Reading Course Core Curriculum

The History

Jordan School District Secondary Language Arts and Literacy unveiled a reading course curriculum during the Reading Teacher Academy held in August 2007. Based upon the “seven elements of a reading course,” the curriculum addresses the nature of reading, comprehension strategies, informational texts, responding to narrative text/oral language experiences, higher order thinking and writing, and diagnostic assessment and instruction.

Under the direction of Tiffany Hall, former Language Arts/World Languages consultant, Anna Smith, former Secondary Literacy Specialist, and Renae Salisbury, current literacy specialist, the Academy and the curriculum were developed by a team of JSD reading teachers: Lis Thomas of Elk Ridge Middle, Carissa Tieken of South Jordan Middle, Patty Hendricks of Sunset Ridge Middle and Bobie Glassett of Albion Middle. To help reading teachers incorporate the curriculum into their classes, the team also created a curriculum map with accompanying sample lessons. The map includes timeframes, objectives, essential questions, instructional activities, assessments and needed materials. The sample lessons suggest strategies to frontload the instructional activity as well as inclusion of model lessons, guided and independent practice, along with needed master copies of handouts and overhead transparencies.

The Curriculum

  1. Nature of Reading
    1. Students will understand that reading is an interactive process that includes metacognition.
    2. Students will understand that reading is a skill that must be practiced.
  2. Comprehension Strategies
    1. Students will demonstrate the declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge of each of the comprehension strategies below:
      1. Students will be able to create literal, interpretive, inferential and evaluative questions.
      2. Students will be able to determine what is most important in a piece of text.
      3. Students will be able to effectively summarize a piece of text.
      4. Students will be able to connect text to schema for effective inferential reading.
      5. Students will be able to make, warrant and confirm/reject text-based predictions.
      6. Students will be able to demonstrate schema and text-based visualizations.
      7. Students will be able to make relevant text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world connections that enhance comprehension.
    2. Students will apply multiple strategies simultaneously, selecting the most effective, as they read.
    3. Students will understand what barriers occur while reading and identify strategies to improve their reading and reading focus.
  3. Informational Texts
    1. Students will demonstrate effective reading of informational texts, including textbooks, advertisements, posters, newspapers, magazines, and websites.
      1. Students will identify the purposes of reading specific types of texts and how to use the texts accordingly.
      2. Students will understand and identify external text features and internal text structures.
      3. Students will be able to evaluate content for validity and usefulness.
    2. Students will demonstrate understanding of how to read test questions and strategically answer them.
  4. Responding to Narrative Text/Oral Language Experiences
    1. Students will demonstrate understanding of the internal and external structure of narrative text.
    2. Students will review and apply reading strategies with short narrative texts and novels.
    3. Students will be able to use effective discussion protocols in pairs, small and whole class discussions.
    4. Students will effectively respond to and discuss a novel while using the given reading strategies.
  5. Higher-Order Thinking and Writing
    1. Students will synthesize and transfer multiple strategies to various independent choices and increasingly challenging texts.
    2. Students will conduct an inquiry project utilizing studied strategies, as well as various texts. Students will report the results in written and verbal formats.
    3. Students will utilize writing to increase comprehension skills.
  6. Diagnostic Assessment and Instruction
    7. Instructor will assess reading levels and interests of students to direct needs-based individualized instruction.

"Scope out the Sequence!"

The Reading Course Curriculum Map