This study guide is a review companion drawn verbatim from the course. Course completion requires the full lessons, activities, and assessment.
Module 1 · Foundations: the science and the statute
28 required minutes
Lesson 1.114 required minutes
Minnesota's statutory charge: renewal reading preparation and the READ Act
Foundation for all six PELSB reading elements
Learning objectiveTrace the legal line from license renewal reading preparation through the READ Act to the six reading elements a PELSB reviewer must be able to locate in this training.
Key teaching points
Minnesota has asked renewing teachers to demonstrate reading preparation for more than two decades, but the legal anchor has moved. The original definition, enacted in Minnesota Statutes, section 122A.06, subdivision 4, named the elements this course teaches: instruction and practice in phonemic awareness, phonics and other word-recognition skills, and guided oral reading for beginning readers, as well as extensive...
The READ Act, enacted in 2023, states a blunt goal: every Minnesota child reading at or above grade level every year, beginning in kindergarten, with support for multilingual learners and students receiving special education services. [S6] To reach it, districts must provide evidence-based reading instruction addressing phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, oral language, vocabulary, and reading comprehension...
The statute also defines its terms so that districts and providers cannot relabel old practice as new science. Section 120B.119 defines seventeen terms, including evidence-based ("instruction based on reliable, trustworthy, and valid evidence" of success in phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension), structured literacy (an approach in which teachers carefully structure...
Finally, the READ Act builds infrastructure a renewing teacher should know how to use. The Minnesota Department of Education must employ literacy specialists to support implementation, approve screeners and professional development, and collect district literacy data; every district must post a local literacy plan annually by June 15. [S8, S10] MDE partnered with CAREI, the Center for Applied Research and...
Because a reviewer must reconcile three statutory vocabularies, it is worth laying them side by side once, explicitly. The historic definition names seven instructional experiences: phonemic awareness, phonics and other word-recognition skills, guided oral reading for beginning readers, extensive silent reading, vocabulary instruction, comprehension instruction, and instruction fostering understanding and...
The renewal obligation also reaches further than many secondary teachers assume. Section 122A.187, subdivision 5, attaches to the license, not to a grade band: a high school chemistry teacher renewing a Tier 3 license carries the same reading-preparation requirement as a kindergarten teacher. [S2] The statute is coherent on this point rather than bureaucratically indifferent.
Renewal hook: Minn. Stat. §122A.187, subd. 5: reading preparation consistent with §§120B.118 to 120B.124, evidenced under Minn. R. 8710.7200. [S2, S4]
Reviewer lens: PELSB's form checks six locatable elements from the historic statutory definition of scientifically based reading instruction. [S1, S3]
District floor: READ Act: evidence-based instruction, approved K-3 screening three times a year, interventions, family notification. [S6, S8]
Support system: MDE literacy specialists, approved training lists, CAREI curriculum reviews, annual local literacy plans. [S8, S9, S10, S11]
Applied activity
Locate your district's current local literacy plan (posted annually by June 15) or, if you cannot access it, the MDE READ Act page. Write a short brief for your own grade level or role: which approved screener your district uses, when the three screening windows fall, and one obligation from this lesson that most directly changes your daily reading instruction.
How skilled reading develops: two models and one evidence base
Foundation for all six PELSB reading elements
Learning objectiveUse the Simple View of Reading and Scarborough's Reading Rope to explain why word recognition and language comprehension both require deliberate instruction, and connect each rope strand to a lesson in this course.
Key teaching points
Two complementary models organize the research this course draws on. The Simple View of Reading (Gough and Tunmer, 1986) proposes that reading comprehension is the product, not the sum, of two capacities: word recognition and language comprehension. [S21] The multiplication matters.
Scarborough's Reading Rope (2001) elaborates the same insight into instructable strands. [S16] The word-recognition strand braids phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words, and these strands must become increasingly automatic: a skilled reader does not sound out "the" or "nation," because repeated accurate decoding has bonded those spellings to pronunciation and meaning. The...
The evidence base beneath both models was consolidated by the National Reading Panel's 2000 report, Teaching Children to Read, which reviewed experimental and quasi-experimental research and reported findings in alphabetics (phonemic awareness and phonics), fluency (including guided oral reading), and comprehension (including vocabulary and comprehension-strategy instruction). [S12, S17] Two decades of subsequent...
One implication deserves emphasis before the modules begin. Because comprehension is a product, a deficit in one factor cannot be compensated by enriching the other.
The Simple View also predicts, correctly, that the relative weight of the two factors shifts across development. In the primary grades, variance in reading comprehension is dominated by variance in word recognition, because most young children's oral language far outstrips what they can decode; by the middle grades, once decoding approaches ceiling for most students, language comprehension carries progressively more...
