Read American Democracy is a tool for learning more about American democracy while infusing phonics-based instruction. Learning this subject matter is challenging for students who are struggling readers. This book gives you quick access to the materials you need to provide basic phonics skills instruction as needed. This book consists of entries for every new vocabulary word (such as amendment) or phrase (such as checks and balances) from Attainment’s Explore American Democracy. Entries contain information you can use in teaching the meanings of the words and phrases, but also how to read them. Each entry contains basic information about spelling, sound, meaning, and connections to other words. A QR code provides access to more detailed information, as well as explanations of concepts from the Science of Reading. This book also includes learning activities to give students the practice they need to solidify learning. They can be used as homework, as small group work, or as whole group activities—whatever works in your classroom.
The learning activities in each chapter are designed to target two areas of knowledge—the vocabulary in Explore World History and basic reading skills. The first three activities provide students more opportunities to learn and use the vocabulary terms from the chapter. The remaining activities provide students with opportunities to learn and use knowledge about phonics and spelling patterns.
For practice with the vocabulary, each chapter begins with a vocabulary fill-in the blank activity followed by two reading passages that include vocabulary terms from the chapter. For practice with phonics and spelling skills, there are two activities and another reading passage. One activity in each chapter focuses on vowels that have multiple spelling patterns. For example, in Chapter 1, students will sort the spellings i_e, i, y, igh for the long /i/ sound. The other activity in each chapter focuses on a spelling pattern at the beginning or ending of words. In Chapter 1, students will sort the words that end with the suffixes -tion and -sion. The spelling patterns and letter sounds that were selected were based upon the frequency of these sounds and patterns in the chapter vocabulary words. The hope is that teachers can partner phonics-based instruction with age-appropriate content.
There are two versions of the activities in each chapter. While the reading passage is the same for the last activity (in the standard and alternate versions), the activity is different. One version has students working on the vowels with multiple spelling patterns and the other has students working on more basic alphabet knowledge. Emerging readers will have more success with the alternate activity.
A Progress Monitoring Form is included at the end of each chapter to document a student’s ability to discriminate between certain letter sounds and spelling patterns. In addition, teachers can track progress of both vocabulary identification and vocabulary comprehension with this form.
The Read American Democracy Curriculum includes 1 Instructor's Guide, 1 Student Workbook, 1 set of Vocabulary Cards, 1 set of Words to Know Cards, and digital reproducible files from the Attainment HUB.
The Read American Democracy Curriculum Plus includes everything in the Curriculum plus a total of 10 consumable Student Workbooks.
The Read Series - Social Studies Curriculum Plus includes both the Read American Democracy Curriculum Plus and the Read World History Curriculum Plus.
| Subject | English Language Arts, Literacy, Social Studies |
|---|---|
| Age Group | Secondary |
| Author | Molly Farry-Thorn, PhD; Mark Seidenberg, PhD; Nancy Zellmer, BS; and Jim Zellmer, BS |
| Grade Range | 6-12 |
