Resource Library Logo

Ready-to-use lessons, tools and downloads to help teachers today.

Monthly Toolkits Tip of the Week
Trending Topics Printables Videos Literacy Strategies Math Strategies Favorites Search
Prepared Classroom Logo

Our approach to teaching and learning using evidence-based practices.

Buy the Book Daily 5 & CAFE About Prepared Classroom
Conferring Notebook Logo

Record notes from student conferring sessions using this online tool.

Login Buy Membership
« Help Center

FAQs

Get answers to the most common questions to make the best decision for you.

Account

How does The Teaching Practice connect to what I already have? (Resource Library, The Daily CAFE, Prepared Classrom, Path to Prepared, etc.)

The Teaching Practice brings everything you already use into one clear, connected space.

Your courses, resources, and tools remain the same. Now they live within a structure that shows how they fit together—so your teaching feels more cohesive, and your learning continues to build over time.

See how everything connects and how the transition affects me

Is this the same login as your other websites? I feel like I’m already a member.

Teach Daily now brings everything together under one account. With your Teach Daily login, you can:

  • Access The Teaching Practice membership which includes
    • Online Courses
    • The Resource Library (previously known as The Daily CAFE)
  • Save and organize your favorite content
  • View and manage purchases and receipts
  • Assign and track licenses

The only exception is Conferring Notebook, which remains on its own website with a separate login.

If you’ve ever had an account with us before, your information has been carried over, so you may already have a Teach Daily login. If you're unsure of your password, you can reset it here.

How do I login to my account? I'm not sure what my password is.

Login to your account here: Login. If you don't remember your password, reset it here.

How do I reset my password?

Visit this page to reset your password. Tell us your your account email, and we will send you an email with a link to choose a new password. Once you choose a new password, use that to login to view your account.

Billing

Can I pay using a purchase order?

Absolutely! Checkout on this page and select which products you want to purchase. You may upload your purchase order during checkout. There is a 5% fee added to all orders paid with a purchase order (not to exceed $200).

Why is there a purchase order fee?

The purchase order fee is charged due to the additional service needed to process them, and to offset the delay we experience in receiving payment. There is no added fee for credit card purchases. We are continually working to streamline our process and make the fee as low as possible.

Why was I charged sales tax?

Due to where our company is based and the business that we do, we are responsible for charging sales tax for purchases made in Washington State and Canada. All of our products are taxable, even digital products.

Is The Teaching Structure right for me?

How do I know if I even need this?

A few questions can help you see where you are.

When your lesson ends and students go off to work, can all of them sustain their own learning for thirty to forty minutes without needing you? When you move through the room to confer, do you know what to look for, what to say, and when to move on? When the block ends, do your students leave with the learning consolidated, or does it feel like it evaporated by the next day?

If any of those questions surfaced something, you have found your starting point.

The Teaching Structure is built to make those moments visible and addressable. Each component of the structure has a set of practices underneath it. When something is not landing in your block, the structure shows you exactly which component to look at and which practice to build next.

I have folders full of lessons and activities I've downloaded. Don't I just need great resources to teach well?

Great resources feel like the answer. And it makes complete sense that teachers build libraries of them. When you are looking for something to put in front of students that will engage them and move them forward, a well-designed activity feels like exactly what you need.

Here is what changes when you have the foundations of teaching underneath you.

The nine foundational practices cover how to structure and deliver a whole group lesson, how to build student independence, how to confer and teach responsively, how to assess in real time and respond to what students actually show you. These are what make teaching work. Not the materials. The knowledge.

When you have that knowledge, something shifts. You stop needing to find the right resource and start being able to teach. If you know the skill, the strategy, or the learning target your students need next, you have everything required to build a lesson, deliver it, and respond to what happens in the room. The curriculum standard becomes the starting point. Your teaching knowledge is what takes it from there.

Teachers who build these foundations often describe the same realization: the folders of downloaded activities become largely unnecessary. Because they no longer need someone else to do the teaching for them. They can do it themselves, for any student, any content, any day.

