A Practitioner’s Guide to Improving Literacy Outcomes for Students

Leaders should review available data on students’ literacy proficiency, including their ability to read, comprehend, and engage with text to identify their most urgent needs. They should also consult a wide range of voices from the community--including students (when appropriate), educators, parents, caregivers, and other relevant community members--to better understand those needs and potential underlying causes.

Planning for the identification of needs

Continuous Improvement Toolkit
This toolkit guides a team of educators through a continuous improvement process using the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. Part I of the toolkit offers guidance and steps to take before embarking on a continuous improvement effort. Part II provides resources to help guide the team through identifying a common problem, generating evidence-based practices, testing those practices, collecting and analyzing data, and reflecting on the evidence to determine next steps.

Continuous Improvement for a Multi-Tiered System of Support in Reading
This set of materials (guide, slides, and handouts) can help district staff improve their multi-tiered systems of support for reading instruction and assessment (MTSS-R). The materials help leaders and practitioners expand their knowledge of MTSS-R, ultimately increasing educators’ capacity to use data-based decision-making effectively and raise student achievement in reading.

Identifying needs and reviewing and analyzing data

PDE Data Summit: Using Data to Identify At-Risk Students
This video features a panel discussion on using student-level data (for example, grades, disciplinary issues, and attendance) to identify students at risk for adverse outcomes.

Using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) Analysis to Identify Students at Risk of Adverse Outcomes: A Guide for State and Local Data Leaders
This guide offers information on conducting Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis. CART is a statistical method that can help educators identify students who may be at risk for adverse outcomes. The guide is designed for data analysts with intermediate statistical skills who want to learn how to conduct CART analysis and help educators apply the results.

Analyzing Student-Level Disciplinary Data: A Guide for Districts
This guide presents a framework for school districts to analyze individual student disciplinary data, but the framework could be applied to analyzing and examining literacy data. It outlines steps for defining data elements, establishing transparent analysis rules, addressing data accuracy, defining the unit of analysis, and ensuring data privacy. Following these steps, school and district staff can examine if particular practices or interventions are having the same impact across different student subgroups. It is useful in Step 1 to understand local needs, and again in Step 5 to see if the steps taken are having the intended effects.

Instructional Improvement Cycle: A Teacher’s Toolkit for Collecting and Analyzing Data on Instructional Strategies
This toolkit provides teachers with a process for evaluating instructional strategies using classroom data. It includes a planning guide for comparing student outcomes between new and traditional strategies, a preprogrammed Excel spreadsheet for data analysis, and a reflection guide for interpreting results.

Using assessment data to inform instruction

Using Kindergarten Entry Assessments to Measure Whether Philadelphia’s Students Are On-Track for Reading Proficiently
This factsheet describes the use of kindergarten entry assessments.

Empowering Young Readers by Using Assessment Data to Inform Evidence-Based Word Reading Skill Instruction
These flowcharts can help educators use assessment data to identify needs for additional diagnostics and then use evidence-based practices to support students’ reading skill development in kindergarten through grade 2.

• Kindergarten Flowchart
• Grade 1 Flowchart
• Grade 2 Flowchart

Supporting English learner students

The English Language Learner Program Survey for Principals
This report provides an overview of the development and application of the English Language Learner Program Survey for Principals. The survey is designed for school principals to help SEAs gather consistent data on how schools support English learner students. It collects information on school policies, principals’ professional development needs, their familiarity with state guidelines, and their beliefs regarding the education of English learner students.

Supporting Integrated English Learner Student Instruction -- A Guide to Assess Professional Learning Needs
This tool can be used to assess teacher professional learning needs to implement research-based recommendations for the instruction of elementary-grade English learner students.

Next, leaders should explore evidence-based programs and practices in literacy that are aligned to those needs and feasible to implement.

The What Works Clearinghouse, hosted by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, is one source of information about evidence-based literacy programs and practices.

Identifying literacy programs and practices for all grade levels

Tools to Support Selection of Evidence-Based Strategies
The “Accessing & Assessing Research and Evidence” clickable guide provides a curated list of resources related to accessing and assessing evidence and research. The “Applicability of Evidence-Based Information” tool provides a set of seven considerations to determine if an intervention is suited to one’s local context.

