Attachment 1 - Self-Evaluation Utilizing the Reading League's Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition) 2.10.26.docx

ATTACHMENT 1

Self-Evaluation Utilizing the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition)

Directions for Completion

1. For each component, determine the extent to which the corresponding red flag statement is true, indicate the appropriate rating based on the descriptions provided.

· Not Applicable: Component is not included in the materials.

· 1 – Red Flag statement is false.

· 2 – Red Flag statement is minimally true, evidence is minimal or briefly mentioned.

· 3 – Red Flag statement is mostly true. If applicable, evidence is in multiple places throughout the curriculum.

· 4 – Red Flag statement is always true, pervasive, and/or integral to curriculum.

2. For each component, reference specific lessons, alignment documents, scope and sequence, student materials, etc to justify the selected score. Strong submissions will include direct links to multiple individual lessons from multiple grade levels across the year. Weak submissions will include only a summary statement, minimal or no direct links, or vague references (e.g., teacher manual or student workbook without specifying a lesson or page) and/or evidence not directly connected to the component.

Overall Design and Delivery Components

No evidence of deliberate and purposeful practice: “These two terms refer to practice that goes beyond rote repetition and involves practicing for a purpose (e.g., accuracy, fluent retrieval, generalization) with the deliberate goal of long-term improvement of skill performance” (Hughes & Riccomini, 2019, p. 406).

No evidence of retrieval practice: Retrieval practice "consists of tasks requiring retrieval of targeted skills and knowledge from memory without prompts or cues" (Hughes & Riccomini, 2019, p. 407). “Retrieval practice is a strategy in which calling information to mind subsequently enhances and boosts learning” (Agarwal, Roediger, McDaniel, & McDermott, 2020, p. 2).

No evidence of spaced or distributed practice: Spaced or distributed practice “involves taking a given amount of time devoted to learning and arranging that time into multiple sessions that are spread over time” (Carpenter & Agarwal, 2019, p. 3).

No evidence of cumulative practice: Cumulative practice is “the systematic addition of a just-learned skill to previously learned and related skills, allowing them to be practiced together” (Hughes & Lee, 2019, p. 414; Archer & Hughes, 2011). “It requires that new (and usually related) skills are added to a practice activity as they are acquired, thus providing distributed practice for multiple skills within one session" (Hughes & Riccomini, 2019, p. 407).

No evidence of interleaved practice: Interleaved practice “is similar to cumulative practice but involves mixing the order of skills and problems to be practiced by distributing them in a random fashion, causing the learner to have to discriminate” (Kirschner, P. & Hendrick, C., 2020).

Student Interest: The materials are generally not intrinsically interesting and engaging for most students in that grade.

Cohesion: The program components are disjointed and not seamlessly related to one another. Instruction based on the science of reading must be integrated, acknowledging the impact of various component skills upon each other.

Usability: The materials are confusing and/or difficult to manage and use in a classroom setting.

Section 1: Word Recognition Components 1A: Word Recognition Non-Negotiables

1.1: The three-cueing system is taught as a strategy for decoding in early grades (i.e., directing students to use picture cues, context cues, or attend to the first letter of a word as a cue).

1.2: Guidance is given to memorize any whole words, including high frequency words, by sight without attending to the sound/symbol correspondences.

1.3: Supporting materials do not provide a systematic scope and sequence nor opportunities for practice and review of elements taught (e.g., phonics, decoding, encoding).

Note: Components 1.4-1.6 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 1.4-1.6 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

1B: Phonological and Phoneme Awareness

1.7: Instruction only attends to larger units of phonological awareness (syllables, rhyme, onset-rime) without moving to the phoneme level (e.g., blends such as /t/ /r/ are kept intact rather than having students notice their individual sounds).

1.8: Blends such as /b/ /l/ are kept intact rather than having students notice their individual sounds.

1.9: Students do not practice the phonemes as soon as they learn the graphemes.

1.10: Instruction is focused on letters only, without explicit instruction and practice with the phonemes that letters represent.

1.11: Phoneme awareness is not taught as a foundational reading skill.

1.12: Phoneme awareness is not assessed and monitored (e.g., a student’s ability to identify the initial, final, and medial phonemes in a word).

