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What teachers need to teach and what students need to learn about written English for Grades K–3 and beyond for older students with gaps in learning

This professional resource supports teachers with the knowledge and tools they need to elevate literacy instruction and evaluate student achievement.

Elevate & Evaluate is packed with professional development materials for elevating teacher knowledge, a full suite of easy-to-use assessments for evaluating student knowledge, and clear evidence of efficacy for Joy Allcock’s speech-to-sounds-to-print approach for teaching the code and structure of written English.

"The resources and assessments throughout this book are a step above most programs. They are derived from many years of working in schools, developing programs and assessments that have been subjected to rigorous academic evaluation, and collaborating with teachers to ensure that the resources created are easy to use and work in real classrooms. This extensive work has given Allcock much clarity about teacher knowledge and about the value of using a linguistic phonics approach, which has significant advantages for teaching the alphabetic code."

- Professor John Hattie

Elevate & Evaluate is included in Grade K of The Code Is the Key.


Elevating teacher knowledge

The resources in this section provide helpful background information and concrete support for teaching the code and structure of written English. Topics covered include:

  • Effective literacy instruction — what science tells us about teaching reading, writing, and spelling.
  • The systems of English — phonological (sound), orthographic (writing), and morphological (meaning).
  • What teachers need to teach — essential literacy skills for teachers to teach and students to develop.
  • Sounds and spellings — the sounds and spelling patterns of English, including blends and digraphs.
  • Syllable structures — teaching the different types of syllables and how to use them for reading and writing.
  • Spelling rules and conventions — the most useful spelling rules for students to learn in the first four years of school.
  • Scope and sequence — an overview of the Code-Ed instructional resources, including the scope and sequence of skills taught each year.
  • Literacy development — how students learn to write, spell, and read, and ways to support their development with assessment-driven instruction.
  • Teaching decoding — how to teach essential decoding skills at each stage of reading development.
  • Literacy delays and difficulties — common reasons why student struggle with reading and writing, and ways to address them.

Teachers can use the professional development resources in this section to work alone or collaboratively with their peers to enhance their knowledge in these key areas and elevate their literacy instruction.


Evaluating student knowledge

This section includes assessment essentials and timelines, yearly achievement expectations, and a full suite of assessment instruments for the first four years of school. The 11 assessments include:

  • Foundations for literacy
  • Phonological and phonemic awareness
  • Grapheme knowledge
  • Letter formation
  • Sound-to-letter knowledge
  • Pseudoword spelling
  • Blends
  • Short and long vowel discrimination
  • Spelling knowledge
  • Spelling analysis
  • Decoding analysis

These assessments can be used to drive instruction, track progress, and measure the impact of instruction on student achievement.


Evaluating evidence

This section presents the research foundations behind the speech-to-sounds-to-print approach, including a summary of the Shine Literacy Project, which validated the efficacy of the approach, and evidence of the reliability and validity of the Code-Ed assessments. Contents include:

  • Research foundations
  • The Shine Literacy Project
  • Reliability and validity data

Find out how Elevate & Evaluate can help teachers elevate their knowledge, evaluate student understanding, and make literacy achievement soar.

"Thank goodness for authors like Joy Allcock who get the messages right — and for her relentless focus across many books on teaching the skills for learning to read, write, and spell."

- Professor John Hattie

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