WWC Intervention Reports on Literacy Programs and Interventions
WWC Intervention Reports provide a summary of findings of the highest-quality research on a program, practice or policy in education, based on a comprehensive search of the literature. This is a listing of all Intervention Reports in the Literacy topic area and it can be filtered by grade level or evidence tier.

WWC Reviews of Single Studies of Literacy Programs and Interventions
This is a listing of all individual studies (not branded interventions) in the Literacy topic area. It can be filtered by grade level or evidence tier.

Guide to Using a Research-Based Process to Review and Select Early Literacy Assessments
This guide provides details on how district staff can use a research-based process for reviewing early literacy assessments, compile a database of early literacy assessment information, and identify possible candidates for a common high-quality assessment.

The Basics of Reviewing a Research Study
This guide is intended to help state education agencies, school districts, and school staff review research studies to identify high-quality, evidence-based interventions that meet their needs.

English Language Arts Standards Briefs: Literacy Research Summaries
This series of five briefs summarizes information from WWC practice guides, meta-analyses, and other federally-funded research reviews. The briefs aim to increase knowledge about evidence-based approaches to reading, writing, and literacy instruction.

Rubric for Evaluating Reading/Language Arts Instructional Materials for Kindergarten to Grade 5
This rubric for evaluating reading/language arts instructional materials helps educators in grades kindergarten to grade 5 assess how consistent instructional materials (including core reading programs and reading intervention programs) are with the scientific research on reading instruction.

Identifying literacy programs and practices for preschool and elementary grades

Research-Based Resources to Support Early Literacy
These products list readily accessible resources for caregivers, practitioners, and policymakers to support early literacy. The resources to support children ages 0–3 are organized into two parts: (1) effective and promising programs and (2) research-based practices. The resources to support children in preschool through grade 3 are organized into five broad categories.

Joyful Early Literacy: Six Principles from Research
This infographic incorporates evidence-based practices from six WWC practice guides and offers a roadmap for effective early literacy instruction. It highlights a comprehensive approach that combines a nurturing and playful literacy environment with a focus on both higher-order and foundational literacy skills.

WWC Practice Guide: Assisting Students Struggling with Reading
This practice guide provides practical, evidence-based recommendations for teachers and reading specialists to identify and support struggling readers in primary grades. It includes strategies for screening students, designing multi-tiered intervention programs, adjusting instruction, and monitoring student progress.

WWC Practice Guide: Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade
This practice guide provides practical, evidence-based recommendations for teachers, administrators, and other educators on teaching early reading skills in kindergarten through grade 3. It includes strategies to improve sound awareness, word decoding and recognition, and reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension.

WWC Practice Guide: Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade
This practice guide provides practical, evidence-based recommendations for teachers, reading coaches, and principals to improve early reading comprehension in kindergarten through grade 3.It includes strategies for teaching reading comprehension techniques, utilizing text structures to understand content, facilitating high-quality discussions on the meaning of text, and creating engaging learning environments.

WWC Practice Guide: Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers
This practice guide provides practical, evidence-based recommendations for teachers, literacy coaches, and other educators to improve elementary students’ writing. It includes strategies for providing daily writing time, improving handwriting, spelling, and sentence construction, and creating an engaged writing community.

Identifying literacy practices for middle grades and secondary

WWC Practice Guide: Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4–9
This practice guide provides practical, evidence-based recommendations for teachers to deliver reading interventions to students in grades 4–9. It includes strategies for building decoding skills, enhancing reading fluency, and using comprehension-building practices.

WWC Practice Guide: Improving Adolescent Literacy: Effective Classroom and Intervention Practices
This practice guide provides practical, evidence-based recommendations for teachers and specialists to increase the reading ability of adolescent students. It includes strategies for explicit vocabulary and comprehension instruction, offering opportunities for extended text discussions, increasing student motivation and engagement, and providing intensive, individualized interventions for struggling readers.

WWC Practice Guide: Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively
This practice guide provides practical, evidence-based recommendations for teachers and administrators to improve writing skills in students in grades 6–12. It includes strategies for explicitly teaching writing through a Model-Practice-Reflect cycle, integrating writing with reading, and using writing assessments to guide instruction.