Scholarly honesty requires noting where the field has pressed on these models. Duke and Cartwright's active view of reading argues that the Simple View, read narrowly, understates three things the evidence now documents: word recognition and language comprehension overlap through shared abilities such as vocabulary, which serves both decoding and meaning; bridging processes such as fluency and morphological...
Model-to-data linking is a discipline worth rehearsing before the content modules. Consider two composite readers.
Applied activity
Select one de-identified reader you teach or recently taught. Using the Simple View, state a one-sentence hypothesis about which factor most constrains that student's comprehension, then name the two rope strands you would strengthen first and the classroom evidence that supports your hypothesis. If your evidence is insufficient, state what screening or work-sample data you would collect.
Statutory element: phonemic awareness · foundation for phonics and word recognition
Learning objectiveSequence phonemic awareness tasks from easier to more advanced, deliver them explicitly in short daily doses, and connect phonemes to graphemes rather than treating sound work as an oral-only exercise.
Key teaching points
Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken syllables and words. [S3, S7] It is not phonics: phonemic awareness concerns spoken language, while phonics concerns the relationship between spoken sounds and written letters. It is also not listening comprehension or rhyming games in general.
Phonological tasks form a rough progression from larger to smaller units and from easier to harder operations. Word and syllable awareness (clapping syllables in "Minnesota") and onset-rime work ("c" plus "at") are phonological but not yet phonemic.
Connecting sound work to print is where Minnesota's screening and instruction meet. Approved READ Act screeners sample phonemic awareness directly in the early grades, so a fall screening profile can tell a teacher which students need intensified small-group sound work before a decoding gap opens. [S6, S8, S24] In instruction, the bridge looks like phoneme-grapheme mapping: students segment a spoken word into...
Two cautions keep this element honest. First, phonemic awareness is a means, not a destination; once students segment and blend reliably and use those operations in decoding and spelling, extending oral drills yields little, and instructional minutes should shift to phonics and connected text.
Phoneme-level precision in the teacher's own speech is a trainable skill that repays deliberate practice. English phonemes divide into continuants, whose airflow can be sustained (/m/, /s/, /f/, /l/, /r/, vowels), and stops, whose airflow cannot (/p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/).
A scripted worked example makes the daily routine concrete. Kindergarten, January, whole group, seven minutes.
The evidence base also disciplines dosage. The National Reading Panel's meta-analytic finding was that programs concentrating on one or two phonemic operations outperformed programs sprawling across many, and that total instructional time in the effective range was modest, on the order of well under twenty hours across a program, not daily drills stretching across years. [S12, S18] The practical inference, hedged...
Applied activity
Build a ten-minute phonemic awareness mini-routine for a real or representative group: choose two task types at the right point in the progression, script six example items each (favoring continuant sounds if learners are early), and describe the phoneme-grapheme mapping step that connects the routine to print. State what screening or classroom evidence would tell you the routine is no longer needed.
PELSB element: phonics and other word-recognition skills
Learning objectiveDeliver systematic, explicit phonics within a structured-literacy frame, extend word recognition to multisyllabic and irregular words through word analysis and orthographic mapping, and explain why cue-based guessing undermines word recognition.
Key teaching points
Phonics is the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds, taught so that students can use those relationships to read and spell words. [S3, S7] The National Reading Panel found that systematic phonics instruction, in which letter-sound correspondences are taught in a planned sequence and applied to reading words and text, produces stronger word...
Systematic means a deliberate scope and sequence, generally moving from high-utility single consonants and short vowels, to consonant digraphs and blends, to long-vowel patterns and vowel teams, to r-controlled vowels, and onward into syllable types and morphology. Explicit means the teacher directly teaches each new correspondence, models blending, and provides cumulative practice that mixes new patterns with...
"Other word-recognition skills" is the statutory phrase that carries students beyond one-syllable phonics. [S1, S3] Three skill families matter most. First, syllable and vowel-pattern analysis lets students break "fantastic" or "remember" into readable chunks.
This mechanism explains why Minnesota wrote the three-cueing system into statute. [S7] Prompting a stuck reader to look at the picture, think what would make sense, or check the first letter and guess trains attention away from the letter sequence, which is the only input that produces orthographic mapping. [S20, S22, S25] Meaning and syntax are essential for comprehension and for confirming a decoded word, but they...
Orthographic mapping deserves mechanism-level treatment, because it explains classroom observations that otherwise look like magic or failure. Ehri's account describes four phases.
Two refinements convert decoding instruction from mechanical to flexible. The first is set for variability: many English words decode to an approximation rather than an exact pronunciation ("stomach" yields "stow-match," "was" yields a rhyme with "gas"), and the skilled move is to flex the approximation to a known spoken word ("stow-match... stomach!").
Morphology is where word recognition and vocabulary merge, and it deserves more than a mention. English spelling is morphophonemic: it represents meaning as faithfully as sound, which is why "sign" keeps its silent g (signal, signature) and "two" its w (twin, twice, twenty).
