Our favorite moments in 2024 ??

As 2024 comes to a close, we’re celebrating the incredible teachers, leaders, professors, and more with whom we’ve worked this year, and the role we’ve gotten to play in their journey towards more evidence-based literacy instruction.

Here’s a look back at some highlights, as told by the educators we met along the way:?

Moments with Teachers

Literacy Mastermind Courses

This year, we facilitated three impactful Literacy Mastermind series, our signature PD model with weekly PLCs and asynchronous learning:

• Moving from Letter Knowledge to Blending: A 5-week series with DCPS teachers, with strategies for them to help students move from sound-by-sound tapping to fluent word reading. Participants noted:“My colleagues had good knowledge and ideas to share. I've really appreciated how thought-provoking the course has been for me. I appreciate it being grounded in research and evidence-based practice which helps me feel confident that implementing with my students will be beneficial to them.”“Treasure trove of resources! I think every DCPS K-2 teacher should receive this training.”
• Structured Literacy for All: A 12-week series with first year teachers in an?alternative certification program, teaching them about structured routines for decoding, phonemic awareness, encoding, and connected texts. We loved receiving this feedback from participants:“Participating in a Literacy Mastermind series reignited my passion for teaching, provided a fresh perspective on literacy instruction, and I was able to see great outcomes with my students.”“Literacy Mastermind is a user-friendly, comprehensive series that truly taught me how to teach reading. 10/10 Highly recommend!”
• Advanced Decoding: This 12-week series taught participants how to systematically target students’ needs in the area of multisyllabic word decoding using syllable and morpheme knowledge. Here’s what the participants had to say:“The learning, mentorship, guidance, and community regarding these reading/decoding practices have been invaluable. You all are amazing. Thank you for providing me with additional tools to support my students, specifically those that need it the most!”“I've learned quite a bit these past twelve weeks. This is a quality PD experience. After completing [other literacy trainings], I can confidently say this training brought all of my learning over the years together. Great job to the team that planned this training! It was truly high quality and exactly what I needed to do my job. I appreciate you facilitating this training.”

Literacy Coaching

This year, we took on our first long-term in-person coaching assignment to work with teachers at a charter school in Washington, D.C., helping them?address challenges with their striving readers.?Collaborating to find just-right solutions and witnessing growth in both instructional practices and student outcomes has been a joy. If you’re interested in our coaching services, visit our website or reply to this email!

Self-Paced Courses

• Addressing Learning Gaps with Syllable Instruction: We partnered with?the Office of the State Superintendent of Education in Washington, D.C.?this year to offer this PD opportunity to over 200?upper elementary and secondary teachers and leaders?across the city!
• We launched five mini-courses on phonemic awareness instruction this year! These 1-hour courses are jam-packed with short videos, downloads, lesson demonstrations, and so much more. Plus, access to each course is only $14 a month, making literacy research accessible to educators everywhere.

PD Opportunities for 2025

• Structured Literacy for Washington,?D.C. Educators: We’re thrilled to be on the OSSE DC list of recommended structured literacy trainings! Our 37-hour hybrid course moves beyond theory to equip educators with actionable routines in phonemic awareness, decoding, morphology, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. Participants have praised the course for its practicality and relevance.
• Micro-Credential in Structured Literacy: In partnership with Credentials Unlimited, we launched the "Structured Literacy for All" micro-credential. This hands-on course guides educators in administering and analyzing decoding diagnostics, planning structured literacy lessons, and tailoring high-impact routines to student needs. Topics include phonemic awareness, explicit decoding and encoding, strategies for irregular words, and using connected texts effectively. It’s an exciting opportunity for educators committed to mastering research-backed literacy practices.

Moments with Professors

Higher Education Community of Practice

In 2024, we launched our first Higher Education Community of Practice to align PreK-2nd teacher preparation courses with evidence-based literacy instruction. Professors from various institutions?came together weekly and?collaborated to update their syllabi, articulate key theories, and embed ways for their teacher candidates to see the practical implications of their learning. We provided them with access to experienced practitioners and a?plethora of resources to add to their courses.?Here’s what professors had to say about our summer and fall cohorts:

• “I liked hearing from the other instructors what content they were adding to their courses and their justification for doing so. It is giving me a lot of great ideas for my own course.”
• “This was a great cohort of colleagues to support learning about embedding literacy instruction within the curriculum for preservice teachers. The facilitators were very knowledgeable and happy to share the space to teach and learn.”

A special thank you to FULCRUM?for sponsoring two professors!?

