Pacific Resources for Education and Learning

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Reading & Literacy

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PREL provides a range of products and services in the areas of reading and literacy development across the grades for multilanguage and multicultural communities. Our services include high-quality technical assistance to schools using face-to-face workshops and institutes, as well as via technology, such as webinars and distance learning. Sessions focus on reading and literacy within language arts and across the curriculum in subject areas such as mathematics, science, art, and social studies. Reading and writing are approached from a multiliteracy perspective to include visual and technical modes of communication that support linguistically and culturally diverse learners in the Pacific.

Workshops

Assessing Reading in the Multimodal Classroom

Audience: Grades K–3 and 4–8 Teachers, Curriculum Specialists
Learn how to assess reading in the multimodal classroom—a classroom enriched with print, visuals/images, artifacts, sounds, and gestures students read to make sense of their world. Use a variety of activities that offer information about comprehension students make and the reading processes they engage in. Learn to be a better observer of students reading. Learn to design and interpret reading performance tasks in which students can demonstrate what they know and can do. Learn to engage students in reflective conversations that result in their own self-assessment of reading. Explore how to apply this information to improve everyday classroom practices.

Comprehension, Culture, Curriculum and Bilingual Kids

Audience: Teachers
Learn how to use both traditional and school-based stories—orally, visually, and in print—to extend children’s knowledge across the curriculum while learning how the local language and English work to make meaning (comprehension). Explore similarities and differences between stories and languages to deepen children’s comprehension of narrative, while building on, and valuing, the cultural knowledge and practices brought to the classroom.

Creating Local Language Materials for Early Readers

Audience: Teachers, Literacy Specialists
Developing materials in the students’ vernacular facilitates literacy growth in the early grades. Learn to create materials purposefully, understand how students develop as readers, understand the characteristics of texts, and explore issues regarding learning to read in the local language and English.

Creating Books in iMovie, MovieMaker, or PowerPoint

Audience: Teachers, Curriculum Specialists, ESL Specialists, Technology Specialists
Using multimedia tools, learn the process of making a bilingual book. This standards-based unit includes the planning of the story and development of a storyboard—linking critical language arts and organizational skills.

Image to Word – Word to Image

Audience: Teachers, Artists
Strive to improve literacy and make reading and writing exciting through art and technology. Students create personal and culturally relevant images to stimulate their own reading and descriptive writing. Participants will use the PREL paper titled “Image to Word – Word to Image” and corresponding Teacher Resource Binder.

Picturing Science

Audience: Elementary Teachers, Secondary Science Teachers
The Picturing Science process combines photography, science, writing, and art to create a Web-based showcase of student work. The goals of the project are for students to look at their environment through new perspectives and engage creatively with those elements that they study in science classes.

Reading in the Early Grades

Audience: K–3 Teachers, Reading Specialists
Explore the early reading process that build skills and develop a desire to read in young learners. Learn practical and effective strategies for your classroom in five areas of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency. Poetry and read alouds are used to demonstrate early reading effective practices.

Reading in Middle School

Audience – Grades 4-8 Teachers, Reading Specialists, ELL Specialists
Explore concepts and strategies that support striving readers, including ELLs, across the curriculum. Special attention is given to vocabulary and key comprehension strategies for informational texts found in science and social studies classrooms. Explore how to teach these strategies in classrooms where the needs of students are complex and diverse. Learn to use techniques such as flexible grouping and cooperative learning to ensure success for all students in your classroom.

Reading Aloud With Your Children

Audience: Parents
Learn new ways to read aloud to your children and create a safe environment for them. Parents will experience first-hand practice and receive tips to make reading aloud a pleasurable experience. This workshop uses the PREL-developed Reading Aloud to Children Facilitator’s materials.

Writing in the Early Years

Audience: Early Childhood Teachers, K–3 Teachers
Learn how to facilitate literacy learning through interactive writing with young children. Learn how to share the pen with your students as they compose and write stories and informational text together.

Online Reading Course Reading Framework K–3 – Part 1: Collaboration, Assessment, and Instructional Practices

Audience: K–3 Teachers, Pre-Service Teachers
Participate in this online distance delivery course designed to help teachers address the unique beginning reading needs of lower elementary students. The 4-credit course is based on best practices in the teaching of early literacy in English. Part 1 includes four modules: Building a Community of Learners, Understanding Literacy Development, Assessing Early Readers, and Using a Variety of Literacy Approaches. http://www.prel.org/readingframework/index.htm
 

Online Reading Course Reading Framework K–3 – Part 2: Guided Reading, Comprehension, and Community Involvement

Audience: K–3 Teachers, Pre-Service Teachers
Participate in this online distance delivery course designed to help teachers address the unique beginning reading needs of lower elementary students. The 4-credit course is based on best practices in the teaching of early literacy in English. Part 2 includes three modules: Guided Reading, Comprehension, and Community Involvement.
http://www.prel.org/readingframework/mod4/information.htm

Training Tutors of Striving Readers

Audience: K–3 Teachers, Paraprofessionals
Learn to perform diagnostic reading assessments, and plan and implement lessons to meet the needs of your students. PREL trainers work with the tutors and their students through a series of meetings.

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Programs

Assistance for the Comprehensive Educational Development Mindanao (ASCEND Mindanao)
JUMP Into Reading for Meaning (JUMP)
Nā Hoa Ho`ōla (NHH)
Pacific Center for the Arts and Humanities in Education (PCAHE)
Pacific Comprehensive Center (PCC)
Parent Information and Resource Center—Federated States of Micronesia (PIRC FSM)
Parent Information and Resource Center—Republic of the Marshall Islands (PIRC RMI)
Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific (REL Pacific)
Territories & Freely Associated States Education Grant Program (T&FASEGP)

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Websites

earlyreading.info
Pacific Comprehensive Center (PCC)
Pacific Early Literacy Resource Kit
Pacific Language Early Readers
Picturing Science
Teaching Educators about Micronesian Students (TEAMS)
Telling Stories: Using Drama and Multimedia With ESL Students

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Products

Print

Booklets:
A Focus on Comprehension (Research Based Practices in Early Reading Series)  
A Focus on Fluency (Research Based Practices in Early Reading Series) 
A Focus on Professional Development (Research Based Practices in Early Reading Series) 
A Focus on Vocabulary (Research Based Practices in Early Reading Series)
Assessing Reading Fluency
Early Literacy and Assessment for Learning (K–3) Series

Books:
Coral Reef Alphabet Book for American Samoa
Island Alphabet Books

Magazines:
Pacific Educator 2003 Vol. 2(1)—Core Literacies 
Pacific Educator 2004 Vol. 3(3)—English Language Learners 
Pacific Educator 2005 Vol. 4(2)—Professional Development
 
Papers:
Effect of Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) on Reading Achievement: A Meta-Analysis 
First and Second Language Literacy: From Research to Practice
Image to Word - Word to Image: Literally a Vision
Literacy in Indigenous Communities 
Look and See: Using the Visual Environment as Access to Literacy 
Lost in Translation: From English to Pacific Languages in Early Reading Assessment
Measuring the Effectiveness of Professional Development in Early Literacy: Lessons Learned
Middle Grades: Putting All Students on Track for College
Reading Instruction for Older Struggling Readers
The Language Question in Pacific Education: The Case of the Republic of the Marshall Islands

Multimedia

Audiotapes:
Reading Aloud to Children

CDs:
Pacific Early Literacy Resource Kit
Pacific Language Early Readers
Reading Aloud to Children—English/Marshallese

DVDs/VHS Tapes:
Teaching Reading in the Vernacular

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Focus Series