FOR-PD Update

February 2006

Latest FOR-PD Numbers

12,037 students
877 sections
67 participating districts
7 participating universities
5 participating community colleges

Dear Colleagues:

The FOR-PD project continues to serve educators across the state of Florida. We are currently running 90 sections of the FOR-PD course. The registration period for district 12-week courses has closed, but the 10-week registration is still open. If your district would like to run a 10-week section, please read the district registration information below. We appreciate your ongoing support of FOR-PD and always welcome your feedback.

In this update you will find information about district registration, registration dates for summer and fall 2006, participant and facilitator updates, and changes occurring at FOR-PD.

Best Wishes,
Catherine Glass
Director, FOR-PD
cc@orion.itrc.ucf.edu

District Registration Spring 2006:

We are currently accepting registrations for 10-week courses. Please keep in mind that participants in these courses will complete two lessons on selected weeks to fulfill the requirements of the course.

10-week Course
3/6/06	Registration file must be received in the FOR-PD office
3/20/06	10-week district courses begin
5/29/06	10-week district courses end

We request that you adhere to the registration deadlines in this schedule as this will ensure completion information is received prior to the June 2006 deadline. We also request that you use the newest version of our district registration file. Email registration files to Richard Scott at Richard@orion.itrc.ucf.edu.

Upcoming District Registration Dates

Districts wishing to register sections for summer and fall must complete the district registration file and send it to Richard Scott (Richard@orion.itrc.ucf.edu). We request that you adhere to the dates provided.

Summer 2006
6/26/06	Registration file must be received in the FOR-PD office
7/10/06	District courses begin
10/09/06	District courses end

Fall 2006
8/14/06	Registration file must be received in the FOR-PD office
8/28/06	District courses begin
12/11/06	District courses end

Upcoming Open Enrollment Dates

Teachers wishing to register during open enrollment must do so by registering on our website. Please advertise these dates to those teachers who will need to take the FOR-PD course.

Summer 2006
5/8/06	Open enrollment registration for summer begins
6/26/06	Open enrollment registration for summer ends
7/10/06	Summer courses begin
10/2/06	Summer courses end

Fall 2006
7/10/06	Open enrollment registration for fall begins
8/7/06	Open enrollment registration for fall ends
8/21/06	Fall courses begin
12/4/06	Fall courses end

Quality Assurance Checks

As with any project, growth requires careful evaluation and planning. In our efforts to ensure that we are providing a sound-learning environment for all participants, we continue to monitor each section. Our Quality Assurance Specialist formally checks each course twice during the semester. During each check of the course, the responsibilities of facilitators and the progress of participants are monitored. The results of these checks assist us in addressing facilitation and participant issues.

We are currently completing the first Quality Assurance Check for the spring 14-week courses. One participant issue that continues to have an impact on our completion rates is that of participants taking multiple courses towards reading endorsement at the same time. So far this semester, we have had close to 180 participants who have dropped the FOR-PD course. Often times these participants become overwhelmed by the number of courses they are taking. Many participants also cite job and personal issues that interfere with their completion of the course.

The UCF College of Education - 8th Annual Literacy Symposium

Come join us for a day of learning how to engage readers, motivate students, and connect children with books! This is a free professional day for all elementary and secondary educators, including literacy coaches, library media specialists, reading specialists, and administrators. The Symposium will take place in the College of Education Gymnasium April 7, 2006 from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM.

This year's keynote speakers include ReLeah Lent, a national educational consultant and Enrigue Puig, director of the Florida Literacy and Reading Excellence Project. ReLeah Lent's increasing awareness of students' disengagement and disinterest in school lead her to write her third book, Engaging Adolescent Learners: A Guide for Content Area Teachers. Enrique Puig's current interests include the concepts of pedagogy and andragogy from a Vygotskian perspective involving literacy coaching to increase student learning. His new book, The Literacy Coach, will be published June 2006.