Moments with Literacy Leaders

Literacy Leadership Network

We wrapped up the first year of our Literacy Leadership Network, connecting with education leaders across the country. Here are all the topics covered in 2024:

• Getting Up to Speed with the Science of Reading
• Data-Driven Decisions
• Crafting Effective Literacy Blocks
• Avoiding a Lemon in Curriculum Adoption and Implementation
• Not a Bandaid: Developing Effective Intervention Models
• It Takes a Village: Engaging Families in Literacy Learning
• Instructional Routines for Literacy Success
• Supporting Multilingual Learners
• Making Your BOY Data Work for You
• Innovative Literacy PD for Teachers
• Creating Momentum: Supporting Striving Readers
• Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

The Literacy Leadership Network now provides access to all past months of LLN content! Our LLN resource library includes 100+ different resources, including downloads, videos, articles, and our monthly webinars.

Monthly membership also includes focused monthly content inspired by your specific literacy goals, live consultancy meetings to give you the time and space to receive feedback from and exchange ideas with peers, and monthly one-on-one office hours to ask our literacy specialists questions about your specific school or district situation.

Tutoring Curriculum

We worked with Air Reading this year to refine their tutoring curriculum, supporting their mission to provide live, virtual tutoring to students during school hours. Their innovative approach is helping students nationwide!

Assessment Item Review

We're partnering with a regional service center in Texas to?review assessment items to improve early literacy formative assessments across the state. This ongoing collaboration aims to ensure that assessments align with literacy research to effectively inform instruction.

Moments at Conferences

This was the year of conferences for us! We were honored to be invited to OSSE's Spring Literacy Convening and the Memphis Literacy Conference this year, in addition to presenting at NWEA Fusion, RPPL's 2024 Annual Convening, and DCPS's Early Literacy Institute. Our sessions were filled with practical action steps for participants:

• Finding and Addressing Gaps in Phonemic Awareness: Educators loved the hands-on strategies and manipulatives for isolating, blending, and segmenting sounds. One participant noted, “I got a lot more ideas on the scale of phonemic awareness and how to implement it in daily instruction in small chunks! Super helpful!”
• Background Knowledge and Vocabulary: They Don’t Know What They Don’t Know: This interactive session offered practical suggestions for building vocabulary and background knowledge. A teacher shared, “This session was incredibly helpful. I was able to share out, participate, practice, and meet some new educators with our small group. I was able to take away practical strategies to implement in the classroom immediately. I felt a strong sense of understanding how prior knowledge and vocabulary are so very closely connected in the process of learning and understanding. Incredible class!!!!!!!!!!”
• Syntax and Sentence Structure: Not "My Fat Big Greek Wedding": We explored the connection between reading and writing and participants left with lots of activity examples to implement immediately with students. "Everything about this session was great. I liked that I can easily apply what I learned in this session to my work as a reading interventionist. Very informative ways to help students improve their sentence structure."
• At RPPL’s 2024 Convening, we were excited to lead a table talk on Making Learning Stick: A Conversation about Adult Learning Principles When Teachers Are the Students. The discussion focused on engaging professional learning, teacher ownership, and strategies to make learning memorable.
• Attendees of our NWEA Fusion session, Using Data to Strengthen the Reading Brain, appreciated the actionable strategies and clarity around leveraging data to support students with reading difficulties:

Looking Ahead

As we gear up for 2025, we’re excited to continue supporting educators with research-backed, practical strategies that make a difference in classrooms. Whether through courses, coaching, or partnerships, The Literacy Architects remain committed to building the PD we wish we had. We?would be honored to share our expertise with your educators -- please reach out to find out more about our PD opportunities as we finalize our calendar for 2025.?

Thank you for being part of our journey this year. Here’s to continued literacy growth in the year ahead!

What We’re Working On

We’re backing our bags for Pharr, Texas! Our team will be collaborating with 270 early childhood educators at the beginning of January 2025. Stay tuned for a recap of our time in South Texas!

?? January's LLN Topic: Fluency: More Than Just Reading Fast

Here's what's on the Literacy Leadership Network Calendar:

?? January 7: Live webinar to help you translate reading research into concrete plans for instructional change.

?? January 8: Webinar recording + members-only resources and downloads so you can take your learning with you.

?? January 13: 2–4 short videos aligned to this month's topic so you can further your learning.

?? January 21: Live consultancy meeting to give you the time and space to receive feedback from and exchange ideas with peers.

? Week of January 27: Office hours to ask our literacy specialists questions about your specific school or district situation.

Fluency will be the focus of January's LLN topic, but that's not all you get access to in your LLN portal! The Literacy Leadership Network now provides access to all past months of LLN content! Our LLN resource library includes 100+ different resources, including downloads, videos, articles, and our monthly webinars.

Join Literacy Leadership Network today!

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