2024 Kansas MTSS & Alignment Symposium

Move away from sit and get to instruction that engages learners in content and promotes deep discussions.  This session will help adolescent teachers focus on deliberate planning to enhance understanding and comprehension.

This session will support educators in bridging their understanding of how to assist Heritage Language Learners in their development of academic language. Heritage Language Learners (HLLs) (Valdes, 2000) are our students that have a cultural and linguistic connection to a language/s other than English due to their family background. Participants will be provided with information and tools to effectively develop HLL’s proficiency in academic contexts while maintaining their linguistic and cultural identities.

This session provides research that underpins the power of instructional routines to maximize student learning. Using explicit instructional routines empowers teachers in providing a seamless flow in delivering a lesson. Instructional routines embed opportunities for students to respond, guided practice with feedback, and immediate error correction. Students can focus on the content to be learned rather than the task, leading to increased student learning. Instructional routines related to word recognition with embedded practice opportunities for participants are modeled and practiced. The design and delivery of this session places an emphasis on translating research-to-practice for practitioners. Participants leave with a toolkit of instructional resources.

​Padlet Link​​​
Password: HOW

Instructional Routines

This session highlights the reciprocal relationship between reading and spelling and its benefits to both essential language skills! Hands-on instructional routines and practices will be shared, modeled, and practiced to optimize the transfer to classroom practice.

Padlet Link
Password: Spelling

Spelling Analysis


Spelling Inventory Tools

Developing a large sight word vocabulary depends upon orthographic mapping, “a process that involves the formation of letter-sound connections to bond the spelling, pronunciations, and meanings of specific words in memory. It explains how children learn to read by sight, to spell words from memory, and to acquire vocabulary words from print.” (Ehri, 2014). This session will review orthographic mapping and instructional practices that result in student engagement in this essential connection forming process. In addition, terms that are often confused: high frequency words, irregular words and sight words will be clarified. Best practices in structured literacy instruction and instructional routines for teaching high frequency words will be shared to facilitate the orthographic mapping process and increase students’ sight word vocabulary.

Padlet Link
Password:  HFW

This session will equip participants with strategies to teach and reinforce vocabulary across all content areas. From explicit vocabulary instruction to engaging word-learning activities, attendees will explore word-learning approaches to foster deep understanding and vocabulary retention among students navigating complex texts. Powerpoint presentation will be uploaded after the session. 

This session provides research that underpins the power of instructional routines to maximize student learning. Using explicit instructional routines empowers teachers in providing a seamless flow in delivering a lesson. Instructional routines embed opportunities for students to respond, guided practice with feedback, and immediate error correction. Students can focus on the content to be learned rather than the task, leading to increased student learning. Instructional routines related to word recognition with embedded practice opportunities for participants are modeled and practiced. The design and delivery of this session places an emphasis on translating research-to-practice for practitioners. Participants leave with a toolkit of instructional resources.

​Padlet Link​​​
Password: HOW

Instructional Routines

This session highlights the reciprocal relationship between reading and spelling and its benefits to both essential language skills! Hands-on instructional routines and practices will be shared, modeled, and practiced to optimize the transfer to classroom practice.

Padlet Link
Password: Spelling

Spelling Analysis


Spelling Inventory Tools 

Developing a large sight word vocabulary depends upon orthographic mapping, “a process that involves the formation of letter-sound connections to bond the spelling, pronunciations, and meanings of specific words in memory. It explains how children learn to read by sight, to spell words from memory, and to acquire vocabulary words from print.” (Ehri, 2014). This session will review orthographic mapping and instructional practices that result in student engagement in this essential connection forming process. In addition, terms that are often confused: high frequency words, irregular words and sight words will be clarified. Best practices in structured literacy instruction and instructional routines for teaching high frequency words will be shared to facilitate the orthographic mapping process and increase students’ sight word vocabulary.

Padlet Link
Password:  HFW