Reading Workshop Correlation:
NBPTS Standards

If one cardinal precept of teaching is a commitment to the welfare and education of young people, the other is a commitment to subject matter. Accomplished teachers are dedicated to exposing students to the social, cultural, ethical and physical worlds in which they live, and they use the subjects they teach as entrees into those worlds. Thus, elementary teachers know about geography and its relationship to commerce and history. Foreign language teachers know how language and culture interact and fuse. But, it is not sufficient that teachers know the facts that fall into these different content domains. Understanding subject matter entails more than being able to recite lists of dates, multiplication tables, or rules of grammar.

The teaching of reading requires considerable expertise. The content of the Reading Horizons Online Reading Workshop increases teacher expertise in multiple areas of effective reading instruction. Elementary teachers who have knowledge of social, cultural, ethical and physical worlds as well as considerable expertise in the teaching of reading will not only be able to open doors of learning for their students but will be able to empower them with the ability to open new doors as they independently explore unlimited landscapes of learning.

Professional teachers hold high expectations for all students and see themselves as facilitators of student learning. To fulfill these responsibilities, teachers must create, enrich and alter the organizational structures in which they work with young people. They also find ways to capture and sustain the interest of their students. Because time is a precious commodity in schools, teachers attempt to make the most efficient use of it. To accomplish these tasks, teachers seek to master the body of generic pedagogical knowledge.

The multisensory instructional delivery and practice in the Reading Horizons methodology is efficient, engaging, and effective for all learners in facilitating enhanced memory and learning as it combines listening, speaking, writing, and reading through the process of dictation. Informal assessment included in the dictation process provides the opportunity for immediate feedback and opportunities for reteaching concepts in which students do not demonstrate proficiency. Systematic, informal assessment included in the dictation process provides the opportunity for immediate observation of individual and group work.

Facilitating student learning is not simply a matter of placing young people in educative environments, for teachers must also motivate them, capturing their minds and hearts and engaging them actively in learning. Thus, the National Board Certified teacher understands the ways in which students can be motivated and has strategies to monitor student engagement. The teacher's role in building upon student interests and in sparking new passions is central to building bridges between what students know and can do and what they are capable of learning.

Teachers using the Reading Horizons methodology will increase their ability to actively engage and monitor students in the learning process. The multisensory method of instructional delivery is engaging and encouraging. Students receive optimal practice opportunities and increased confidence and motivation as they develop new skills.

The cumulative nature of the Reading Horizons methodology continually adds to students’ prior knowledge and abilities while stretching them to new levels. Teachers using the Reading Horizons methodology will be able to see clearly where students are performing as well as knowing at which levels they are capable of performing.

As with most professions, teaching requires an open-ended capacity that is not acquired once and for all. Because they work in a field marked by many unsolved puzzles and an expanding research base, teachers have a professional obligation to be lifelong students of their craft, seeking to expand their repertoire, deepen their knowledge and skill, and become wiser in rendering judgments. Accomplished teachers are inventive in their teaching and, recognizing the need to admit new findings and continue learning, stand ready to incorporate ideas and methods developed by others that fit their aims and their students. What exemplifies excellence, then, is a reverence for the craft, a recognition of its complexities, and a commitment to lifelong professional development.

The teaching of reading requires considerable on continuous expertise. The Reading Horizons Online Reading Workshop is a free and ongoing online resource for professional development supporting classroom teachers in researchbased reading instruction and practice. Professional development credit is given for completion of the Workshop.