Identifying practices for serving English learner students

WWC Practice Guide: Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School
This practice guide provides practical, evidence-based recommendations for teachers, administrators, and other educators to improve instruction in academic content and literacy for English learners in elementary and middle school. It includes strategies for teaching academic vocabulary, integrating language instruction into content areas, offering structured writing opportunities, and providing small-group interventions.

Establishing a User Guide for the Promising Practices to Support English Learner Students Resource
The purpose of this guide and checklist is to help educators develop a deeper understanding of their district’s and school’s systems for serving English learner students and to help them test and adopt promising practices that may lead to equitable education outcomes for English learner students in classrooms, schools, and districts.

Supporting Young English Learners to Develop Academic Vocabulary Across Content Areas
This video demonstrates how educators, families, and caregivers partnered to prepare transitional kindergarten children for classroom lessons on sequential language across content areas and then extend this learning using two fun and engaging activity sheets: Asking and Answering Questions About a Story and Making a Meal Together.

Literacy Instruction Strategies for Success: Multi-Tier Intervention in Primary Grades
This video discusses the most effective, evidence-based practices for identifying and assisting struggling readers.

WWC Practice Guide: Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction for English Learners in the Elementary Grades
This practice guide provides practical, evidence-based recommendations for school practitioners to enhance literacy and English language instruction for elementary-grade English learner students. It includes strategies for screening and monitoring reading progress, providing intensive small-group interventions, delivering vocabulary instruction, supporting academic English development, and offering peer-assisted learning opportunities.

After selecting one or more programs to implement, leaders should create a detailed implementation plan. That plan should include a logic model that documents how each program activity ultimately contributes to improving student literacy outcomes. Goals for each outcome should be “SMART,” that is: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Finally, the implementation plan should clearly define roles and responsibilities, implementation timelines, resources required, and strategies for monitoring performance.

Developing a logic model

What is a Logic Model?
This short video explains what a logic model is and how it may be used in implementing evidence-based literacy practices.

Logic Models for Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation
The Logic Model Workshop Toolkit is designed to help practitioners understand the purpose of logic models, the different elements of a logic model, and the appropriate steps for developing and using a logic model for program evaluation.

Logic Models: A Tool for Effective Program Planning, Collaboration, and Monitoring
This guide, an installment in a four-part series on logic models, describes the role of logic models in effective program planning, collaboration, and monitoring. It defines the four components of these models—resources, activities, outputs, and outcomes—and explains how they connect. Using logic models can help practitioners and evaluators better understand a program’s mechanics and structure and chart a course toward improved policy and practice.

Aligning Data and Measures to Outputs and Outcomes of the Logic Model
This resource aims to help state-, district-, and school-level educators and staff use logic models to guide data collection efforts to determine progress toward measuring outputs and short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes.

Defining and Measuring Progress: Aligning Data and Measures to Outputs and Outcomes of Logic Models
This webinar discusses how to align data in the development of a logic model.

Blank Logic Model Template
This blank template can be used by school teams to write out the inputs, outputs, and expected outcomes of implementing particular practices around improving literacy.

Planning for Implementation

Roles and Responsibilities of Implementation Team Members
This document provides guidance for teams as they implement new programs, practices, or interventions.

Self-Study Guide for Implementing Early Literacy Interventions
This self-study guide for Implementing Early Literacy Interventions was developed to help district- and school-based practitioners conduct self-studies for planning and implementing early literacy interventions. It is intended to promote reflection on current strengths and challenges in planning for implementation of early literacy interventions, spark conversations among staff, and identify areas for improvement.

Joyful Reading and Creative Expression with Young Children: Planning Tips and Tools
This video shares tips, tools, and resources for planning joyful reading and creative expression activities with young children in preschool through the early elementary grades.

Self-Study Guide for Implementing Literacy Interventions in Grades 3–8
This self-study guide provides a template for data collection and guiding questions for discussion that may improve the implementation of literacy interventions in grades 3–8 and increase the number of students meeting college and career readiness standards. This guide is intended to help district- and school-level educators and staff conduct self-studies for planning and implementing literacy interventions in grades 3–8.

Self-Study Guide for Implementing High School Academic Interventions
This self-study guide provides a template for data collection and guiding questions for discussion that may improve the implementation of high school academic interventions and increase the number of students meeting college and career readiness standards. This guide is intended to help district- and school-based practitioners conduct self-studies for planning and implementing high school academic interventions.