Intellectual honesty about the evidence base strengthens rather than weakens the case for this lesson. Bowers has argued, against the consensus reading of the meta-analyses, that the experimental advantage of systematic phonics over alternative instruction is smaller and less consistent than commonly claimed. [S34] Responses in the literature dispute his selection and interpretation of studies, and the cumulative...
Finally, assessment must steer the instruction. A brief phonics inventory, sampling taught patterns from single consonants through vowel teams and multisyllabic structures, converts a screening flag into an instructional address: it tells you which correspondences are secure, shaky, or absent.
Systematic: A planned scope and sequence of letter-sound correspondences and word structures, taught cumulatively. [S12]
Explicit: Direct teaching, modeled blending, guided practice, corrective feedback; no inference-from-exposure. [S13]
Word analysis: Syllable patterns and morphemes that make multisyllabic words readable. [S15]
Orthographic mapping: Accurate decoding bonds spellings to pronunciations and meanings, producing instant recognition. [S20]
Applied activity
Draft a phonics lesson skeleton for one correspondence or word structure appropriate to your learners: the explicit introduction, a blending routine, six practice words mixing new and review patterns, an encoding step, and two lines of connected text. Then script the exact prompt you will use when a student stalls on a word, replacing any cue-based prompt with a print-based one.
Module 3 · From decoding to fluency: oral and silent reading
35 required minutes
Lesson 3.118 required minutes
Guided oral reading: fluency built with feedback
PELSB element: guided oral reading
Learning objectiveDesign guided oral reading routines with modeling, repeated or wide practice, and immediate feedback, and use accuracy, rate, and prosody evidence to adjust them.
Key teaching points
Fluency is the ability to read text with speed, accuracy, and proper expression, and it is the bridge between word recognition and comprehension: a reader who labors over words has little attention left for meaning. [S3, S7] The National Reading Panel's fluency subgroup found that guided repeated oral reading procedures, in which students read text aloud with guidance and feedback from a teacher, peer, or parent...
"Guided" is the operative word, and it separates this element from merely assigning reading aloud. A complete guided oral reading routine has four parts.
Evidence should drive adjustment. Accuracy below roughly the high-nineties in percent signals that the text is too hard or the underlying phonics gap is unaddressed; fluency practice cannot compensate for decoding a student does not have, which is why Module 2 precedes this one.
Guided oral reading also carries equity weight in Minnesota classrooms. Beginning readers, multilingual learners acquiring English phonology, and older striving readers all benefit from hearing fluent models and practicing aloud with feedback, but oral performance can be exposing.
A worked elementary routine shows the parts assembled. Grade 2, fifteen minutes, six students whose winter screening placed them below the rate benchmark but above ninety-five percent accuracy in taught patterns, which is the profile that indicates fluency practice rather than renewed phonics.
The secondary translation changes texts and formats, not principles. A grade 7 social studies teacher can open three days a week with six minutes of fluency work on the week's primary source: teacher model of the first paragraph, attention drawn to two archaic constructions, paired whisper-reading of the full excerpt with the same four-step correction protocol, closing choral read of the thesis sentence.
Decision rules close the loop between this routine and the district's data system. Rate at or above the seasonal benchmark percentile with adequate prosody: fluency work continues inside Tier 1 volume reading, no special arrangement.
Applied activity
Design a 15-minute guided oral reading routine for a specific group: name the text-matching rule, the model, the practice structure (repeated or wide, with format), and the feedback protocol including your exact error-correction move. Add the evidence you will record (accuracy, rate, prosody rubric level) and the decision rule that would make you change the text difficulty or return to phonics work.
Learning objectiveDesign extensive silent reading that is purposeful, matched to students' decoding ability, and accountable, while stating honestly what the evidence does and does not support.
Key teaching points
Minnesota's statutory definition calls for extensive silent reading, and the professional case for it is straightforward: silent reading is how proficient adults read, it is the only practical route to the reading volume that grows vocabulary, background knowledge, and orthographic familiarity, and correlational research consistently links volume of reading to achievement. [S3, S31] Intellectual honesty, which a...
Four design features convert silent reading from a hopeful ritual into instruction. First, match: students read text they can actually decode and largely comprehend.
For older readers, silent reading is also where challenge lives. The grades 4 to 9 intervention guide recommends, with moderate evidence, giving students supported opportunities to make sense of "stretch text," material somewhat above their comfortable level, with pre-taught vocabulary, purpose setting, and follow-up discussion. [S15] A defensible secondary design therefore mixes volume reading in accessible text...
Silent reading is finally where comprehension monitoring becomes each reader's own responsibility. During conferences, teach and probe the self-checks skilled readers run: Does this sentence fit what I have read?
A worked design shows the four features operating together. Grade 4, twenty minutes daily, a class of twenty-seven readers including four below the decoding benchmark.
