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Supporting Students’ Reading: Phonemic Awareness to Fluency – 6 Weeks – Winter Online 2024

Course Credit 15 Hours/PDPs
With an option to add 1 graduate credit from Fitchburg State University

This professional development course provides educators with an understanding of the components of reading development, including phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, and fluency. The course content is rooted in the structure of literacy and explores the importance of building competency in all of the components of reading in order to ultimately read for understanding. Additionally, the course explores how reading development is impacted for students with a language-based learning disability (LBLD), such as dyslexia, which falls under the diagnostic umbrella of a specific learning disability (SLD). As a result of the learning experiences in this course, participants will be more competent in their ability to:

• Identify the components of reading development
• Understand how LBLD impacts reading development
• Implement and adapt targeted strategies to support all components of students’ reading development
• Design activities and lessons to promote students’ reading skills and, ultimately, their ability to read for understanding.

The course is divided into five, self-paced modules:

• Overview of Reading Development: This module presents an overview of reading development and explores how reading development is impacted for students with language-based learning disabilities.
• Phonemic Awareness: This module describes phonemic awareness, or the ability to differentiate and manipulate speech sounds.
• Phonics: This module addresses phonics, the connection of speech sounds to letters.
• Decoding:  This module explores decoding, the association of letters with speech sounds in order to accurately read a word.
• Fluency: This module outlines the components of fluency: accuracy, rate, expression, and phrasing.

Each module will follow the same basic outline:

• A reading of course content followed by a short quiz
• A reading of additional course content followed by a discussion post
• A viewing of strategy demonstration videos featuring Landmark School teachers employing practical instructional strategies followed by a related assignment
• An opportunity to submit concluding thoughts about the relevance of the course content

Specific Assignments:

• Pre and Post-Assessments: These ungraded questionnaires will be completed at the beginning and end of the course in order for participants to self-assess knowledge and application of course content.
• Quizzes: The quizzes will assess comprehension of the content from the required reading.  The quizzes will be automatically graded within the course platform. Although participants must earn an 80% or higher to move on to the next section of the course, there are unlimited attempts allowed.  
• Discussion Posts: The discussions will require participants to post an initial response and reply to at least one other post.  These tasks will be assessed using specific rubrics.
• Assignments: The assignments in each module will require participants to apply their understanding of course content. These tasks will be assessed using specific rubrics.
• Concluding Thoughts: These tasks require participants to synthesize three key takeaways from the module and will be assessed using specific rubrics.
  

MATERIALS

There is not a required text for the course.

GRADUATE CREDIT

There is an option to add one (1) graduate credit to this 6-week course from Fitchburg State University. Graduate credit is optional; the cost is $210 and the non-refundable payment is made directly to Fitchburg. The timeline to opt into graduate credit is firm (January 9 – January 26) and cannot be accepted after that time. Details about the optional graduate credit will be embedded in the “Course Welcome” module of the online course so you can make your final decision at that time. 

See our FAQ page for specific information about our online courses.