Over the course of a career, that shift saves thousands of dollars in purchased resources. More importantly, it builds something no download can provide: a teacher who can reach any learner in front of them because they understand how learning works and how to respond when it is not happening yet.

The resources were never the foundation. The teaching knowledge is.

I am a veteran teacher. Is this for me or for newer teachers?

This is for every teacher. Some of the teachers who have found this work most transformative have been teaching for twenty and thirty years. Experience is an asset here. The more time you have spent in a classroom the faster this lands, because you have seen these practices in action even when you did not have language for them yet.

Maryanne Wolf said it directly: regardless of prior training, every teacher has something to give from their expertise, and every teacher has something to expand.

John Hattie's research on teacher credibility and expertise shows that teachers who actively build their knowledge and craft at any stage of their career have among the highest impact on student outcomes of any factor he has studied, with an effect size of 0.90. The craft of teaching is never finished. There is always a next practice to build. A next level of depth to reach.

Linda Darling-Hammond's research at Stanford confirms that teacher knowledge and skill make more difference for student learning than any other single factor. Veteran teachers bring something newer teachers do not have: years of classroom experience to connect this work to. That makes the learning faster and the impact deeper.

Does this work for my grade level and subject area?

Yes. The Teaching Structure is built on how students learn, not on what grade they are in or what subject is being taught. The five components work the same way in a kindergarten literacy block as they do in a high school science class or a middle school math period.

Brian Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction were drawn from research across grade levels and content areas. The principles that make a Whole Group Lesson effective in second-grade reading are the same principles that make it effective in ninth-grade writing or fifth-grade math. You learn the structure once and you carry it across every block you teach.

Teachers at every grade level, from early childhood through high school, have described the same experience: once they could see the structure clearly, they could see exactly where their block was working and where it had room to grow. The structure scales. The practices deepen with experience. The foundation holds at every level.

I have been teaching for years and my students do fine. Why would I need this?

If your students are doing fine, something is working. The question the Teaching Structure invites is a different one: what becomes possible when your students do more than fine?

John Hattie's research identifies the practices with the highest impact on student outcomes. Feedback at 0.73. Formative assessment at 0.68. Teacher-student relationships at 0.72. These are not the practices of a struggling teacher. They are the practices of an exceptional one. And they are learnable at any stage of a career.

Many experienced teachers describe finding this work not as a correction but as a clarification. They were already doing pieces of it. What the Teaching Structure gave them was language for what they were doing, a way to do it more consistently, and a path to the practices they had not yet reached.

The craft of teaching is never finished. Every teacher, no matter how long they have been in the classroom, has a next level. This work is how you find it.

I am already overwhelmed. I don't have time for more professional development.

That is real. Teaching is relentless, and adding anything to a full plate takes intention.

The Teaching Practice is designed for exactly that reality. You do not take a course on top of your teaching. You build one practice at a time, in your classroom, with your students. The learning happens inside the work you are already doing, not alongside it. The courses are structured with specific action items to bring the work into your classroom in a manageable way.

Anders Ericsson's research on skill development shows that meaningful growth does not require massive time investment. It requires deliberate, focused practice on the right thing. A few intentional minutes each day, applied to one specific practice, produces more growth than sporadic large investments scattered across many areas.

Teachers who have built this work into their year consistently describe the same experience: the time investment pays back. When students can sustain independent work, when conferring becomes efficient, when the close actually consolidates learning, the block starts working harder than it ever did before. You get time back.

What if I start and don't finish? Is this self-paced?

Yes. The Teaching practice is completely self-paced. There are no deadlines, no cohorts you fall behind, no pressure to move before you are ready.

Your progress saves exactly where you are. You can step away for a week, or a month, and return to exactly where you left off. The path holds.

The structure is built around one foundation at a time. You do not need to see the whole path before you take the first step. Each practice builds on the one before it, and each one produces results in your classroom before you move to the next.

You are never behind. You are exactly where you are. And the next step is always clear.

Program Compatibility

Does this work with my scripted reading program?