Secondary silent reading lives mostly inside the disciplines, and the honest design question is not whether to schedule a sustained-silent-reading period but whether students are reading enough connected disciplinary text to grow the vocabulary and knowledge their courses assume. A stretch-text protocol for grade 9 civics: before reading, two minutes of background and two pretaught terms; during, a stop-and-jot gist...
Applied activity
Redesign a silent reading block you run or have observed. Specify the match rule (including what the weakest decoder in the room reads), the purpose or text-set connection, the accountability structure and conference schedule, and the stamina plan. Then write two sentences you could say to a colleague explaining why this design answers the research caution about unstructured silent reading.
Primary sources: S3 · S8 · S12 · S14 · S15 · S31
Module 4 · Vocabulary and comprehension
36 required minutes
Lesson 4.118 required minutes
Vocabulary instruction: direct, indirect, and morphological
PELSB element: vocabulary
Learning objectiveSelect words worth direct teaching, run a complete direct-teaching routine with multiple exposures and active use, and build the indirect and morphological pathways that account for most vocabulary growth.
Key teaching points
Vocabulary knowledge is both a cause and a consequence of reading: word meanings enable comprehension, and wide comprehension-driven reading grows word meanings. The National Reading Panel concluded that vocabulary should be taught both directly and indirectly, that repetition and multiple exposures to words matter, that words should be encountered in meaningful contexts rather than lists alone, and that dependence...
Direct teaching begins with selection, because a teacher can teach perhaps eight to twelve words deeply in a week and a text may contain forty unknown ones. A useful triage, associated with Beck and McKeown's tiering [S28], sorts candidate words into everyday words most students already own, high-utility academic words that appear across domains ("analyze," "reluctant," "consequence"), and domain-bound technical...
Indirect pathways carry the volume. Most word learning occurs incidentally through spoken language and, above all, through reading, which is why the matched, extensive silent reading of Lesson 3.2 and the read-alouds of language-rich classrooms are vocabulary instruction by other means.
Minnesota's multilingual learners deserve specific planning rather than generic sympathy. A student's home language is an asset: Spanish, for example, shares thousands of cognates with academic English ("información," "análisis"), and explicit cognate instruction converts home-language knowledge into English reading vocabulary.
Morphological instruction merits its own worked sequence, because it is the pathway most often praised and least often scheduled. A defensible arc: grades 1 and 2 secure inflections and the compound-word insight that meaning parts combine; grade 3 onward adds the highest-frequency prefixes, a small set that covers most prefixed words students will meet, each taught with its meaning, three example words, and a...
Vocabulary assessment needs the same honesty this course applies to silent reading. A Friday matching quiz measures short-term paired-associate memory and reliably flatters instruction; knowing a word means recognizing it in new contexts, using it accurately, and sensing its collocations, and no single instrument samples all of that.
Failure modes, stated plainly because each one occupies real instructional time somewhere. Copying dictionary definitions produces the illusion of coverage while depositing almost nothing, since learner-opaque definitions cannot attach to experience; the replacement is the student-friendly definition plus immediate use.
Applied activity
Choose a text you will actually teach. Triage its challenging words into the three tiers and select four high-utility words for direct teaching. For one of the four, script the full routine: pronunciation and spelling attention, student-friendly definition, two examples and one nonexample, and two active-use prompts spaced across the week. If you teach multilingual learners, add one cognate or home-language connection.
Learning objectiveTeach comprehension as an active meaning-construction process using explicitly taught strategies, text-structure instruction, high-quality discussion, and knowledge building, with gradual release toward independence.
Key teaching points
Minnesota statute describes reading comprehension as an active process requiring intentional thinking, in which meaning is constructed through interactions between text and reader. [S3, S7] That definition rules out the most common classroom counterfeit: assigning text and questions, then grading the answers, which assesses comprehension without ever teaching it. The National Reading Panel found that comprehension...
Strategy instruction succeeds or fails on explicitness and release. The core strategies are few: activating and connecting prior knowledge; predicting and confirming; questioning the text; monitoring comprehension and repairing breakdowns by rereading, reading on, or looking back; determining importance and summarizing gist; and making inferences by joining text clues with knowledge.
Text structure and discussion give comprehension its skeleton and its social engine. Narrative structure (character, setting, problem, attempts, resolution) and the expository structures that dominate content text (description, sequence, compare-contrast, cause-effect, problem-solution) are each signaled by predictable words and each map onto a graphic organizer; students taught to recognize the structure and use it...
Beneath every strategy sits knowledge. A reader's comprehension of a passage about wetlands drainage or the Iron Range depends on what the reader already knows about water tables or mining, which is why vocabulary and background knowledge appear inside the comprehension recommendations themselves. [S15] The instructional consequence is to plan comprehension across texts, not per text: sequences of conceptually...
