Issue 20, 2009
End One Year, Begin Another
The summer months bring the perfect time to review and evaluate new curriculum offerings to strengthen the 2009-2010 classrooms. At 
Abrams Learning Trends, we’ve created exciting new products and programs for early childhood and balanced literacy. And we’re ready to help you make next year something special for your students! We’ll provide you with free samples to help you review and make decisions. We have pricing to meet your tight budgets. And we’re ready to ship on a 
one-day turnaround – day in, day out - to ensure you have your orders waiting when you return to the classroom next fall. It all begins here. It all begins now. Call our toll free number (800-227-9120) and visit our website www.abramslearningtrends.com – your single source for the very best in early childhood education and balanced literacy. Let Abrams Learning Trends help you make next year one you – and your students – will always remember!
Response to Intervention (RTI)
Response to Intervention is a multi-tiered approach to help struggling learners. Students' progress is closely monitored at each stage of intervention to determine the need for further research-based instruction and/or intervention in general education, in special education, or both.
The tricky part to RTI is that it is a dual initiative between General Education funding and Special Education funding. Many states are developing and embracing a multi-tiered highly assessed intervention system within the 3 tier system:
- Tier 1: General education tier where the classroom teacher implements differentiated approaches meeting the diverse needs within the classroom. Usually linking whole group, small group, and one-on-one teaching techniques to accommodate student needs and provide opportunities for success.
- Tier 2: General education tier where more direct and intentional interventions are implemented. Students identified are one to two grade levels below grade level. This can be a pull out, push in, and/or classroom teacher intervention, and is a multifaceted approach.
- Tier 3: Special Education.
The above Tier descriptors are very general and each state is developing an RTI framework or model. See how these Abrams Learning Trends products meet most RTI requirements. Please contact Alison Schmerler, Sandra Welander, or the Abrams Learning Trends customer support team for direct help.
Stimulus Funds
Congress passed and the President signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) with a significant amount of the funds targeted to the schools. Under the law, the Department of Education (ED) is quickly providing your state with a large infusion of one-time funds to be spent over the next two years that includes Early Childhood, Title I, and IDEA.
For more details about Stimulus Funds:
http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2009/03/03072009.html
Check with your state’s Department of Education to find out when your school district will be receiving its stimulus funds under ARRA.
Let’s Begin with the Letter People® 2009!
Let’s Begin with the Letter People® is thoughtfully designed to plan your entire Pre-K day! Comprehensive, thematically-organized preschool program features a strong literacy and skills focus – and is aligned to state and national Pre-K standards.
- Research-based — ensures the use of proven “best practices”
- Comprehensive — everything is there for a total Pre-K program
- Thematic organization — helps children make connections and promotes important vocabulary development
- Oral language; book/print awareness; phonological awareness; alphabet knowledge; writing — everything the children need to become successful readers/writers
- Three instructional settings: whole group, small group, interest centers — provides the complete daily program
Take a closer look at Let's Begin for 2009!
Key Links Literacy
Key Links Literacy brings a truly unique balanced literacy approach to the classroom – unique for students, unique for teachers. This standards-based literacy program for grades K-2 presents engaging fiction and nonfiction leveled readers along with explicit teaching instructions – right on the student pages! Teacher support is unparalleled, with Preview, View, and Review prompts for before, during, and after reading.
And because of these unique “focus panels”, Key Links Literacy’s readers are perfect for use with summer school, after school, assistant teachers; substitute teachers, and families—any situation where a set of literacy-focused questions/tasks can increase the level of the literacy experience, and ultimately the progress, for the reader.
- Helps students comprehend what they are reading by teaching and reinforcing comprehension strategies of both fiction and nonfiction texts.
- Promotes student discussion and develops thinking skills
- Teaches students reading strategies that will help them monitor their reading so the can become independent readers
- Develops students’ phonological, phonemic, and phonic awareness
- Provides systematic instruction in phonics
- Helps students recognize a bank of high-frequency words
- Develops fluency by providing students with instruction and practice in the flow and phrasing of sentences
- Reinforces comprehension as students preview, view, and review the text
- Key Links Literacy Focus Panels provide easy to use explicit instruction on every two- page spread in the Leveled Readers
Here's more information on Key Links Literacy!
Interactive Big Books!
- Instant support for all content areas—math, science, and social studies — grades PK-2
- Unique interactive pieces involve every child in the learning process
- Solid content area information in a comfortable literacy format
- 30 science, 20 math, and 10 social studies titles in English—most available in Spanish, too
- Total alignment to NCTM; NSTA; and NCSS standards and strands
- 20-page, easy-to-use Teacher Guide offers practice; enrichment; differentiation; and curriculum connections
See the Interactive difference in Big Books!
Product Correlations to National/State/Local Standards
Thorough, thoughtful, and easy-to-use correlations make your job in the classroom so much easier. Abrams Learning Trends provides detailed correlations for Key Links Literacy, Let’s Begin with the Letter People, Interactive Big Books, and more – linked to local, state, and national standards. These invaluable teaching tools are available for easy download:
http://www.abramslearningtrends.com/correlations.aspx
A prime objective in today’s world is to teach students how to think and how to think critically. The Key Links Literacy collection is inspiring teachers to reflect on their guided reading and shared reading practice!
“After two weeks using the Key Links Literacy guided reading focus panels I was inspired by the critical thinking of my students. I discovered the power of how exploring the text, questioning, and engaging students using the Key Links Literacy preview suggestions set the stage for student success at the word and sentence level. I discovered that the students were thinking critically about what they had read. The focus panels gave me the supports right at the point of teaching to guide the students. Because I had stimulated critical thinking in my book introduction the students were ready to tackle any tricky words that came up in the text.”
“Key Links Literacy comprehension at the emergent and early reading levels is about exploring and learning about language including vocabulary, print conventions, phonological patterns, and visual information and activating interest to support the processing of information. The Key Links Literacy collection has enriched my teaching practice and students are excited to come to the table to read because of the rich fiction and nonfiction titles.”
Julie Heckmann
1st Grade Teacher
Farmington, MN
Dear Friends and Customers,
We are still looking for teachers and administrators from across the country and across grade levels to become members of our Customer Advisory Email Groups—one for Early Childhood and one for Balanced Literacy.
This is your chance to let us know your opinions on future products and to keep us informed your needs as educators, and other topics of interest.
Please click here to register to become a member of the Abrams Learning Trends Customer Advisory Email Groups.
We love to hear from all of you!
Alison and Sandra
Abrams Learning Trends National Teacher Consultants
Click here to ask Alison Schmerler and Sandra Welander, National Curriculum Consultants, about joining the Letter People Efficacy Study or to ask about Letter People® or Abrams Educational Products.