AR Preschool

Introduction to Artful Reading (AR) Pre-K

CTL’s Artful Reading Pre-K is an early childhood literacy program that seamlessly ties Kentucky’s Early Childhood Standards with National Core Arts Standards to promote an age-appropriate approach to reading, writing, speaking, and listening. In addition, the modules are designed with Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale® (ECERS) in mind and foster whole group, small group, and individualized work.

 Artful Reading Pre-K utilizes high-interest and varied texts, unique arts materials, and carefully crafted lesson plans to engage students. Lessons extend into centers for a centers-based approach to learning that promotes initiative, curiosity and exploration. The centers include opportunities for continued learning with a focus on:

  • Dramatic Play
  • Music
  • Health and Wellness
  • Science
  • Blocks
  • Visual Arts
  • Sensory
  • Reading
  • Writing

Students engage with a variety of texts through arts-based experiences designed to develop the skills of communication, creative expression, fine and gross motor, and social-emotional response. CTL builds on brain-based research to design instruction to improve learning.

In addition to providing opportunities for core arts experiences, the materials immerse students and teachers in learning in, through and about the arts, using music, dance, theater, and visual arts to: connect to high-quality texts, set schema for student learning, and provide opportunities for students to create and demonstrate their learning.

Specifically, Artful Reading Pre-K addresses early learning standards in:

  • English Language Arts
  • Mathematics
  • Science
  • Health/Mental Wellness
  • Social Studies
  • Physical Development
  • Arts and Humanities
  • National Core Arts Anchors

Artful Reading Pre-K aims to improve the skills of teachers to successfully and reciprocally link the arts and literacy to promote student learning. Artful Reading Pre-K combines formal training with job-embedded coaching and modeling to ensure that local capacity is built to sustain and grow the use of the program as a deliberate component of literacy instruction in the school.

Professional Learning

CTL has developed and tested its Artful Reading (AR) program through multiple projects, including the schools across the country. The purpose of AR is to support classroom teachers in implementing an arts-integrated approach to literacy using modules. Each module contains a core text, a blend of informational and literary supplemental texts, arts materials, lesson plans and a standards matrix. Implementation of the program involves a commitment to intensive professional learning, rooted in job-embedded coaching, with regular on-site and distance engagement of teachers and administrators. 

 

The model includes:

  • Foundational training provided via a 2-day summer institute
  • Capacity building throughout the year via job-embedded coaching (modeling, co-teaching, pre/mid/post-observation, co-planning, etc.)
  • Continuing trainings that are teacher-driven and promote reflection, planning, and fidelity of implementation
  • Consultation with content resources throughout the year via distance and face-to-face to support extension activities
  • Literacy leadership team development, consisting of teachers, support staff, and administration, to ensure sustainability of professional learning and practices outside the life of the grant
  • Where applicable, CTL offers job-embedded coaching for school and district literacy coaches as they develop their capacity to lead and support teachers in the program’s design

 

All of CTL’s professional learning models meet the Learning Forward Professional Learning Standards for effective student learning.

Personalized Professional Coaching

While AR brings educators together to regularly engage in collaborative professional learning, the program honors the individual needs of participating practitioners. CTL coaching provides a space for assessment, reflection, and refinement that is educator-driven, and proven to enhance engagement, motivation and instructional practices. Whether virtually or in-person, CTL staff engage in side-by-side instructional planning, pre/mid/post observations, reflection cycles, analysis of student work protocols, and other timely and relevant coaching experiences with teachers. CTL’s personalized professional coaching helps to create a school-wide culture of continuous improvement, which pays dividends both in the classroom and in the professional learning communities.

Leadership Capacity Building

CTL staff works closely with school faculties in implementing the model. Summer Institutes, half-day training sessions throughout the year, on-site and distance coaching and leadership seminars all support efforts to develop professional practices leading to improved student literacy skills. Initially, CTL staff works alongside Artful Reading with teachers while they develop the capacity of the school-based instructional coaches and the administration, to assume responsibility for improved instruction. Over time, CTL staff applies a gradual release approach, to support literacy leadership team members, coaches and principals more directly as they assumer greater responsibility for the ongoing success of Artful Reading.