Note: Components 1.13-1.16 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 1.13-1.16 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

1C: Phonics and Phonic Decoding

1.17: Letter-sound correspondences are taught opportunistically or implicitly during text reading.

1.18: Instruction is typically “one and done”; phonics skills are introduced but with very little or short-term review.

1.19: The first letters of key words for letter-sound correspondences are not aligned with the pure phoneme being taught (e.g., earth for /ě/, ant for /ă/, orange for /ŏ/).

1.20: Phonics instruction takes place in short (or optional) “mini-lessons” or “word work” sessions.

1.21: The initial instructional sequence introduces many (or all) consonants before a vowel is introduced, short vowels are all taught in rapid succession, and/or all sounds for one letter are taught all at once.

1.22: Blending is not explicitly taught nor practiced.

1.23: Instruction encourages students to memorize whole words, read words using the first letter only as a clue, guess at words in context using a “What would make sense?” strategy, or use picture clues rather than phonic decoding.

1.24: Words with known letter-sound correspondences, including high-frequency words, are taught as whole-word units, often as stand-alone “sight words” to be memorized.

1.25: There are few opportunities provided for word-level decoding practice of new phonics patterns and interleaving practice for prior phonics patterns.

1.26: Early texts are predominantly predictable and/or leveled texts which include phonic elements that have not been taught; decodable texts are not used or emphasized.

1.27: Advanced word study (Grades 2-5): Instruction in phonics ends once single-syllable phonics patterns (e.g., CVC, CVCe) are taught.

1.28: Advanced word study (Grades 2-5): There is no evident instruction in multisyllabic word decoding strategies and/or using morphology to support word recognition.

Note: Components 1.29-1.41 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 1.29-1.41 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

1D: Fluency

1.42: Fluency instruction focuses primarily on student silent reading.

1.43: Rate is emphasized over accuracy; priority is given to the student's ability to read words quickly.

1.44: Word-level fluency practice to automaticity is not provided, or fluency is viewed only as text-reading fluency.

1.45: Fluency is practiced only in narrative text or with repeated readings of patterned text.

1.46: Fluency assessment allows acceptance of incorrectly decoded words if they are close in meaning to the target word (e.g., accepting the word “house” instead of the printed word “home”).

Note: Components 1.47-1.52 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 1.47-1.52 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

Language Comprehension, Reading Comprehension, and Writing Components Sections 2-4: Non-Negotiables for Language Comprehension (LC), Reading Comprehension (RC), and Writing (W)

2-4.1: (LC, RC, W) In early grades, the instructional framework is primarily a workshop approach, emphasizing student choice and implicit, incidental, or embedded learning.

2-4.2: (LC, RC, W) Students are not exposed to rich vocabulary and complex syntax in reading and writing materials.

2-4.3: (RC) Comprehension instruction focuses mainly on reading a text and answering comprehension questions instead of supporting the process of and providing scaffolds for comprehending texts.

2-4.4: (RC, W) Writing is not taught or is taught separately from reading at all times.

2-4.5: (LC, RC) Questioning during read-alouds focuses mainly on lower-level thinking skills.

Note: Components 2-4.6-2-4.8 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 2-4.6-2-4.8 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

Section 2: Language Comprehension Components 2B: Background Knowledge

2.1: Read-aloud opportunities emphasize simple stories or narrative texts. Read-aloud text is not sufficiently complex and/or does not include knowledge-building expository texts (i.e., topics related to science, social studies, current events).

2.2: Opportunities to bridge existing knowledge to new knowledge are not apparent in instruction.

2.3: Advanced (Grades 2-5): For students who are automatic with the code, texts for reading are primarily leveled texts that do not feature a variety of diverse, complex, knowledge-building text sets to develop background knowledge in a variety of subject areas.

Note: Components 2.4-2.6 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 2.4-2.6 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

2C: Vocabulary

2.7: Vocabulary worksheets and activities are used with little opportunity for deep understanding of vocabulary words.

2.8: Instruction includes memorization of isolated words and definitions out of context.

2.9: Tier 2 words are not explicitly taught and practiced; students are not given opportunities to use them in their speech, see them in print, and use them in writing.

2.10: Students are not exposed to and taught Tier 3 words.

