Powerful Interventions to Guide Struggling Readers

(Grades K-3) / Flex Course

PDI Course Number: 122T02 / UCSD Course Number: EDUC40389

Course Description

Are you wondering what the phrase the “Big Five” means and how it relates to your students’ literacy development? Perhaps you’ve heard the term before but are unaware of all that it entails? This online course is designed to take K-3 teachers through an intensive step-by-step approach to reading interventions as they pertain to the five areas of literacy. This course begins by discussing why students may struggle with reading and then goes right into the basics of intervention as well as tiers of intervention. Next, teachers are introduced to the role that phonemic awareness plays as a foundation for students’ later literacy skills. As teachers progress through the course, they will take a deep dive into each of the five areas of literacy and will learn specific intervention strategies for addressing student deficits in the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Teachers will learn how to effectively implement each of the discussed strategies within their own literacy programs, and they will learn how to successfully implement and use assessment to diagnose students’ reading deficits, as well as how to set data-driven goals for student success. By the end of this course, teachers will feel more confident and successful in their quest to implement research-based reading interventions into their own teaching practices. 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 this course was excellent. I learned more from these resources than I did from my Master's class resources." - Sherri Smith