Artful Reading

Introduction to Artful Reading (AR)

CTL’s AR is a Pre-K-5 classroom, grade-level, or school-wide literacy program that integrates the arts into literacy instruction, while meeting both National English Language Arts Standards and Core Arts Anchor Standards. AR promotes a thoughtful approach to reading, writing, speaking, and listening by utilizing high-interest and varied texts, arts materials, and lesson plans. Each module taps into the classroom teacher’s prior knowledge about literacy instruction and arts integration. The materials are built around a structure for before, during, and after reading that addresses key literacy developmental skills (including vocabulary development, reading comprehension, speaking, listening, observing, writing), using arts-based strategies and contexts to deeply engage students in learning.

 

In addition to providing opportunities for core arts experiences, the materials immerse students and teachers in learning in, through and about the arts, using music, dance, theater, and visual arts to: connect to high-quality texts, set schema for student learning, and provide opportunities for students to create and demonstrate their learning.

 

Students engage with texts through arts-based experiences focused on developing the skills of visualization, prediction, inferencing, analysis, questioning, creating, and synthesis. CTL builds on brain-based research to design instruction to improve learning.

 

Specifically, AR advances:

  • Arts integrated approach to teaching and learning that is student-centered
  • Summative writing tasks with rubric development support
  • Tiered vocabulary instruction around everyday words to domain-specific academic vocabulary
  • Reading comprehension activities for before, during, and after reading
  • Student to self; student to student; student to teacher dialogue opportunities
  • Writing to learn opportunities to make meaning of new learning
  • Authentic writing tasks in forms, purposes, and audiences
  • Gradual release process from teacher-directed to student-directed
  • Cross-disciplinary extension activities within the classroom and beyond

 

AR aims to improve the skills of teachers to successfully and reciprocally link the arts and literacy to promote student learning. AR networks teachers across grade levels and combines formal training with job-embedded coaching and modeling to ensure that local capacity is built to sustain and grow the use of the program as a deliberate component of literacy instruction in the school.

Professional Learning

CTL has developed and tested its Artful Reading (AR) program through multiple projects, including the schools across the country. The purpose of AR is to support classroom teachers in implementing an arts-integrated approach to literacy using modules. Each module contains a core text, a blend of informational and literary supplemental texts, arts materials, lesson plans and a standards matrix. Implementation of the program involves a commitment to intensive professional learning, rooted in job-embedded coaching, with regular on-site and distance engagement of teachers and administrators. 

 

The model includes:

  • Foundational training provided via a 2-day summer institute
  • Capacity building throughout the year via job-embedded coaching (modeling, co-teaching, pre/mid/post-observation, co-planning, etc.)
  • Continuing trainings that are teacher-driven and promote reflection, planning, and fidelity of implementation
  • Consultation with content resources throughout the year via distance and face-to-face to support extension activities
  • Literacy leadership team development, consisting of teachers, support staff, and administration, to ensure sustainability of professional learning and practices outside the life of the grant
  • Where applicable, CTL offers job-embedded coaching for school and district literacy coaches as they develop their capacity to lead and support teachers in the program’s design

 

All of CTL’s professional learning models meet the Learning Forward Professional Learning Standards for effective student learning.

Personalized Professional Coaching

While AR brings educators together to regularly engage in collaborative professional learning, the program honors the individual needs of participating practitioners. CTL coaching provides a space for assessment, reflection, and refinement that is educator-driven, and proven to enhance engagement, motivation and instructional practices. Whether virtually or in-person, CTL staff engage in side-by-side instructional planning, pre/mid/post observations, reflection cycles, analysis of student work protocols, and other timely and relevant coaching experiences with teachers. CTL’s personalized professional coaching helps to create a school-wide culture of continuous improvement, which pays dividends both in the classroom and in the professional learning communities.