Yes. Completely. Your scripted program gives you the Whole Group Lesson. The explicit instruction, the modeling, the sequenced content delivered to your whole class. That is exactly what it was built to do. And it belongs right there, at the top of the block, in Component One of the Teaching Structure.

The Teaching Structure shows you everything that surrounds it. The practice time that follows the lesson. The responsive teaching that happens while students work. The close that moves learning into memory. The program provides the lesson. The Teaching Structure organizes the whole block.

There is something else worth knowing. Whether or not you use a scripted program, the Whole Group Lesson is one of the nine foundations of teaching. We teach it as a skill. How to identify one clear learning target. How to model your thinking so students can see inside the process. How to recognize the moment when instruction needs to stop and practice needs to begin. Teachers with scripted programs and teachers without them both build this foundation inside The Teaching Practice.

John Hattie's research shows that explicit instruction has an effect size of 0.57, well above the threshold for meaningful impact. Your program delivers that instruction. The Teaching Structure makes sure the rest of the block does its job. They are designed to work together.

Maryanne Wolf, neuroscientist and author of Proust and the Squid, states clearly that there are no interventions that fit every child. Teachers who understand the structure of the block are prepared to use whatever program they have to its fullest potential. The program provides the content. The teacher provides the responsiveness.

I use a scripted program and I already know how to teach. What would this add?

A scripted program tells you what to say and in what order. Knowing how to teach means something different. It means knowing what to do when the lesson ends and students are in front of you with twenty-five different levels of understanding. It means knowing how to build the kind of independence that lets you move through the room while students are working. It means knowing how to read what students show you and respond in the moment, not after the unit test.

The Teaching Structure is not about the lesson. It is about everything that surrounds the lesson. What happens in the thirty to forty minutes after the script is done. How students practice. How you move. What you are looking for. How you bring the learning to close so it moves into memory.

John Hattie's research shows that feedback has an effect size of 0.73 and formative assessment 0.68. Two of the highest-impact practices in all of education. Neither of them lives inside a scripted lesson. Both of them live in what happens after it.

Many experienced teachers who come to this work describe the same moment: they could see, for the first time, that their program was delivering the content and their students were receiving it, but the transfer was not happening. The Teaching Structure showed them exactly where in the block that gap was living. And exactly how to close it.

My program takes 60 minutes. Where does independent practice even fit?

This is one of the most important questions a teacher using a scripted program can ask.

When a scripted whole group lesson fills the entire block there is no time left for students to practice what was just taught. No conferring. No small groups. The lesson becomes the whole block and students never have time to make the learning their own.

John Sweller's cognitive load research shows that working memory is finite. Students can only hold a limited amount of new information at once. A longer lesson does not produce more learning. It produces more forgetting.

Stanislas Dehaene's neuroscience research confirms that learning consolidates through application and retrieval, not through continued instruction. The block has to hold both instruction and practice.

A 2024 Stanford meta-analysis of literacy interventions, led by Rebecca Silverman, found that programs showing the strongest positive effects included opportunities for practice and feedback alongside instruction. That is what the rest of the block is for.

The Teaching Structure helps you look at your block honestly and find where practice can live. When we shorten the whole group lesson to 10–15 minutes and teach students how to engage with their work independently, time opens up for students to practice what we taught in the whole group lesson for 15–30 minutes at a time. We can show you how to get there inside The Teaching Practice.

Does this align with Science of Reading?

Completely. Science of Reading tells you what to teach: the content, the phonics, the structured literacy practices that the research supports. The Teaching Structure organizes how you teach it and what happens in the entire block around that instruction.

Rebecca Silverman, a Stanford researcher studying Science of Reading implementation, named the gap directly in 2026: teachers need infrastructure for continued professional learning so they can dive deeper, get feedback, and grow. That infrastructure is what The Teaching Practice provides.

Nell Duke and Kelly Cartwright's Active View of Reading research shows that student reading success depends not just on decoding and language comprehension but on self-regulation, executive functioning, and motivation. Those are capacities no curriculum builds. They are built through the teaching practices inside The Teaching Structure.

