Reading Foundations for Emergent and Early Readers

(Grades PreK-2) / Flex Course

PDI Course Number: 82T02 / UCSD Course Number: EDUC41676

Course Description

Do you ever wonder what you can do to help young students gain a better foundation in reading? This online course is designed for teachers in grades PreK-2 who want to build a solid foundation in reading for each of their students from the very beginning. Information on the building blocks of reading is shared together with specific strategies for incorporating these foundational skills into everyday practice. The course begins with building a solid understanding of such concepts as phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. Teachers will then strengthen their toolbox of strategies for teaching spelling, word families, decoding, sight words, vocabulary, and fluency. Teachers will also learn assessment strategies such as story retelling and asking students to answer questions using textual evidence. Teachers will learn how to help their students choose “just right” books for their individual reading levels while balancing the types of text they read. To help in this regard, teachers will gain strategies for teaching students the features of nonfiction text. Finally, strategies for making the most of classroom read-alouds will be shared. By the end of this course, teachers will more fully understand how to best help their students master the foundations of reading, and will have gained valuable classroom ideas to incorporate into their everyday teaching. This course is worth 3 ⅓ semester units/5 quarter units (50 hours of training) from University of California San Diego (UCSD) Division of Extended Studies. For detailed information on university credit, click here.

"I thought the content and resources from this course were amazing. I will be incorporating many new strategies into my instruction." - Tamara Moskowitz