Self-Study Guide for Evidence-Based Coaching for Literacy: PreK–Grade 12
The purpose of this self-study guide is to increase the knowledge, skills, and ability of teachers to implement evidence-based instructional practices by improving the effectiveness of literacy coaching.

While carrying out their new evidence-based approach to improving literacy outcomes, leaders should monitor its implementation and make necessary adjustments in the spirit of continuous improvement. This includes collecting data on implementation quality, addressing barriers to adoption (for example, resource constraints), and soliciting ongoing stakeholder feedback.

Applying evidence-based strategies

Professional Learning Communities Facilitator’s Guide: Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade
This guide is designed to assist professional learning communities (PLCs) in applying evidence-based strategies to help K–3 students acquire the language and literacy skills needed to succeed academically. It provides teachers, reading coaches, principals, and other educators with instructional recommendations that can be implemented in conjunction with existing standards or curricula and does not recommend a particular curriculum.

Joyful Early Literacy: The Teaching and Learning Cycle
This infographic presents the Teaching and Learning Cycle (TLC) and its guiding principles for effective implementation. The TLC and the guiding principles together provide an instructional sequence that integrates evidence-based early language and literacy instruction with culturally and linguistically sustaining and inclusive practices. The goal is to affirm each student’s identity and promote joyful teaching and learning.

Professional Learning Community: Emergent Literacy
This guide was developed to support preschool teachers through collaborative learning experiences in a professional learning community (PLC). Preschool teachers who participate in this PLC will learn evidence-based instructional practices that can enhance their emergent literacy instruction and benefit children in their classrooms.

Monitoring and measuring implementation

Practical Measurement for Continuous Improvement in the Classroom: A Toolkit for Educators
This toolkit is aimed at helping a team of educators with the final process in a continuous improvement cycle, which includes collecting data to measure implementation of changes (such as new instructional strategies) and intended outcomes and using those data to inform future action. The toolkit focuses on the creation of instruments such as short surveys, checklists, rubrics, exit tickets, or quizzes aimed at measuring improved instruction and student learning, and are practical to implement in the classroom.

Summer Reading Camp Self-Study Guide
This guide is designed to facilitate self-studies of planning and implementation of state-required summer reading camp programs for grade 3 students who scored at the lowest level on the state reading assessment. It provides a template for data collection and guiding questions for discussion that may improve instruction and increase the number of students meeting the grade-level standard by the end of the summer reading camp. The guide is composed of a scoring guide and consensus rating form. The scoring guide includes guiding questions and potential sources of evidence.

Integrating play-based learning

Integrating Play Into Literacy Instruction: Strategies for Your Classroom
This video shows how to implement research-based literacy practices from the WWC through play-based learning.

Integrating Play into Literacy Instruction: Interview with Tim Shanahan
This video includes descriptions of research-based recommendations from the WWC about how to teach literacy to young students.

Play as a Teaching Strategy for Children in PreKindergarten to Grade 3: Findings from the Evidence Review
This memo summarizes the evidence base on play as a teaching strategy to improve academic outcomes.

Supporting English learner students

Multilingualism and Translanguaging in the Classroom
This video provides an overview of the benefits of multilingualism and translanguaging in schooling, including how language abilities are interconnected, how these abilities are used in complex ways to create meaning, and how students are able to effectively communicate using all the linguistic resources available to them.

PLC Guide for the WWC Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School Practice Guide
This facilitator’s guide (guide, handouts, videos) is designed to assist professional learning communities (PLCs) in applying evidence-based strategies to help K–8 English learners acquire the language and literacy skills needed to succeed academically.

Translanguaging to Support Students’ Bilingual and Multilingual Development
This infographic focuses on translanguaging, a theory that allows teachers to mobilize students’ linguistic skills to support and develop learning outcomes.

Reading Across the Content Areas
This infographic provides information on evidence-based classroom strategies to support reading across the content areas for English learners and students with disabilities.

Blending Evidence-Based Literacy Practices with Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Practices
This video describes the importance of leveraging multilingual students’ home languages and/or dialects to support their literacy learning, affirming that all language knowledge is advantageous when learning how to read.

Supporting family involvement in foundational reading skills

Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade
This video explains the need for systematic, direct, and explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics and discusses the most effective evidence-based practices for teaching decoding to early readers.

