Supercharging Literacy Instruction: Micro-Schedules for Reading

This post is part of a three-part series on Making Every Minute Count: 3 Ways to Address Pandemic Learning Loss This Fall, sharing best practice strategies that can be implemented now in elementary schools to make a big difference for students this school year: providing extra-time intervention, rethinking grade-level common planning time, and creating micro-schedules for reading. With tweaks to the elementary school schedule, these best practices can be facilitated and can have immediate impact on student learning.

Before the pandemic, reading was job number one for elementary schools, and now it’s even more critical to ensure all students read and comprehend well. The huge increase in schools purchasing new reading curriculum or providing PD in the subject makes it clear that school leaders value literacy.

Schools widely recognize reading as an essential skill and the reading block as an important part of the school day. Nearly all elementary master schedules show when reading should be taught. This is usually a big chunk of time, 90 or 120 minutes or more, that proclaims the importance of reading. This is good, but it is not enough.

How a Micro-schedule for Reading Supercharges Literacy Instruction

To make the biggest gains in reading achievement for the most students, schools should go beyond scheduling the overall reading block to include a micro-schedule for how time within the reading block should be used. This means being very specific, such as 15 minutes of phonics in grades K-3, 20 minutes of whole class instruction, and so on. Its splitting the 90-minute block into four, five, or six smaller chunks, and customizing the plan for each grade level.

Without a micro-schedule, there often is a high level of variability in how the 90 or 120 minutes of the daily reading block is used across classrooms. One classroom might spend half the time on whole group read aloud, while across the hall they spend only fifteen minutes. Similarly, the time spent on phonics, word study, or small group rotation would likely be inconsistent in the two classrooms. What this means for students is that their opportunity to master all the foundational skills for reading depends upon their classroom and teacher.

In order to set all students up to successfully learn to read, create and implement a micro-schedule to ensure students across all classrooms benefit from best practices for learning to read.

But do teachers really need this level of detail?

Some teachers, especially less experienced ones, will welcome the specific guidance. More importantly, it’s the kids who need their teachers to have micro-schedules. In a number of studies we have conducted in schools without micro-schedules, some students get 50% less phonics instruction than others, some students get 70% less time on academic vocabulary, and some get almost no teaching of comprehension strategies. This inequity harms students who struggle to read, and micro-schedules can right this wrong.

Ok, but the curriculum spells out what to teach

I often hear, “OK, micro schedules would be helpful, but the curriculum we purchased spells it all out.” In actuality, most programs provide a range of options such as 10-20 minutes of phonics in grades K-2 or K-3 or might suggest daily vocabulary instruction but not say whether its 5 minutes or 10. Even if every teacher follows the program, some students will receive very different instruction than others.

A sample micro-schedule for reading block is shown here.

Reading is just too important to leave how and how much is taught to chance. Kids deserve best practice instruction and micro-schedules help ensure this.