Differentiating Instruction and Comprehension Strategy Websites

• Reading Lady - Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Listserv

• Stephanie Harvey & Anne Goudvis - Technology Integration Resources

• Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature

• Planting A Literacy Garden - A developmentally appropriate learning sequence to teach comprehension strategies for students ages 3 -8.

• The Literacy Web - The Literacy Web is designed to promote the use of the Internet as a tool to assist classroom teachers in their search for best practices in literacy instruction, including the new literacy's of Internet technologies.

• Reading Network Resource - Researchers have identified six essential reading strategies for developing comprehension abilities. Each strategy and teaching/learning activities which help students learn the strategy will be described.

• Reading Workshop - The basic philosophy behind the Reading Workshop is to allow students to daily spend an extended amount of time reading authentic texts that interest them. Students can explore a variety of genres. Comprehension strategies, fluency, word-solving strategies and other reading skills can be taught within the workshop.

• Powerful Questioning, Good Intelligence and Right Thinking  Digging for answers but also building your own answers by collecting and considering good intelligence - pertinent facts, clues and evidence - when answers are not easily found, are not satisfying, and need improving. This list is a synthesis of strategies identified by P. David Pearson in his research on reading comprehension in the 1980s, work cited by Stephanie Harvey in Nonfiction Matters: Reading, Writing and Research in Grades 3-8¹

• Using QARs to Develop Comprehension and Reflective Reading Habits - Middle school is a time when students move from reading for literal comprehension to developing inferential comprehension strategies. This lesson provides a foundation for building reflective reading habits, which enables students to develop these higher-level comprehension strategies. Students are introduced to a variety of question-answer relationships (QARs), in an effort to increase comprehension during reading and increase personal awareness of their own reading processes. Using the QAR strategy, students identify different types of questions and learn how to determine the appropriate response for each question type. With continued practice, this process becomes automatic and students ask questions of themselves while reading to monitor comprehension.

• Steve Peha's TTMS: Click here to view some of Steve's greatest shares for teaching.
  Teaching That Makes Sense-There’s No Practice Like Best Practice Making Sense of the Research, Recommendations, and Rhetoric of Professional Teaching by Steve Peha 
  "When I first started doing professional development workshops, I always opened them up the same way: "So what kinds of things are you doing now?" And I always got the same reply: silence. If it isn't polite to ask a group of dinner guests about their religion, it's even worse to ask a group of teachers about their teaching. So, as it turned out, the first lesson about best practice was mine to learn, and I hope I've learned it well: I now start all my workshops by giving away Hawaiian vacations."

• Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences and education
  Howard Gardner's work around multiple intelligences has had a profound impact on thinking and practice in education - especially in the United States. Here we explore the theory of multiple intelligences; why it has found a ready audience amongst educationalists; and some of the issues around its conceptualization and realization.  

• Project Zero
  Project Zero's mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels.  Project Zero, a research group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has investigated the development of learning processes in children, adults, and organizations since 1967. Today, Project Zero is building on this research to help create communities of reflective, independent learners; to enhance deep understanding within disciplines; and to promote critical and creative thinking. Project Zero's mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels.

• Northwest Regional Educational Laboratories (NWREL) improves educational results for children, youth, and adults by providing research and development assistance in delivering equitable, high-quality educational programs. The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) provides research and development assistance to education, government, community agencies, business, and labor. NWREL's primary service area is the Northwest states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.

• North Center Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory® (NCREL) was one of 10 federally funded laboratories whose contract to operate ended in 2005. Learning Point Associates conducted the work of NCREL, and many of the resources developed under this contract remain accessible through this website. If you cannot find a resource that you have accessed in the past, it is because the information is either outdated or has been replaced. You may contact us with questions or to inquire about resources you may need in your education work.

• The Annenberg Channel  is a free satellite channel for schools, colleges, libraries, public broadcasting stations, public access channels, and other community agencies. It is presented 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, and airs an extraordinary range of teacher professional development and instructional programs funded by Annenberg Media. It is available to any non-commercial agency with a Ku-band satellite dish and a DigiCipher II satellite receiver.

• Balanced Literacy K - 6 New York (pdf file but very specific and helpful) Look through the table of contents and you will see balanced literacy in every lesson throughout the curriculum

• Balanced Literacy 6 - 12 New York

• Grades K - 2

• Grades 3 - 5

• Grades 6-8

• Grades 9 - 12

• Curriculum & Instruction Units of Study Lessons and Planning Denver School System
  Welcome to the Curriculum and Instruction Web site of Denver Public Schools. This Web site contains several useful sections. For example, learn about curriculum and instruction in specific content areas, stay up-to-date on special programs and projects, and access curriculum documents and resources.
• America's Choice
• United Streaming (Videos for all contents)
• We The Teachers