Thinking skills are explicitly taught and modeled.
Because comprehension results from the thoughtful interaction between reader and text, improving student thinking positively impacts student comprehension. When a student fails to think while he is reading, he is not truly reading. By breaking thinking down into its component steps, teaching these steps explicitly, and extensively modeling the use of these steps, teachers can equip students with the cognitive abilities needed to fully understand a text.
Time is dedicated to skill mastery.
Learning to use a skill requires extensive guided and independent practice. Foundations & Frameworks units devote adequate time and provide adequate practice for students to truly master each comprehension skill.
High quality literature is used as a natural conduit for skill instruction.
Great literature captures a reader’s imagination and motivates further reading. Foundations & Frameworks uses real, complete works of children’s literature to engage students and provide adequate material for in-depth comprehension. The literature is clustered according to readability and is used for comprehension skill instruction. Fifteen years of researching quality literature preceded the selection of Foundations & Frameworks titles.
Small group interaction is a daily practice.
Small groups enable teachers to know their students and adjust instruction to meet the needs of individuals. Small groups also provide an opportunity for students to further develop their understanding of text through thoughtful discussion with the teacher and with others reading the same text. The small group structure also gives teachers the flexibility to group students for re-teaching, reviewing, or for providing additional, individualized, guided practice.
Visual tools are used to organize and represent patterns of thinking.
Visual tools are graphic tools used to organize and connect information from a text. Because they represent the thinking process that has been explicitly taught and modeled, visual tools foster the thinking necessary to comprehend a text. With an associated visual tool for each skill, Foundations & Frameworks equips students to think effectively in reading and in every other area of learning.
Vocabulary instruction emphasizes complete word understanding.
Vocabulary instruction must emphasize complete word understanding to be effective. Definitional, contextual, and conceptual word understanding leads to ownership, allowing the student to not only comprehend new words, but to use them effectively in speaking and writing.
Phonemic awareness and phonics instruction is explicit and systematic.
Comprehension begins with accuracy and fluency in word identification. Phonics is best taught through multi-modal methods that incorporate listening, reading, spelling, and handwriting in explicit and systematic instruction of sound-spelling relationships. This is immediately followed by opportunities to practice decoding words in isolation and connected text. Foundations & Frameworks emphasizes both of these areas of word knowledge, getting students off to a successful start in both word recognition and comprehension.