Interested in presenting at this year's symposium? You can download a presentation proposal form from the symposium website. Presentation applications are due March 17, 2006. Also included on the website are directions for registering for this professional development opportunity. All Literacy Symposium information can be accessed at http://www.itrc.ucf.edu/LitSym/.

The UCF College of Education 8th Annual Literacy Symposium is sponsored by FOR-PD, FLaRE, and UCF's College of Education.

FOR-PD Literacy e-Newsletter

Please read the February issue of the Literacy Newsletter.

What types of reading should be included in a comprehensive reading program? Last month, we took a look at guided reading. This month we turn our attention to shared reading. Over the next two months, we will take a look at independent reading and reading aloud. Each of these types of reading requires a different level of support from the teacher with the goal of moving students toward reading independence.

Shared reading is a student-centered approach which allows all students to participate in reading of text. The teacher or an expert reader provides voice support and models the reading process as students view the text and observe what the reader is doing. Shared reading is an appropriate instructional strategy when the challenges in a text make it too difficult for students to read along. This instructional strategy can be used with all readers, at all grade levels, and in all content areas. Students are engaged in the reading process through a highly engaging and interesting text chosen by the teacher. The teacher's role includes selecting text, reading the text to students, modeling the reading process and effective reading strategies, and gradually including students in this process until they have gained enough confidence to independently read the text.

Additional information you will find in this month’s Literacy Newsletter:

Books awarded the Newbery Medal, the Caldecott Medal, the Robert F. Sibert Award, and the Coretta Scott King Award;
Resources for celebration Black History Month;
Information on Read Across America;
Books for students; and
Books for professional development

FOR-PD's Reading Strategy of the Month

February's Reading Strategy of the Month examines the use of text sets as a strategy to aid in the selection of text. Texts sets can be considered a collection of books related to a common element, topic, theme, or type of text (Opitz, 1998). Text sets provide readers with a focus and allow teachers to guide readers through specific engagements with the texts. They also provide readers with a medley of text, including non-fiction and fiction, which supports the growing need for students to obtain quality information from a variety of sources.

We invite you to take a look at our current reading strategy and the examples provided from elementary and secondary levels. Try this strategy in your classroom and then email us and tell us how it worked (forpd@mail.ucf.edu). Also, don't forget to share the strategy with your colleagues. Each month we feature an effective reading strategy, explain the rationale behind the strategy, give directions on how to use the strategy with students, present ideas for adapting the strategy to different content areas, present ideas for assessing the strategy, and, of course, provide a printable PDF version of the strategy. Check out our Reading Strategy Archive to see past Reading Strategies of the Month.

Facilitator Newsletter

Please also read our February Facilitator Newsletter.

In our "Facilitation with Felicity" e-Newsletter, we continue to address the issues of facilitator professional development, facilitation, communication, and teacher participation. Our theme this semester will be building effective online communities. In an online learning environment, the facilitator’s consistent presence and interaction is vital to participant success. Here are a few tips on how facilitators can maintain a quality virtual presence.

Engage teachers with subject matter - e.g., ask questions, give feedback, and share personal experiences.
Account for attendance and participation - e.g., let teachers in your course know that you value their presence, attendance, and participation.
Work with teachers who do not participate - e.g., drop them an e-mail or two. Find out why they aren't participating.
Understand the signs of when a teacher is in trouble - e.g., monitor your students' participation.
Build an online community that accommodates personal interaction - e.g., teachers in your class will enjoy interacting with other colleagues; encourage interactions.

This month’s facilitation resource is an online article entitled What Makes a Successful Online Facilitator? In this short paper, the Illinois Online Network outlines key guidelines for successful facilitation. We hope that these core reminders help facilitators as they reflect upon their facilitation of the FOR-PD course.

Facilitator Professional Development

Reading and reading professional development for teachers are a major foci in education today. The focus of FOR-PD is to provide Florida teachers with a professional development course that focuses on research-based qualities of effective reading instruction. The course was designed to help teachers improve reading instruction for students in grades K-12.

