The Teaching Foundational Reading Skills MOOC-Ed will help you more effectively prepare your students in grades K–3 with the skills they need to become successful readers. This is a critical challenge for elementary school teachers: In 2015, only 36 percent of fourth-graders scored at or above the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Reading competency at fourth grade strongly predicts future success in school, since reading becomes increasingly central to learning in all content areas as students advance to higher grades.
This MOOC-Ed is organized around the recommendations of the Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade Practice Guide, published in July 2016 by the U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse. This Practice Guide, developed by a panel of expert researchers and practitioners, provides educators with specific, research-based recommendations for effective teaching practices. It focuses on the foundational skills that enable students to read words, relate those words to their oral language, and read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to understand what they read. The foundational reading skills addressed in this course are shown in the framework below.