Two worked examples anchor the abstractions. Elementary: a grade 2 class reading an informational text on how beavers change streams.
The strategies-versus-knowledge debate deserves an honest paragraph, because participants will encounter it in professional discourse. One camp emphasizes that comprehension strategies are teachable, transferable, and supported by strong experimental evidence; another emphasizes that comprehension is ultimately knowledge-bound, that strategy effects plateau quickly, and that curriculum time should buy coherent...
Discussion quality is measurable, and measuring it protects it. Markers worth tracking across a semester: the proportion of teacher questions that are open rather than retrieval; the frequency of student-to-student uptake ("I disagree with Maya because the text says..."); wait time actually elapsed; and the distribution of voices, because a discussion carried by six students is an opportunity gap in real time for...
Applied activity
Plan one comprehension lesson on a text you teach: name the text structure and how you will make it visible, script a think-aloud for one strategy, write three discussion questions that require textual evidence, and define the gist routine and the two-minute background preview the text needs. State what student evidence will show meaning was constructed.
Primary sources: S3 · S6 · S7 · S12 · S14 · S15
Module 5 · Higher-order thinking and READ Act practice
31 required minutes
Lesson 5.116 required minutes
Higher-order thinking for readers of all ages and proficiency levels
PELSB element: understanding and higher-order thinking for all proficiency levels
Learning objectiveDesign instruction in which every reader, including beginning readers, striving decoders, multilingual learners, and advanced readers, engages in inference, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis with text.
Key teaching points
The statutory definition ends with its most demanding clause: instruction that fosters understanding and higher-order thinking for readers of all ages and proficiency levels. [S1, S3] Higher-order thinking with text means work beyond retrieval: inferring what is implied but unstated; analyzing how an author builds an argument or a mood; comparing and synthesizing across texts; evaluating claims against evidence; and...
The design principle is to route thinking around the current bottleneck, not to postpone thinking until the bottleneck clears. A grade 1 class that cannot yet decode "migration" can listen to a read-aloud about monarch migration and argue, with sentence frames, about why the monarchs leave Minnesota in September and how the author could know.
Concretely, higher-order work with text rests on four teacher moves. First, question design: plan a spine of three to five text-dependent questions per text that ascend from key details to inference to analysis and evaluation ("What does the author want you to feel about the dam, and which three word choices do the work?").
Higher-order thinking is also where assessment becomes most honest. A multiple-choice recall score can be earned without understanding; an inference defended with evidence cannot.
A worked spine makes the design visible. Text: a news feature on zebra mussels spreading through Minnesota lakes, read in grade 5.
Two clarifications keep the element intellectually honest. First, rigor lives in the task, not the text difficulty alone: a demanding inference task on an accessible text is higher-order work, while a retrieval worksheet on a hard text is not, and conflating text level with cognitive level is the most common design error in differentiated classrooms.
High demand, varied access: Keep the inference and analysis constant; vary the route into the text (read-aloud, audio, partner, print).
Text-dependent question spine: Three to five planned questions ascending from detail to inference to evaluation. [S14]
Evidence norms: Every claim returns to the print: "show me where." [S14, S15]
Extension without exile: Advanced readers get depth and synthesis inside the community, not just more volume.
Applied activity
For one text you teach, write a question spine of four text-dependent questions ascending to evaluation or synthesis. Then plan access for three de-identified reader profiles (a striving decoder, a multilingual learner, an advanced reader): state how each engages the same questions, and what skill instruction continues in parallel for the striving decoder.
Primary sources: S1 · S3 · S14 · S15 · S16
Lesson 5.215 required minutes
The READ Act in daily practice: screening, data, curricula, and support
Minnesota implementation context for all six elements
Learning objectiveUse universal screening data, progress monitoring, and CAREI-reviewed curricula inside the district's MTSS process, and know where MDE support and required training fit.
Key teaching points
The READ Act converts the reading science of Modules 2 through 4 into a public accountability structure, and a renewing Minnesota teacher should be able to describe that structure precisely. Universal screening is its front door: every student in kindergarten through grade 3 is screened with an MDE-approved, evidence-based screener three times a year, within the first six weeks of school, again by February 15, and...
What happens after screening is the multitiered system of support the Act presumes. Students identified as not reading at grade level receive evidence-based intervention with progress monitoring, and districts are directed toward data-based decision-making in matching students to Tier 2 or Tier 3 supports; students not proficient by grade 3 receive personal learning plans with targeted instruction and progress...
Curriculum is the second pillar. Since July 1, 2023, new core and intervention literacy materials must be evidence-based, and the department, in partnership with CAREI, reviews curricula against structured-literacy criteria and publishes alignment ratings (highly aligned through not aligned), with attention to culturally and linguistically responsive materials for Minnesota's diverse student population. [S8, S9...