Maryanne Wolf adds an important note from neuroscience: we need to address both phonics and the broader comprehension and language capacities that develop through extended reading practice. The Teaching Structure is built to hold all of it.

Hollis Scarborough's Reading Rope research shows that skilled reading is made up of many strands: word recognition, language comprehension, background knowledge, vocabulary, and more. No single program addresses all of them. The Teaching Structure creates the conditions for every strand to be taught, practiced, and developed.

Science of Reading and the Teaching Structure are the complete picture together.

How is this different from Daily 5 and CAFE?

Daily 5 taught student practices: how to build the independence students need to sustain their own work. CAFE taught teacher practices: how to confer responsively and teach based on what students actually show you.

Prepared Classroom extracted the universal foundations underneath both and organized them into a complete teaching structure that works across every subject and every grade level.

Pearson and Gallagher's gradual release research, the same research that grounded Daily 5, remains the foundation here. The Teaching Structure makes it visible across every block you teach, every day, in every subject. If you built Daily 5 classrooms you already know what it felt like when your students could sustain their work and you were free to move through the room. The Teaching Structure gives you the language for why that worked and The Teaching Practice members gives you a deliberate path to build every practice that surrounds it.

Is this the same as the Workshop Model?

They share some foundations. The Workshop Model gave teachers a picture of what one part of a literacy block could look like. It was valuable work.

The Teaching Structure shows you the complete block across every subject you teach: reading, math, science, writing. It gives you a deliberate path to build every practice that makes it work. It is grounded in twenty years of classroom implementation with real teachers.

John Hattie's synthesis of over 1,600 meta-analyses found that the practices with the highest impact, including feedback, relationships, formative evaluation, and explicit instruction, require a complete, intentional block to deliver. The Workshop Model addressed some of these. The Teaching Structure is built around all of them. If you have used the Workshop Model you will recognize pieces of what you see here. You will also find practices here that the Workshop Model never addressed.

Does this work for students with IEPs, English language learners, and students significantly below grade level?

Yes. The Teaching Structure is built around responsive teaching: the practice of adjusting instruction in real time based on what each student is actually showing you. That is precisely what students with IEPs, multilingual learners, and students working below, on, and above grade level need most.

The diagonal line shows the relationship between independent practice time and direct teacher support. A student who needs more support gets more time with the teacher. A student building independence gets more sustained practice time. Every student is on the diagonal. The teacher moves to where they are.

Nell Duke and Kelly Cartwright's Active View of Reading research shows that student success depends on self-regulation, executive functioning, and motivation alongside decoding and comprehension. These capacities develop through the structured practice time and responsive teaching at the heart of Component Three. No curriculum builds them. The structure does.

Component Two, setting a clear purpose in student-friendly language before students go off to work, is one of the highest-leverage practices for multilingual learners and students with IEPs. When students know exactly what they are working toward and what success looks like, they can sustain the work. That small move carries heavy weight for the students who need it most.

The nine foundational practices of teaching are the conditions under which every learner can be reached.

Can I earn continuing education credits, clock hours, or graduate credit for these courses?

Each course inside The Teaching Practice includes a Certificate of Completion showing the course name and hours completed. Many districts accept certificates of completion for salary advancement and professional development requirements.

Teachers seeking graduate credit for license renewal or salary advancement should check with their district HR department.

About The Teaching Structure

What is The Teaching Structure?

The Teaching Structure is the design that shows how teaching and learning fit together across a day. It makes visible the natural flow between whole-group instruction, independent practice, conferring, and reflection—so students continue learning beyond the lesson.

Learn more →

Watch the Workshop →

What is responsive teaching? Do you teach small groups, conferring, and assessment?

Responsive teaching is the practice of adjusting your instruction in real time based on what students are actually showing you. Not what the program planned for today. What you see in front of you right now. That specific student. That specific moment.

