of Robin Fogarty & Associates as a leading educational consultant. She works with educators throughout the world in curriculum, instruction, and assessment strategies. Working as an author and consultant, she works with students at all levels, from kindergarten to college. Her roles include school administrator, and consultant with state departments and ministries of education in the United States, Puerto Rico, Russia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Great Britain, Singapore, South Korea, and the Netherlands.
Robin has written articles for Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, and the Journal of Staff Development. She is author of Brain-Compatible Classrooms, 10 Things New Teachers Need to Succeed, and Literacy Matters: Strategies Every Teacher Can Use. She is coauthor of How to Integrate the Curricula, The Adult Learner: Some Things We Know, A Look at Transfer: Seven Strategies That Work, Close the Achievement Gap: Simple Strategies That Work, Twelve Brain Principles That Make the Difference, Nine Best Practices That Make the Difference, Informative Assessment: When It’s Not About a Grade, Supporting Differentiated Instruction: A Professional Learning Communities Approach, Invite! Excite! Ignite! 13 Principles for Teaching, Learning, and Leading, K–12, and The Right to Be Literate: 6 Essential Literacy Skills. Her work also includes a leadership series titled From Staff Room to Classroom: The One-Minute Professional Development Planner and School Leader’s Guide to the Common Core. Her most recent works include Unlocking Student Talent: The New Science of Developing Expertise and the second edition of How to Teach Thinking Skills.
Robin earned a doctorate in curriculum and human resource development from Loyola University Chicago, a master’s in instructional strategies from National Louis University, and a bachelor’s in early childhood education from the State University of New York at Potsdam.
To learn more about Robin’s work, visit www.robinfogarty.com or follow @robinfogarty or @RFATeachPD on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Gene M. Kerns, EdD, is a third-generation educator with teaching experience from elementary through the university level and K–12 administrative experience. He currently serves as vice president and chief academic officer of Renaissance Learning.
With nearly twenty years of experience of leading staff development and speaking at national and international conferences, Gene has helped clients that include administrators’ associations across the country, the Ministry of Education of Singapore, London’s Westminster Education Forum, and the Global Education Technology Forum of China.
Gene received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Longwood University in Virginia, and also holds a doctorate of education from the University of Delaware with an emphasis in education leadership.
To learn more about Gene’s work, follow him on Twitter @GeneKerns.
Brian M. Pete is cofounder and CEO of Robin Fogarty & Associates. He has followed a long line of educators—college professors, school superintendents, teachers, and teachers of teachers—into a career in education. He has a rich background in professional development and has worked with adult learners in districts and educational agencies throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
Brian has an eye for the teachable moment and the words to describe skillful teaching. He delivers dynamic, humor-filled sessions that energize the audiences of school leaders, teachers, and teacher leaders with engaging strategies that transfer into immediate and practical on-site applications.
Brian is coauthor of How to Teach Thinking Skills Within the Common Core, From Staff Room to Classroom: A Guide for Planning and Coaching Professional Development, From Staff Room to Classroom II: The One-Minute Professional Development Planner, Twelve Brain Principles That Make the Difference, Supporting Differentiated Instruction: A Professional Learning Communities Approach, The Adult Learner: Some Things We Know, A Look at Transfer: Seven Strategies That Work, School Leader’s Guide to the Common Core, Everyday Problem-Based Learning: Quick Projects to Build Problem-Solving Fluency, Unlocking Student Talent, and The Right to Be Literate: 6 Essential Literacy Skills.
Brian earned a bachelor of science from DePaul University in Chicago and is pursuing his master’s degree in fiction writing from Columbia College in Chicago.
To learn more about Brian’s work, visit www.robinfogarty.com, or follow @brian pete or @RFATeachPD on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
To book Robin J. Fogarty or Brian M. Pete for professional development, contact [email protected].
Preface
Our journey with this book started the moment Gene called Robin and Brian and asked, “Do you have a few minutes? Well, maybe more?” He piqued their curiosity as he began his pitch: “This is about the reading challenges that almost nobody’s talking about.” He was talking about supporting and advocating for a revolutionary shake-up in traditional reading protocols based on re-emerging and newly emerging research evidence. That phone call and exciting news set the journey in motion.
K–12 students in 21st century classrooms face reading challenges that few on the modern school scene are talking about yet. These challenges have only become visible as a consensus of ideas from four voices in education. First, the wisdom of school-improvement expert Mike Schmoker’s (2018) Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning and his plea to prioritize the essentials of teaching and optimize the power of student learning both struck the right chord with the three of us. Second, American educator E. D. Hirsch Jr.’s (2018) tome Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories broke new ground and fanned the flame of knowledge as the quintessential ingredient for reclaiming students’ literacy legacy. Third, Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs, and Erica Woolway (2016) advanced a phenomenal approach to instruction in their book Reading Reconsidered: A Practical Guide to Rigorous Literacy Instruction, boosted by, finally, psychologist Daniel T. Willingham’s (2017) The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads.
These last two books made us clearly and urgently decide to combine their ideas in ways that matter to teachers. We discovered how their ideas coincide with our aim to revisit common reading instructional practices (which have always included instruction on phonics, or decoding, and vocabulary development) and the critical role of content knowledge. This mingling of ideas contains the essence of a newly formed truth: massive amounts of time for authentic reading are necessary across all subjects in order for teachers to willingly release students to read successfully as a lifetime pursuit.
That’s the story of Literacy Reframed: How a Focus on Decoding, Vocabulary, and Background Knowledge Improves Reading Comprehension.
Introduction
It is impossible to overstate the importance of literacy. Yet nothing so begs for clarity in K–12 education.
—Mike Schmoker
Imagine, in a year devoid of major financial market disruption, you dutifully invested twice the amount you did the previous year into your retirement account only to see that your account balance remained the same at year’s end. You doubled
