes. You’ll explore how instruction can be designed to match a variety of reader profiles, including difficulties or disabilities in word reading, comprehension and/or both. You’ll explore progress monitoring and assessment tools to measure the efficacy of interventions, along with decision-making processes that guide instructional adjustments or intensifications.
Learning Outcomes
What You Will Learn and Do
In this course, you’ll have the opportunity to
- explore current issues and developments in literacy acquisition and intervention for students with diverse literacy needs
- learn about features of multi-tiered support systems that enable access to success-oriented literacy instruction and achievement for all students
- investigate the role of assessment in the design and implementation of effective literacy instruction and intervention
- identify ways to structure literacy intervention for learners with diverse or complex needs
- identify evidence-based practices that support growth in essential components of literacy development
- create intervention plans that address components of literacy based on students’ diagnosed literacy needs
- become a discerning consumer of literacy and intervention research and evaluator of literacy practices, programs and resources
Assessments
Module 1
Teaching Literacy through Multi-Tiered Systems of Support
Module 2
Assessment Across the Tiers
Progress Update 1
Module 3
Phonemic Awareness and Word Recognition
Module 4
Spelling and Written Expression
Formative Assessment
Module 5
Vocabulary, Comprehension and Fluency
Progress Update 2
Module 6
Mixed Reading Difficulties and Other Needs
Module 7
Creating a Resource Hub
Summative Assessment