It includes everything that happens during Independent Practice while students are working. Small group instruction: pulling two or three students who need the same thing taught a different way. One on one conferring: sitting beside a student, listening to what they are doing, responding with the precise teaching move they need in that moment. And ongoing assessment: not a formal test, but the real time information you gather every day that tells you who understands and who is ready for something different.

Yes. We teach all of it. Inside The Teaching Practice you will find a complete success pathway built around Conferring as Responsive Teaching. It walks you through how to move through a room with intention. What to look for. What to say. How long to stay. When to move.

We also teach you how to use a conferring notebook: a simple, practical tool that captures what you learn about each student during conferences and small groups. That record becomes the foundation for every teaching decision that follows. Who to pull tomorrow. What to teach next. Who is ready for more.

Maryanne Wolf's research confirms that it is the flexibility of the teacher, using data from progress monitoring and ongoing observation, that is key to using any evidence-based intervention well. The program cannot provide that flexibility. Only the teacher can.

John Hattie's research puts feedback at an effect size of 0.73, among the highest of any teaching practice studied. That is what responsive teaching delivers. Not feedback at the end of a unit. Feedback in the moment. The kind that changes what a student does next. Right then.

How do I get students to actually work independently while I confer?

It is taught. Step by deliberate step. Students do not arrive knowing how to sustain their own work. They learn it the same way they learn anything else: through explicit instruction, gradual release, and practice over time.

Rebecca Silverman named the problem precisely: if you have a class of 25 students and you need to focus on five who need additional phonics instruction, you need all the other students engaged and working independently. Student independence is what makes responsive teaching possible. It is the foundation the whole diagonal line rests on.

Keith Stanovich's research on the Matthew effect shows that students who read most make the most gains and students who read least fall further behind. The International Literacy Association's research confirms that just 15 minutes of daily independent reading practice produces significant literacy gains. Every student deserves that time. Building independence is how you protect it.

Sally Shaywitz's research on reading development shows that automaticity, the ability to read fluently without effort, only develops through extended, repeated practice with text. Students who do not have sustained independent reading time do not build the automaticity that frees their minds for comprehension. Independence is not a classroom management goal. It is a reading development goal.

Fisher and Frey's gradual release of responsibility framework shows that independence is not a personality trait. It is the end point of a deliberate instructional sequence. We teach it explicitly, then we release it gradually. The courses inside The Teaching Practice walk you through exactly how. One step at a time.

Is this just for literacy or does it work in other subjects?

Every subject. Reading, math, science, writing, social studies. The Teaching Structure is based on how students learn, not on what they are learning. The five components work the same way regardless of the content inside them.

Brian Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction were drawn from research across content areas and grade levels, not from literacy alone. The principles that make a Whole Group Lesson effective in reading are the same principles that make it effective in math, science, and writing. You learn the structure once and you use it everywhere. Every block. Every subject. Every day.

I do not use a scripted program. Do you teach me how to plan and deliver a Whole Group Lesson?

Yes. The Whole Group Lesson is one of the nine foundational practices of teaching, Brief and Effective Lessons, and it is one of the most important skills you can build.

There is a real craft underneath effective lesson delivery. How to identify one clear learning target and teach it explicitly. How to model your thinking so students can see inside the process. How to guide students through practice before they go off on their own. How to recognize the moment when instruction needs to stop and practice needs to begin. All this is taught in an 8-step Lesson Framework inside The Teaching Practice.

Brian Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, one of the most cited and replicated bodies of research in education, shows that the most effective lessons present new material in small steps, model procedures, and provide guided practice before independent work begins.

David Pearson and Margaret Gallagher's gradual release of responsibility research shows that the movement from explicit instruction to guided practice to independence is not incidental. It is the mechanism by which teaching becomes learning. Fisher and Frey built on this foundation to show that every lesson needs a deliberate arc from teacher modeling to student ownership.

You do not need a scripted program to deliver a powerful lesson. You need a clear structure and the skill to work inside it. That is exactly what we build with you.

For Administrators and Districts

Can schools use Science of Reading funding to support this work?