The third pillar is people. Districts must ensure that teachers in specified roles, including K-3 classroom teachers, reading intervention teachers, special education teachers, and ESL teachers, complete approved evidence-based literacy training on a statutory timeline, and MDE must employ literacy specialists to support district implementation; regional service cooperatives extend training delivery across greater...
MTSS decision-making rewards precision about what intensification actually means, because "more support" is not a plan. Interventions intensify along nameable dimensions: group size (five students to three to one), dosage (twenty minutes three times weekly to thirty minutes daily), instructional focus (narrowed to the diagnosed skill, such as vowel teams rather than "phonics"), explicitness (more modeling, more...
Screening data also demand validity discipline, especially for Minnesota's multilingual learners. An English-language screener administered to a newcomer measures English foundational skills, which is information, not a verdict: MDE's screening guidance addresses multilingual learners directly, and the defensible posture combines taking the data seriously (multilingual learners are screened, and characteristics of...
Here is the data story worked to script, because the Module 6 case lab will demand one. "Winter screening places him at the eighteenth percentile composite, down from the twenty-fourth in fall.
Applied activity
Using a de-identified student below benchmark on the most recent screening window, draft the data story you would bring to a grade-level or MTSS meeting: the screening signal, your corroborating classroom evidence by rope strand, the Tier 1 adjustments you own, the intervention question for the team, and the family communication step consistent with the language access plan.
Integrated demonstration of all six PELSB reading elements
Learning objectiveAnalyze three reader cases with the Simple View and the rope, select the statutory elements each case requires, and defend an instructional plan with evidence.
Key teaching points
Case A: the beginning reader with a sound gap. Jayda is a grade 1 student in a St. Cloud classroom.
Case B: the accurate but effortful intermediate reader. Marcus is a grade 4 student in a Rochester school, newly screened this fall because he was not reading at grade level.
Case C: the multilingual seventh grader ready to think. Amina is a grade 7 student in a Minneapolis school who arrived from Somalia four years ago.
For each case, complete the decision record:
There may be more than one defensible plan per case. A high-quality response reasons from evidence rather than labels, keeps thinking demand high while skill instruction proceeds, and names the boundary between classroom authority and team process.
Four analytic errors recur when practicing teachers work these cases, and naming them raises the floor of your own records. First, treating a label as a mechanism: "he is a struggling reader" explains nothing, while "his multisyllabic word attack collapses after the first syllable" points to Tuesday's lesson.
Applied activity
Complete the eight-part decision record for all three cases. Then write a short comparison: one case turns on the sound foundation, one on the bridge to fluency, and one on language comprehension; state how the statutory elements distribute differently across the three and why no single element could carry any case alone.
Primary sources: S6 · S8 · S12 · S13 · S15 · S16
Lesson 6.232 required minutes
Capstone: a scientifically based reading instruction plan
Integrated demonstration of all six PELSB reading elements
Learning objectiveProduce a de-identified instructional plan in which a PELSB reviewer can locate phonemic awareness, phonics and word recognition, guided oral reading, silent reading, vocabulary, comprehension, and higher-order thinking for all proficiency levels.
Key teaching points
The capstone is the course's professional-learning artifact. Plan two weeks of reading instruction for a real class or role, with all student information removed.
The capstone is complete when every section is present, each of the six review-form elements is locatable in a named routine, the thinking demand is visibly preserved for every reader profile, and every individualized claim carries evidence and a review plan. Use the rubric in the participant workbook to self-score and revise any section rated missing or partially demonstrated before the assessment.
Self-scoring runs on four dimensions, each rated missing, partial, or demonstrated. Specificity: a colleague could teach Tuesday from your plan without asking you anything; "daily phonics" is partial, "vowel team ea/ee introduced Monday with the Lesson 2.2 structure, cumulative review set listed" is demonstrated.
Applied activity
Complete the ten-section capstone plan. Confirm it is de-identified: no student names, IDs, birth dates, school identifiers, or unique circumstances that make a learner identifiable.
Answer all 20 scenario-based questions. The planned completion threshold is 80% (16 of 20). This reviewer copy shows feedback after submission; the deployed version must make the same threshold, scoring, feedback, and remediation rules consistent in the interface and server.
Question stems are listed for study purposes. Answer choices and keys are intentionally omitted.
Under current law, reading preparation for Minnesota Tier 3 and Tier 4 license renewal must be consistent with which framework?
In the Simple View of Reading, a student with strong oral language who cannot decode will comprehend print poorly because
Which task is phonemic, rather than merely phonological, and among the most advanced in the progression?
Research on phonemic awareness instruction indicates it is most effective when
Which sequence best describes systematic, explicit phonics instruction?
A grade 6 student reads single-syllable words well but stalls on words like "constitutional." The highest-leverage instruction is
Which classroom structure counts as guided oral reading as the National Reading Panel used the term?
A student's rate meets the norm but reading is flat and expressionless. The best next move is
What did the National Reading Panel conclude about unstructured sustained silent reading programs?