2.11: Explicit instruction in morphology is either absent or not consistently taught according to a scope and sequence (i.e., simple to complex) throughout K-5 instruction.

Note: Components 2.12-2.17 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 2.12-2.17 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

2D: Language Structures

2.18: Conventions of print, grammar, and syntax are taught implicitly or opportunistically with no evidence of consistent, explicit, simple to complex instruction across all grade levels.

2.19: Instruction does not include teacher modeling nor sufficient opportunities for discussion.

2.20: Students are asked to memorize parts of speech as a list without learning in context and through application.

Note: Components 2.21-2.26 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 2.21-2.26 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

2E: Verbal Reasoning

2.27: Inferencing strategies are not taught explicitly and may be based only on picture clues (i.e., picture walking), and not connecting them to background knowledge and instructional texts.

2.28: Students do not practice inferencing as a discrete skill.

Note: Components 2.29-2.32 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 2.29-2.32 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

2F: Literacy Knowledge

2.33: Genre types and features are not explicitly taught.

2.34: Genre types and text structures (e.g., cause and effect, problem and solution, sequence, compare and contrast) are not used to understand the purpose of what is being read.

2.35: Specific text structures and corresponding signal words are not explicitly taught and practiced.

Note: Components 2.36-2.39 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 2.36-2.39 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

Section 3: Reading Comprehension Components

3.1: Comprehension strategies such as identifying the main idea, summarizing, noting text structure, inferencing, and fix-ups are not taught and practiced throughout the year using a gradual release of responsibility (i.e., I do, we do, you do) using appropriate instructional text that students can accurately decode.

3.2: Students are asked to independently apply reading comprehension strategies primarily in short, disconnected readings at the expense of engaging in knowledge-building text sets.

3.3: Emphasis on independent reading and book choice without engaging with complex texts.

3.4: Materials for comprehension instruction are predominantly predictable and/or leveled texts.

3.5: Students are not taught methods to monitor their comprehension while reading.

Note: Components 3.6-3.9 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 3.6-3.9 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

Section 4: Writing Components 4A: Handwriting

4.1: There is no direct instruction in handwriting.

4.2: Handwriting instruction is an isolated add-on.

Note: Components 4.3-4.4 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 4.3-4.4 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

4B: Writing - Spelling

4.5: There is no evidence of explicit spelling instruction, no spelling scope and sequence, or the spelling scope and sequence is not aligned with the phonics/decoding scope and sequence.

4.6: There is no evidence of phoneme segmentation or phoneme-grapheme mapping to support spelling instruction.

4.7: Patterns in decoding are not featured in encoding/spelling; spelling lists are based on content or frequency of word use and not connected to decoding/phonics lessons.

4.8: Students practice spelling by memorization only (e.g., rainbow writing, repeated writing, pyramid writing).

4.9: Spelling patterns for each phoneme are taught all at once (e.g., all spellings of long /ā/) instead of a systematic progression to develop automaticity with individual grapheme/phonemes.

Note: Components 4.10-4.14 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 4.10-4.14 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

4C: Writing - Composition

4.15: Writing tasks and prompts are provided with minimal instruction for the skills needed to complete them and little time for planning prior to writing.

4.16: Writing assignments are primarily unstructured with few models or graphic organizers.

4.17: Conventions, grammar, and sentence structure are not explicitly taught, and opportunities for practice to develop automaticity are not provided; instead, they are addressed opportunistically.

4.18: Writing instruction and assignments are focused primarily on narrative writing or unstructured student choice.

4.19: Students are not taught the writing process (i.e., planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing).

4.20: Writing is taught as a standalone skill and is not used to further reading comprehension.

Note: Components 4.21-4.25 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 4.21-4.25 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

Section 5: Assessment Components Assessment Non-Negotiables

5.1: Assessments measure comprehension only without additional assessment measures to determine what is leading to comprehension weaknesses (e.g., phonics, phoneme awareness, nonsense word fluency, decoding, encoding, fluency, vocabulary, listening comprehension).

5.2: Assessments include miscue analysis in which misread words are marked correct if the mistake does not substantially alter the meaning of the text.

Note: Components 5.3-5.5 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 5.3-5.5 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

Assessment

5.6: Assessments result in benchmarks according to a leveled-text gradient.

