Voyager Sopris Learning EDVIEW360 Podcast Series

Join education and assessment expert Dr. Kelly Powell-Smith of Acadience Learning as she examines the critical issues educators face when making assessment decisions. Which assessments are necessary to support schoolwide Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) in the area of literacy, and when should they be used?

You’ll walk away from this informative session with newfound understanding of:

• The various purposes assessments serve and what kinds of reading assessments are needed in a MTSS
• How to connect reading assessments to critical questions educators need to answer in a MTSS
• How to design an effective and efficient reading assessment system that results in actionable data leading to improved student outcomes

Dr. Powell-Smith will share application of these ideas in pre-K–8 settings, and she will provide specific examples and recommend resources.

We hope you’ll join us!

For our middle school English Learners, special considerations must be made based on the stages of language acquisition, literacy levels in their native language, and support needed to learn to read and write in English. As an educator, are you doing everything possible to change the trajectory of literacy challenges into success?

During this informative and eye-opening presentation, Dr. Antonio Fierro—an esteemed literacy expert and an English Learner himself—will illustrate why teachers of older English Learners must be diagnostic in nature with their approach to reading intervention. Attendees will also learn:

• To apply techniques that build on language components
• Why a Structured Literacy approach is essential for grades 5–8
• The language elements necessary to teach academic vocabulary and improve oral and written discourse
• How small-group and age-appropriate intervention succeeds when other approaches may not

We hope you’ll join us!

Have you ever wanted to implement a sound wall, but are not sure how to get started? In this informative webinar, literacy and sound wall expert Dr. Mary Dahlgren will share the basics of setting up and implementing a sound wall, including how sound walls support the science of reading. If you already are implementing a sound wall, Dr. Dahlgren will show you the latest ways to improve it to increase reading skills.

During the webinar, Dr. Dahlgren will discuss::

• The best way to arrange a sound wall
• Introducing the sounds in a sound wall
• How to implement a sound wall once it is set up 

Join us for this enlightening conversation as our Acadience^® Learning experts discuss how to implement formative assessment of content-area reading in the middle school environment and why that is important. Lessons learned from successful implementation of Acadience^® Reading assessments in K–6 will be shared. We will discuss how and why implementation of formative assessment may differ for middle school. A framework for decision making, called the Outcomes-Driven Model, also will be shared and its use in middle school will be illustrated.

Attendees will learn:

• Useful information about formative assessments of content-area reading skills for use in grades 7 and 8
• How the use of these formative assessments within a decision-making framework focused on improving outcomes
• The benefits of this approach and the structure of these assessments
• Why it is imperative to focus on students in middle school