Leadership Capacity Building

CTL staff works closely with school faculties in implementing the model. Summer Institutes, half-day training sessions throughout the year, on-site and distance coaching and leadership seminars all support efforts to develop professional practices leading to improved student literacy skills. Initially, CTL staff works alongside Artful Reading with teachers while they develop the capacity of the school-based instructional coaches and the administration, to assume responsibility for improved instruction. Over time, CTL staff applies a gradual release approach, to support literacy leadership team members, coaches and principals more directly as they assumer greater responsibility for the ongoing success of Artful Reading.

Adolescent Literacy Model (ALM)

Introduction to the Adolescent Literacy Model (ALM)

CTL has developed and tested its Adolescent Literacy Model (ALM) over the past decade, through multiple research projects, including Striving Readers and the KDE Literacy Initiative Grant, as well as implementation in individual schools. The purpose of the ALM is to develop a collaborative professional learning environment, in which educators perpetually enhance their ability to design instruction that leverages the various facets of literacy in service of their discipline specific objectives. By developing these skills across professional learning teams, schools create a learning environment in which students develop and take advantage of literacy in every classroom, every day. The results of this work include 1) improved literacy outcomes for students, 2) increased teacher efficacy in designing literacy-infused instruction in any discipline, and 3) more efficient mastery of content as student’s reading, writing, listening, and speaking strategies and skills are enhanced.

 Implementation of the model involves a commitment to intensive professional learning, rooted in job-embeddedcoaching, with regular on-site and distance engagement of teachers and administrators.

 

  • Foundational training provided via a 3-day Summer Institute
  • Customized follow-up training throughout the school year covering a range of essential topics which could include: lesson plan refinement protocol for balanced literacy integration, designing instruction within the learning cycle, analysis of student work protocol, comprehensive literacy calibration, and others
  • • Capacity-building instructional coaching for teachers as they design, implement, and refine their comprehensive literacy practices
  • Job-embedded coaching for school leaders as they develop their capacity to lead and support teachers in comprehensive literacy instructional design
  • Establishment of a literacy leadership team, consisting of teachers, support staff, and administration, to ensure sustainability of professional learning and practice outside the life of the grant
  • Resources, protocols, and tools for school self-assessment and improvement in implementation of comprehensive literacy instructional practices

CTL’s Adolescent Literacy Model is a school-wide, comprehensive professional learning model for middle and high schools. It provides training, coaching, strategies, tools, and processes to address the overall and specific literacy needs in schools today. The ALM enhances instruction in and across all disciplines, embracing the idea that literacy is the way we learn and therefore should be leveraged and supported in all classrooms. It has been developed over a period of fifteen years and tested through external research projects where it has been shown to have positive impact on teacher practice, teacher and student self-efficacy, and student performance in reading in grades 6 and 9, as well as an increase in student motivation and grades in other content areas.

 The ALM is designed for customized implementation. Specific components of the model are combined to address the targeted needs of the school and/or teacher, determined by a self assessment process using the ALM School Performance Guide, Classroom Observation Tool, and others. The overall goal is to support comprehensive literacy instruction where students are successful in all content areas, by applying familiar literacy strategies as they master new content objectives.

 Specifically, the ALM advances:

  • Tier 1 Instruction aligned with Kentucky Academic Standards and based in content literacy, where literacy strategies are applied in all subject areas to increase student engagement and deepen learning
  • Access to content learning for all learners through the regular use of content literacy
  • strategies which take advantage of the various facets of literacy: Vocabulary Development, Reading Comprehension, Writing to Learn, Academic Dialogue, and Writing to Demonstrate
  • Teacher as instructional-designer, selectively integrating curriculum resources and technology, to enhance student opportunities to process and express content learning
  • individually and collaboratively
  • Leadership development, including training and support for principals and the creation of a literacy leadership team to encourage, support, and monitor progress
  • A school instructional culture of high achievement through literacy development based in an environment of continuous improvement and growth-mindset

Professional Learning

CTL has developed and tested its Artful Reading (AR) program through multiple projects, including the schools across the country. The purpose of AR is to support classroom teachers in implementing an arts-integrated approach to literacy using modules. Each module contains a core text, a blend of informational and literary supplemental texts, arts materials, lesson plans and a standards matrix. Implementation of the program involves a commitment to intensive professional learning, rooted in job-embedded coaching, with regular on-site and distance engagement of teachers and administrators. 