5.7: Foundational skills assessments are primarily running records or similar assessments that are based on whole language or cueing strategies (e.g., guess the word by looking at the first letter, use picture support for decoding).

5.8: Phonics skills are not assessed.

5.9: Phoneme awareness is not assessed.

5.10: Decoding skills are assessed using real words only.

5.11: Oral reading fluency (ORF) assessments are not used.

5.12: The suite of assessments does not address aspects of language comprehension (e.g., vocabulary, syntax, listening comprehension).

5.13: Multilingual learners are not assessed in their home language.

Note: Components 5.14-5.23 are optional in the Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition). Therefore, components 5.14-5.23 are not included in this self-evaluation tool.

Glossary Reading League’s Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines (3rd Edition) Section 1A: Phonological and Phoneme Awareness

· Explicit Instruction: Instruction that is taught directly and clearly, leaving little to chance. Teachers begin by modeling the objective, ensuring that students know what is expected. Students then practice along with the teacher, and finally, they complete the task individually (e.g., I do, we do, you do). Explicit instruction includes practice with immediate corrective feedback.

· Grapheme: A letter or letter combination that spells a phoneme; it can be one, two, three, or four letters in English (e.g., i, ou, igh, ough).

· Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound in a spoken word; an individual speech sound.

· Phoneme Awareness: The ability to notice, think about, or manipulate the individual phonemes (sounds) in spoken words. It is the highest level of phonological awareness and a potent predictor of future reading success.

· Phonological Sensitivity (Awareness): One’s sensitivity to, or explicit awareness of, the phonological structure of words in one’s language. It is an “umbrella” term that encompasses awareness of individual words in spoken sentences, syllables, onset-rime segments, and individual phonemes.

· Systematic Instruction: The use of a planned, logical sequence to introduce elements taught, building from the simplest to those that are more complex.

Section 1B: Phonics and Phonic Decoding

· Blending: Putting phonemes together to form a word.

· Encoding: Using knowledge of individual phonemes in spoken words to spell words both orally and in print; a skill that develops reciprocally to decoding when explicitly taught.

· Etymology: The history of a word or word part that includes its origin.

· High-Frequency Words: Words that appear most often in printed text.

· Interleaving Practice: Practice that is similar to cumulative practice but involves mixing the order of skills and problems to be practiced by distributing them in a random fashion, causing the learner to have to discriminate.

· Letter-Sound Correspondences: The relationship between a grapheme, or printed letter(s), and its corresponding phoneme, or individual speech sound (e.g., “c” can correspond to the phoneme /k/ or /s/).

· Morpheme: The smallest unit of a word that carries meaning (e.g., prefix, suffix, base element).

· Phonics: Instruction to teach how print/letters represent the sounds of spoken language.

· Phonic Decoding: The process of sounding out words using letter-sound knowledge and blending those sounds together to pronounce the word. In the research literature, this process is referred to as phonological recoding or simply recoding.

· Segmenting: Breaking a spoken word into its individual phonemes.

· Spaced Practice: Practice that occurs over time.

· Syllable Types: The six common syllable patterns in English: closed, open, vowel-consonant-e, r-controlled, vowel team, and consonant-le.

· Types of Text:

· Decodable: Texts with a high proportion of phonetically regular words matched to common letter-sound relationships found within the program’s systematic scope and sequence.

· Leveled: Texts are leveled according to a gradient of difficulty typically based on features like vocabulary, text structures, and content.

· Predictable: Texts with predictable text structures such as repetitive sentences, words, and phrases.

· Variant Vowels: Groups of letters that produce the same vowel sound (e.g., ai, ay, eigh).

Section 1C: Fluency

· Accuracy: Decoding words without any letter-sound errors.

· Automaticity: Performing a reading task without conscious effort to decode words.

· Connected Text: Text that includes multiple sentences that are related to one another.

· Prosody: Reading smoothly with expression and intonation that represent the meaning and comprehension of connected text.

Section 2A: Language Comprehension - Background Knowledge

· Background Knowledge: A specific subset of knowledge needed to comprehend a particular situation, lesson, or text.

· English Language Development (ELD): Instruction that is specially designed for multilingual learners to develop their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in English.

· Expository Text: Text that provides factual information about a topic.