Which silent reading design is most defensible for a class that includes striving decoders?
Consistent with vocabulary research, which combination best grows word knowledge?
From a science article containing "the," "photosynthesis," and "analyze," which word most repays direct whole-class teaching, and why?
Which practice reflects the strong-evidence recommendation for early reading comprehension?
Teaching students to recognize compare-contrast or cause-effect organization primarily supports comprehension by
A grade 5 student receives decoding intervention. During the class novel's comprehension and discussion work, the statutory commitment to higher-order thinking for all proficiency levels requires
Which move best serves an advanced reader who finishes the anchor text early and easily?
Which statement correctly describes READ Act universal screening?
Under the READ Act, CAREI's role has been to
Why does prompting a stuck reader to guess from the picture or context undermine word recognition development?
What is the correct submission status of this pilot course file?
Primary source register
Sources were checked July 24, 2026. The register was expanded from 16 to 32 sources under the provider research-validation directive of July 24, 2026, and to 34 sources under the same-day full-depth instructional directive (S33 and S34 verified live via their ERIC records, EJ1298048 and EJ1263190, on July 24, 2026); every source below was individually verified live on that date. The READ Act sections were renumbered after enactment (for example, the definitions formerly at 120B.1118 now appear at 120B.119); reconfirm current statutes, rules, forms, and agency guidance immediately before submission.
S2. Minn. Stat. §122A.187, subd. 5. Tier 3 and Tier 4 license renewal requires further reading preparation consistent with sections 120B.118 to 120B.124. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/122A.187
S3. Minn. Stat. §122A.06, subd. 4 (2002). Historic statutory definition of comprehensive, scientifically based reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics and other word-recognition skills, guided oral reading for beginning readers, extensive silent reading, vocabulary instruction, instruction in comprehension, and higher-order thinking for readers of all ages and proficiency levels; the later revision of this subdivision organized the definition around five areas of reading. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/2002/cite/122A.06
S4. Minn. R. 8710.7200. Clock-hour renewal rule; applicants must show evidence of reading preparation under Minn. Stat. §122A.187, subd. 5. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/8710.7200/
S5. Minn. R. 8710.2000 - Standards of Effective Practice. Licensure standards including literacy development, characteristics of reading disabilities including dyslexia, assessment, and differentiated instruction. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/8710.2000/
S6. Minn. Stat. §120B.12 - READ Act goal and interventions. Goal of every child reading at or above grade level every year; approved universal screening in K-3 three times yearly and for older students below grade level; characteristics of dyslexia; family notification; personal learning plans; retention never the sole intervention. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/120B.12
S7. Minn. Stat. §120B.119 - READ Act definitions. Definitions including evidence-based, structured literacy, phonemic awareness, phonics instruction, fluency, vocabulary development, reading comprehension, multitiered system of support, and the three-cueing system. Formerly numbered 120B.1118. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/120B.119
S8. Minn. Stat. §120B.123 - READ Act implementation. Evidence-based curricula and intervention materials; approved screeners and screening windows; progress monitoring and data-based decisions; teacher training requirements by role; MDE literacy specialists. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/120B.123
S9. Minn. Stat. §120B.124 - READ Act implementation partnership. MDE-CAREI partnership to identify evidence-based and structured-literacy curricula and professional development, including culturally and linguistically responsive materials; regional service cooperative delivery. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/120B.124
S10. Minnesota Department of Education - READ Act. Agency landing page: local literacy plans due June 15 annually, screening and dyslexia guidance, approved professional development, and district reporting. https://education.mn.gov/MDE/dse/READ/
S12. National Reading Panel (2000), Teaching Children to Read. NICHD report of findings in alphabetics (phonemic awareness and phonics), fluency (guided repeated oral reading; insufficient evidence for encouraging unstructured silent reading), and comprehension (vocabulary and strategy instruction). https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/smallbook
S13. IES What Works Clearinghouse - Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. Recommendations on academic language (minimal evidence), phonological awareness linked to letters (strong), decoding and word analysis (strong), and daily connected-text reading (moderate). https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/21
S14. IES What Works Clearinghouse - Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. Recommendations on comprehension strategies (strong evidence), text structure (moderate), high-quality discussion, purposeful text selection, and motivating context. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/14
S15. IES What Works Clearinghouse - Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4-9 (2022). Strong evidence for multisyllabic decoding, purposeful fluency building, and a comprehension-building practice set (vocabulary and background knowledge, questioning, gist, monitoring); moderate evidence for supported stretch text. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/29
S17. National Reading Panel (2000), Teaching Children to Read: Reports of the Subgroups. NICHD, 480 pages. The full subgroup reports behind the summary booklet in S12: alphabetics (phonemic awareness instruction, phonics instruction), fluency, and comprehension (vocabulary, text comprehension, teacher preparation), with complete methodology and effect-size tables. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/product/247