 

The model includes:

  • Foundational training provided via a 2-day summer institute
  • Capacity building throughout the year via job-embedded coaching (modeling, co-teaching, pre/mid/post-observation, co-planning, etc.)
  • Continuing trainings that are teacher-driven and promote reflection, planning, and fidelity of implementation
  • Consultation with content resources throughout the year via distance and face-to-face to support extension activities
  • Literacy leadership team development, consisting of teachers, support staff, and administration, to ensure sustainability of professional learning and practices outside the life of the grant
  • Where applicable, CTL offers job-embedded coaching for school and district literacy coaches as they develop their capacity to lead and support teachers in the program’s design

 

All of CTL’s professional learning models meet the Learning Forward Professional Learning Standards for effective student learning.

Personalized Professional Coaching

While AR brings educators together to regularly engage in collaborative professional learning, the program honors the individual needs of participating practitioners. CTL coaching provides a space for assessment, reflection, and refinement that is educator-driven, and proven to enhance engagement, motivation and instructional practices. Whether virtually or in-person, CTL staff engage in side-by-side instructional planning, pre/mid/post observations, reflection cycles, analysis of student work protocols, and other timely and relevant coaching experiences with teachers. CTL’s personalized professional coaching helps to create a school-wide culture of continuous improvement, which pays dividends both in the classroom and in the professional learning communities.

Leadership Capacity Building

CTL staff works closely with school faculties in implementing the model. Summer Institutes, half-day training sessions throughout the year, on-site and distance coaching and leadership seminars all support efforts to develop professional practices leading to improved student literacy skills. Initially, CTL staff works alongside Artful Reading with teachers while they develop the capacity of the school-based instructional coaches and the administration, to assume responsibility for improved instruction. Over time, CTL staff applies a gradual release approach, to support literacy leadership team members, coaches and principals more directly as they assumer greater responsibility for the ongoing success of Artful Reading.

Literacy Leadership Cadre

Focused. Strategic. Supportive.

CTL designs and facilitates a Literacy Leadership Cadre (LLC), which is intended for those individuals who work alongside teachers and can include instructional coaches, administrators, or district leaders. Cadre members deepen their own understanding of comprehensive literacy, explore and utilize best practices relative to the complex nature of teaching, and design a support plan for maximum impact in schools. The Literacy Leadership Cadre convenes as an in-person cohort, bringing together literacy leaders from across the state in an effort to learn, collaborate, and network. CTL also provides individualized distance support to Cadre members.

Members of the cadre will participate in on-going training in each year of the grant to support development of the skills for supporting systemic instructional change in the building or district level. Participants will work toward International Literacy Associations Middle and High School Coaching Standards

Literacy coaching is a form of highly targeted professional development and can be a potent vehicle for improving literacy skills. CTL includes features identified as part of effective professional development:

  • Grounded in inquiry and reflection
  • Participant driven and collaborative, involving knowledge sharing among teachers and administrators within communities of practice
  • Sustained, ongoing, and intensive

Each year of the grant contains at least five convenings of the cadre with specific focus and purpose for each convening.

    Optional ALM Teacher Micro-Credentialing

    To address differentiation of professional learning and further support teachers in translating the ALM into classroom practice, CTL has developed a stack of micro-credentials that teachers, coaches, and administrators can tap into to further the work of the traditional ALM. Providing teachers with additional tools and resources to progress towards mastery of the same topics and objectives of the traditional ALM, our micro-credentials provide a formal opportunity for teachers to demonstrate evidence-based mastery of the ALM and an additional avenue for coaching support. Micro-credentials honor the educator as they increase their capacity and provide teachers with a public credential that reflects their abilities. CTL’s micro-credentials are a powerful addition to the traditional ALM delivery, providing flexibility in professional learning for teachers and opportunities for coaching and collaboration for school-based instructional coaches and administrators.