A Teacher’s Guide to Supporting Family Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills
These guides provide teachers with information on how to support families as they practice foundational reading skills at home. Parents’ or caregivers’ continuing support of literacy development throughout elementary school positively affects their children’s reading ability.

• Kindergarten
• First
• Second
• Third

Supporting Your Child’s Reading at Home
These resources include activities and videos on how parents or caregivers of students in kindergarten, first, second, and third grade can support reading practices at home.

Tips for Supporting Elementary Writing Skills at Home
This tip sheet helps families and caregivers support children’s elementary writing skills at home.

Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic at Home: Building a Foundation to Move Forward
This video is aimed at supporting families and caregivers by introducing them to evidence-based tools and strategies designed to help young children engage with and develop skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic while learning remotely.

Finally, SEA and LEA leaders should assess the success of their literacy intervention by analyzing performance data and, if possible, by implementing a high-quality evaluation. Based on those findings, they should determine whether their student literacy goals were achieved and whether adjustments to the program might strengthen the program going forward.

Evaluation rubrics that can be used to collect and monitor data

Using the Phonological Awareness and Phonics Instruction Rubric for Classroom Observation
This rubric helps school leaders communicate with teachers about integrating evidence-based practices around phonological awareness and phonics in the classroom and measuring the success of implementation.

K–3 School Leader’s Literacy Walkthrough
The School Leader’s Literacy Walkthrough is designed to assist school leaders in observing specific research-based practices during literacy instruction (or students’ independent use or application of those practices).

Guide and Checklists for a School Leader’s Walkthrough during Literacy Instruction in Grades 4–12
This tool was developed to assist school leaders in observing specific research-based practices during literacy instruction in grades 4–12 classrooms and students’ independent use or application of those practices.

What Tools Have States Developed or Adapted to Assess Schools’ Implementation of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports/Response to Intervention Framework?
This report describes the features of 31 tools that 21 states developed or adapted to assess key MTSS/RTI practices that are informed by the research literature.

Data conversations

Five Steps for Structuring Data-Informed Conversations and Action in Education
This infographic presents an overview of different data types that educators might use, as well as five steps to beginning or continuing data-informed conversations on high-leverage problems of practice. This can also be useful in Step 1 to identify needs.

Supporting a Culture of Data Literacy and Use to Improve Instructional Quality
This fact sheet provides educators and school/system leaders with some key considerations for developing an effective culture of data use that can help improve instruction and student support services.

Instructional Improvement Cycle: A Teacher’s Toolkit for Collecting and Analyzing Data on Instructional Strategies
This toolkit provides teachers with a process for evaluating instructional strategies using classroom data. It includes a planning guide for comparing student outcomes between new and traditional strategies, a preprogrammed Excel spreadsheet for data analysis, and a reflection guide for interpreting results. This toolkit is cross-listed with Step 1.

General evaluation resources

Program Evaluation Toolkit
The Program Evaluation Toolkit provides tools to support educators in contributing to evaluations of their own programs. The primary audience for the toolkit includes individuals responsible for evaluating and monitoring local, state, or federal programs. The toolkit comprises a series of eight modules that begin at the planning stages of an evaluation and progress to the presentation of findings. Resources in the toolkit will help users create a logic model, develop evaluation questions, identify data sources, develop data collection instruments, conduct basic analyses, and disseminate findings.

Integrating Program Evaluation into Your School Improvement Work
This video is a companion to the Program Evaluation Toolkit. It walks users through the toolkit using a concrete example of evaluating a tutoring program.

Effect Size Basics: Understanding the Strength of a Program’s Impact
This infographic serves as a companion to the guide, The Basics of Reviewing a Research Study (listed in Step 2) to assist state education agency staff, school district staff, and school staff as they review research to identify high-quality, evidence-based programs that meet their needs.

Survey Design Best Practices
This guide and video highlight best practices in designing and administering effective surveys.

Learning Before Going to Scale: An Introduction to Conducting Pilot Studies
This pilot study resource provides a 7-step process for education leaders and researchers interested in implementing an initiative on a small scale first.

See also the ‘self-study’ resources in Step 3 and the instructional improvement cycle tool under Step 1.

Part of examining and reflecting can lead SEA and LEA team members to revisit Step 1 and begin the process again.