FOR-PD facilitators must not only be knowledgeable of how to build online learning communities and facilitation of those communities, but they must also be knowledgeable of the reading content in the course. Facilitators must be kept up to date on new information and research that becomes available in the field of reading. In an effort to build reading content knowledge of our facilitator, we will be focusing on three areas of reading in the coming months – fluency, vocabulary instruction, and comprehension.

February Professional Development Focus - Fluency

Fluency encompasses the ability to quickly and accurately read text, automaticity in word recognition, and appropriate use of expression often referred to as prosody. More fluent readers are able to focus their attention on making meaning while less fluent readers struggle with little attention left over for comprehension. Fluency is important because it is the bridge between word recognition and comprehension.

This month facilitators will be looking at the following aspects of fluency:

Current research and theory of fluency and fluency instruction;
Instructional practices teachers can use in the classroom to develop fluency;
Assessment practices teachers can use to diagnose and progress monitor fluency; and
Discussion on how facilitators can use this information in their own classroom and with teachers taking FOR-PD.

Professional Development Materials:

While the materials we are using focus on the elementary to beginning middle school levels, we are encouraging facilitators to think beyond those levels to how this information can be applied with secondary students.

A Focus on Fluency [PDF 1.85MB] by Jean Osborn, MEd; Fran Lehr, MA (2003)

Intended for practitioners, A Focus on Fluency summarizes current research on fluency and fluency instruction and describes strategies for fluency instruction. It also explains various ways of conducting repeated oral reading, the use of independent silent reading, an integrated fluency instruction approach, the role of texts, and fluency assessment.

Teaching Reading Workshop
This is a video workshop provided through Annenburg Media. We will be using the Workshop 2: Fluency and Word Study. This session focuses on how students in the middle grades develop vocabulary and reading fluency. Literacy expert Richard Allington discusses specific teaching strategies that help build fluency and vocabulary, illustrated by classroom examples. (We will be using the first 16-minutes of this workshop video.). You will need to fill out the Annenburg registration form in order to view the video workshop.

FOR-PD Help Desk Hours

Our Technical Team continues to improve the services they offer. They have added a Live Chat feature that is available on the Help Desk web page. In order to use this feature you must follow these directions. First, make sure that you are online. The button below the directions on the webpage will tell you whether you are online or offline. Next, click on Set Screen Name and type your name. Then, click in the light blue box below the screen name box to type your message. Press Enter to send it. This requires you have Macromedia Flash installed on your computer.

The Technical Team has also been busy updating the course Tutorials and Troubleshooting Guide. Both of these resources provide a wealth of information on the tools used in the course and specific technology problems past participants have had along with solutions to these problems. They have made these resources more interactive by using Captivate to create short movies. These movies visually show participants, in a step by step manner, exactly what to do and click as they attempt to solve their problems.

The Technical Support Site lists the most up-to-date Help Desk hours. Our hours are as follows:
Monday through Friday 9:00am - 4:00pm EST and 6:00pm - 10:00pm EST
Saturday 10:00am- 3:00pm EST

The phone number is 1-866-863-READ (7323) toll free, Florida calls only. Out of the state of Florida, please call 407-249-4702. Technical support is also available through the Tech Help form our Help Desk Web page. Additionally, technical support is available through AOL Instant Messenger, screen name "forpdhelp."

FOR-PD Notable Quotables

"My facilitator is good at responding, which is critical for first-time, online learners ." –Fall 2005 Participant

"Thanks so much for including this feature in the course. I'm sure that it will be a great help to facilitators as they encourage participants to form their thoughts, practice using graphic organizers, and prepare meaningful discussion postings. If participants use the literacy log as it is intended, it can be a very helpful tool. I have always required that the log be submitted to me at the end of the course, but giving facilitators access to the in-process logs during the session will be great!" – Barbara Cavanah, FOR-PD Facilitator, response to Online Literacy Log

Do you have comments about the course? Have you received any comments from people in your district? We are always looking for feedback so send it our way. Email forpd@mail.ucf.edu.