In Transforming Our Teaching Through Reading to Understand, participants become attuned to the end goal in teaching reading: independent, engaged readers who monitor their own comprehension. Teachers learn how to set up the classroom library, establish reading routines, teach and manage reading groups, increase comprehension in nonfiction and fiction, and effectively confer one-on-one with all students. This PD project also helps teachers skillfully use shared reading, literature conversations, and other research-based techniques to ensure all students become self-directed readers.

Research shows that high-level, on-site, and ongoing professional development is the surest route to school improvement in literacy, and Transforming Our Teaching Through Reading to Understand delivers it directly to your teachers.

Transforming Our Teaching Through Reading to Understand is based on four foundational ideas. 

1. Change begins with defining common beliefs and setting high expectations about teaching and learning. For lasting, schoolwide change and high achievement, teachers across grade levels must develop common beliefs about what student writers are capable of, and which practices best advance children’s writing.

2. An Optimal Learning Model provides an effective, unified model for teaching and learning. Teachers can plan, teach, and assess with greater ease and effectiveness with an Optimal Learning Model, ensuring that teaching always nudges students toward independence.

3. Responsive teaching engages students and raises their achievement. Research indicates that when children write for authentic reasons, achievement goes up. Writing leads to success in reading, so we can raise achievement in both by asking students to write for real audiences and purposes.

4. Applying new ideas leads to lasting, significant change. This is true for students and for teachers. Transforming Our Teaching Through Reading to Understand gives teachers consistent opportunities to discuss, analyze, and try out with their students what they’ve seen in each session. By applying what they learn, their teaching is transformed, and so is students’ learning.