S18. Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250-287. Meta-analysis of 52 studies (96 comparisons): phonemic awareness instruction produced large effects on phonemic awareness (d = 0.86) and moderate significant effects on reading (d = 0.53) and spelling (d = 0.59); instruction was most effective when focused and connected to letters. https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1598/RRQ.36.3.2
S19. Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Stahl, S. A., & Willows, D. M. (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71(3), 393-447. Meta-analysis of 66 treatment-control comparisons from 38 experiments: systematic phonics outperformed unsystematic or no phonics (overall d = 0.41), with larger effects when instruction began early (d = 0.55) and benefits to decoding, word reading, comprehension, and spelling. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/00346543071003393
S20. Ehri, L. C. (2014). Orthographic mapping in the acquisition of sight word reading, spelling memory, and vocabulary learning. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18(1), 5-21. Theory and evidence for orthographic mapping: letter-sound connections bond spellings, pronunciations, and meanings of specific words in memory, developing through pre-alphabetic, partial, full, and consolidated phases, enabled by phonemic awareness and grapheme-phoneme knowledge. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888438.2013.819356
S21. Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7(1), 6-10. The Simple View of Reading: reading comprehension is the product of decoding and language comprehension, predicting distinct profiles of reading difficulty when either factor is constrained. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/074193258600700104
S22. Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5-51. Tutorial review of the science of learning to read, from alphabetic skills through fluent word recognition and skilled comprehension, confirming the centrality of phonics and print-based word learning and the inadequacy of guessing-based approaches. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1529100618772271
S23. National Early Literacy Panel (2008). Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. National Institute for Literacy. Synthesis of roughly 500 studies identifying early predictors of later literacy and the effectiveness of code-focused interventions, shared reading, and language-enhancement interventions for young children. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED504224
S24. Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.) (1998). Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. National Research Council, National Academy Press. Consensus report on prevention: excellent early instruction in the alphabetic principle, reading for meaning, and opportunities to practice reduces the incidence of reading difficulty; early identification and intervention beat later remediation. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED416465
S26. Hasbrouck, J., & Tindal, G. (2017). An Update to Compiled ORF Norms (Technical Report No. 1702). Behavioral Research and Teaching, University of Oregon. Compiled oral reading fluency norms for grades 1-6 (words correct per minute by percentile and season), the standard reference for interpreting rate data against grade-level norms. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED594994
S27. NCES, NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Study. National study of fourth-grade oral reading examining speed, accuracy, and expression, including oral-reading rubric levels; the basis for classroom prosody rubrics from word-by-word reading to expressive, interpretive reading. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/orf/
S28. Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. The three-tier framework for selecting words for direct instruction and the robust-instruction routine of student-friendly definitions, multiple contexts, and active use. https://www.guilford.com/books/Bringing-Words-to-Life/Beck-McKeown-Kucan/9781462508167
S29. Minnesota Department of Education - READ Act Screening. MDE's K-3 universal literacy and dyslexia screening pages: the approved screening tool list (posted July 1, 2023, reviewed with the University of Minnesota), required subtests, screening windows, and guidance for multilingual learners. https://education.mn.gov/MDE/dse/READ/scr/
S30. National Center on Improving Literacy - Dyslexia resources. U.S. Department of Education funded center (Boston University, Florida State University, RMC Research) providing evidence-based briefs on dyslexia, screening, and systematic, explicit reading and spelling instruction. https://improvingliteracy.org/topic/dyslexia/
S31. Anderson, R. C., Wilson, P. T., & Fielding, L. G. (1988). Growth in reading and how children spend their time outside of school. Reading Research Quarterly, 23(3), 285-303. Time-diary study of 155 fifth graders: minutes of book reading was the best predictor of reading achievement and of growth from second to fifth grade, the classic correlational evidence linking reading volume to achievement. https://experts.illinois.edu/en/publications/growth-in-reading-and-how-children-spend-their-time-outside-of-sc
S32. Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. Meta-analysis of 190 studies (18,573 participants): mean adult silent reading rate approximately 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, with slower rates for careful study reading; the empirical basis for this course's time-on-task computation. https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8647789
S33. Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the Simple View of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25-S44. The active view of reading: word recognition and language comprehension overlap through shared abilities, bridging processes including fluency and morphological awareness connect them, and active self-regulation contributes to comprehension; presented in this course as a refinement, not a replacement, of the Simple View. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1298048
S34. Bowers, J. S. (2020). Reconsidering the evidence that systematic phonics is more effective than alternative methods of reading instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 32(3), 681-705. Dissenting review of twelve meta-analyses arguing the experimental advantage of systematic phonics is smaller and less consistent than commonly claimed; cited so participants can locate the scholarly debate this course addresses in Lesson 2.2, alongside the converging evidence and Minnesota's statutory requirements. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1263190
