Iowa Reading Research Center Resources

These plans use a famous speech (middle school) and a children's book on frogs (elementary school) as texts and t-chart graphic and semantic web graphic organizers to teach background knowledge. Related blog post.

Activating Background Knowledge Middle School Example Lesson Plan

Activating Background Knowledge Elementary School Example Lesson Plan

These plans provide guided and independent practice on adding details to expand simple sentences. Each plan contains a notes page, a words and phrases bank, and a practice sheet. Related blog post.

Sentence Expanding Elementary School Example Lesson Plan

Sentence Expanding Middle School Example Lesson Plan

Three ways to support struggling writers through sentence framing, expanding, and combining.

Teacher Methods of Supporting Students' Writing

This organizer helps readers develop comprehension skills by learning how to ask questions and look for the answers in a text.

"Asking Questions of Readers in the Lower Grades (Pre-Kindergarten-Fourth Grade)" graphic organizer

This organizer helps readers develop comprehension skills by learning how to ask questions and look for the answers in a text.

"Asking Questions of Readers in the Upper Grades (Fifth Grade and Up)" graphic organizer

Using two prompts, users will be able to use this organizer to practice inferencing skills, which are critical for reading comprehension.

"Making Inferences" graphic organizer

This tool helps users organize their thoughts and learn to form opinions about their reading.

"Forming Opinions" graphic organizer

Users of this tool are encouraged to write down their thoughts about a text in four different ways (opinion, reaction, connection, and visualization) and provide reasons from the text for their thoughts.

"What am I Thinking" graphic organizer

CROWD is used to remember the types of basic questions to ask: completion, recall, open-ended, “wh” questions, and distancing.

Set of CROWD bookmarks

PEER questions are meant to encourage deeper responses about a text, leading to a conversation beyond one-word answers.

Set of PEER bookmarks

This guide provides an overall orientation to Colorin Colorado, a national multimedia project offering a wealth of bilingual, research-based information, activities, and advice for educators and families of English language learners.

"Fun and Effective Ways to Read to Children" facilitation guide

This facilitation guide features Reading Rockets, a website that provides family members tips for helping kids become successful readers. Information can be searched by age or grade, disability area, and home language.

"Reading Tips for Parents" facilitation guide

This guide explores a collection of searchable digital books available in multiple languages.

"International Children's Digital Library" facilitation guide

This facilitation guide focuses on a section of the Colorin Colorado and Reading Rockets websites that offer at-home activities family members can use to help their children understand the sounds in words.

"Tips for Teaching Your Child About Phonemes" facilitation guide

This checklist outlines the steps family members can take when they have concerns regarding their child’s reading performance.

Parent Support Checklist

The Iowa Department of Education provides letter templates and other documents to assist with implementation of the state’s early literacy laws. The letters are intended to assist schools in communicating with families about universal screening assessments and results.

The documents begin on Page 28 of the “Early Literacy Technical Assistance Appendices.”

By Shawn Datchuk, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, University of Iowa College of Education

This white paper explains how handwriting assessments can be used to analyze a student’s handwriting and then offers instructional techniques to improve the handwriting of elementary-aged students.

How to Make Handwriting Part of Early Literacy Instruction

By Renita Schmidt, Ph.D.,
Associate Professor, University of Iowa College of Education
Amanda Haertling Thein, Ph.D.,
Associate Professor, University of Iowa College of Education

The authors explain how they go about selecting texts for their afterschool reading club that helps girls grow into strong women through reading books featuring strong female protagonists. They also highlight key practices they have found useful in reading and responding to those texts.

Strong Girls Read Strong Books

By Gwen Marra, Ed.D.

Through read alouds that utilize dialogic reading, children can develop their use of new vocabulary in a meaningful way, make connections between new and previously-learned information, and learn literary elements like character, point of view, and plot.

The Power of Interactive Read Alouds

Related: Blank version of the Dialogic Reading Planning Form included in the report