· Narrative Text: Text that relates a series of events; this can include both fiction and nonfiction.

Section 2B: Language Comprehension - Vocabulary

· English Language Development (ELD): Instruction that is specially designed for multilingual learners to help develop their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in English.

· Morphology: The system of meaningful parts, or morphemes, that make up words.

· Tiered Vocabulary Words: A means of classifying words due to their level of difficulty and frequency of use. It is important to note that these tiers are not related to tiers of instruction in a Multi-Tiered System of Supports.

· Tier 1 Vocabulary Words: Words that are familiar to children and occur often in text and conversation (e.g., house, car, dog, school).

· Tier 2 Vocabulary Words: Words that are not likely to be familiar to young children but reflect a concept they can identify with and can use in conversation (e.g., shiver, excitement, remarkable). Tier 2 words can appear in multiple domains and content areas.

· Tier 3 Vocabulary Words: Words that are low frequency and domain or content-area specific (e.g., words like rhombus, molecule, democracy, baroque).

Section 2C: Language Comprehension - Language Structures

· Cohesive Devices: Words used to connect ideas within a sentence or text (e.g., pronouns, synonyms, connectives including coordinate and subordinate conjunctions).

· Contrastive Analysis: A systematic study of two languages (or language variations) with the intent of identifying their structural similarities and differences.

· Syntax: The arrangement of words to form sentences in a given language.

Section 2D: Language Comprehension - Verbal Reasoning

· Inference: Using prior knowledge and information from the text to comprehend what is not directly stated.

· Metacognition: Developing an interactive approach with text to recognize when you do not understand something and having options to know what to do about it.

Section 2E: Language Comprehension - Literacy Knowledge

· Genre: A type of text or literature that has a particular form and style (e.g., poetry, narrative, information, opinion).

· Signal Words: Words that signal readers as to the text structure. For example, signal words for cause and effect texts include “therefore,” “because,” and “as a result,” whereas signal words for compare and contrast texts include “however,” “in contrast,” and “on the other hand.”

Section 3: Reading Comprehension

· Types of Text:

· Decodable: Texts with a high proportion of phonetically regular words matched to common letter-sound relationships previously taught in phonics lessons within accompanying teacher guides.

· Leveled: Texts are leveled according to a gradient of difficulty, typically based on features like vocabulary, text structures, and content.

· Predictable: Texts with predictable text structures such as repetitive sentences, words, and phrases.

Section 4A: Writing - Spelling

· Encoding: Using knowledge of individual phonemes in spoken words to spell words both orally and in print; a skill that develops reciprocally to decoding when explicitly taught.

· Morphology: The system of meaningful parts, or morphemes, that make up words.

· Variant Vowels: Groups of letters that produce the same vowel sound (e.g., ai, ay, eigh).

Section 4B: Writing - Composition

· Syntax: The arrangement of words to form sentences in a given language.

Section 5: Assessment

· Diagnostic Assessments: Used to assess specific skills or components of reading (such as phonics or fluency) to help educators plan targeted and individualized instruction.

· Grapheme: A letter or letter combination that spells a phoneme; it can be one, two, three, or four letters in English (e.g., i, ou, igh, ough).

· Morpheme: The smallest unit of a word that carries meaning (e.g., prefix, suffix, base element).

· Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS): A framework for school improvement that ensures all students are supported to meet positive academic, behavioral, and social-emotional outcomes, beginning with core instruction in Tier I and interventions at increasing intensity at Tiers 2 and 3.

· Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound in a spoken word; an individual speech sound.

· Progress Monitoring: Frequent assessments given to students receiving intervention that measure progress toward acquiring specific skills.

· Reliable: The extent to which assessments are consistent over time within the same settings.

· Screening/Screeners: Brief assessments given to all students to determine which students are at risk of struggling with reading.

· Standardized: Administered and scored in a consistent manner.

· Syllable Types: The six common syllable patterns in English: closed, open, vowel-consonant-e, r-controlled, vowel team, and consonant-le.

· Systematic Instruction: The use of a planned, logical instructional sequence to introduce concepts, building from the simplest to those that are more complex.

· Valid: The extent to which an assessment is accurate (i.e., whether or not it measures what it is supposed to measure).