Classroom teachers implement instruction using the district-adopted Houghton Mifflin materials. These materials provide teachers with daily lessons in reading, writing, and word knowledge. In addition, this core curriculum provides appropriate grade-level anthologies for whole group instruction and leveled readers for small group instruction. Additional resources are available at www.eduplace.com/rdg.

In addition to the Houghton Mifflin materials, students have access to a wide range of reading materials through the use of school literacy labs as well as school and classroom libraries.

Daily classroom instruction occurs within a three-block balanced literacy framework. This framework includes a one-hour block for Reading Workshop, a one-hour block for Writing Workshop and a thirty minute block for Word Study. Effective instruction includes explicit teaching of strategies and skills and extended time to practice reading and writing authentic texts.

All students receive 90 minutes of uninterrupted classroom reading instruction focused on the five essential elements: comprehension, fluency, vocabulary, phonics (K-2) and phonological awareness (K/1). This instruction occurs within the Reading Workshop block and the Word Knowledge block. The teacher also provides students with a one-hour block of Writing Workshop.

The teacher monitors students during whole group instruction, identifying students who need extra support. Differentiated instruction is provided for these students by the teacher in a variety of ways, such as by size of group (e.g., changing from whole group to small group instruction), amount of content (e.g., focusing on only a few letter sounds), or type of delivery (e.g., changing from an oral approach to a tactile approach using magnetic).