Yes. Prepared Classroom has been formally aligned to state Science of Reading statutory requirements. A North Dakota State Alignment Document demonstrates how Prepared Classroom meets the requirements of North Dakota Century Code 15.1-21-12.1, the state's evidence-based reading instruction law, across all required components including phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

The professional development framework inside The Teaching Practice qualifies as evidence-based, job-embedded professional learning. That is the category most state literacy laws and federal funding streams including ESSA Title II specifically support.

Rebecca Silverman at Stanford has stated directly that schools need funding for coaching and collaboration models where teachers can learn from each other. Joyce and Showers' landmark research on transfer of training found that only 5 to 10 percent of professional development transfers to classroom practice without ongoing coaching and structured support. The Teaching Practice is built to close that gap. Ongoing. Collaborative. Grounded in research. Aligned to the standards state literacy laws require.

Administrators building a funding case will find that The Teaching Practice sits squarely inside the professional development investments that state and federal literacy funding is designed to support. Reach out to us at [email protected] and we can help you build that case.

My administrator wants to see a program. How do I explain this?

Start with the research. RAND's studies show that teachers have two to three times the effect on student outcomes of any other school factor. Linda Darling-Hammond's work at Stanford confirms that teacher knowledge and skill matter more than any single program or curriculum.

Programs change every three to five years. Teacher knowledge lasts a career. When you invest in building teaching practices you are making an investment that compounds, one that no curriculum adoption can replicate.

Joyce and Showers' transfer research makes the case directly: professional development that includes ongoing coaching and structured practice produces results at eight to nine times the rate of one-shot training. That is a measurable return on investment. The Teaching Structure works alongside any program your school has adopted. It is not a replacement. It is what makes the program work at its fullest potential.

That is a sound, sustainable, research-backed investment. And The Teaching Practice is built to support it.

We already invested in a program. Why would we spend more on professional development?

Every program your school has adopted was built on an assumption: that teachers already have the structure to implement it. How to organize the block around the lesson. How to build the student independence that makes small group instruction possible. How to use what students show you to decide what to teach next. Programs deliver the content. They do not build the implementation capacity.

Joyce and Showers' landmark research on transfer of training found that without ongoing coaching and structured support, only 5 to 10 percent of professional development transfers to classroom practice. That means most of what teachers learn in program training stays in the training. It never reaches students.

The investment in The Teaching Practice is the investment that makes your existing program work. It is not a second purchase. It is what closes the gap between what the program promises and what students actually experience.

RAND's research shows that teachers have two to three times the effect on student outcomes of any other school factor, more than any program, any curriculum, any technology. Building teacher capacity is not an add-on to your literacy investment. It is the investment that makes everything else return.

About The Teaching Practice

What is The Teaching Practice?

The Teaching Practice is a membership that provides a professional learning space for understanding how teaching leads to learning that lasts. It brings together courses that teach the high-impact practices of effective teaching with our Resource Library into one connected experience. It allows your learning to build over time and implement The Teaching Structure into your classroom with clarity.

About our transition to The Teaching Practice →

Learn more and become a member →

I have tried professional development before and nothing sticks. Why is this different?

Most professional development gives you information. A workshop. A strategy. A list of things to try. Then you go back to your classroom and nothing actually changes.

Joyce and Showers' landmark research on professional development and transfer found that teachers who receive theory and demonstration alone transfer new practices to their classrooms at a rate of 5 to 10 percent. When ongoing coaching and structured practice are added that rate rises to 80 to 90 percent. One-shot professional development is not a design flaw. It is the norm. That is the reality most teachers have lived.

The Teaching Practice is a path. Built around one practice at a time, with clear action steps, milestones, and a community of teachers building alongside you.

John Hattie's research on professional development shows that the most effective learning for teachers, like the most effective learning for students, requires deliberate practice over time. Your pace. Your path. Building real skills that compound across your career.

How long does it take to see results in my classroom?

Some things you will feel immediately. When you give students more practice time you will see engagement shift. When you set a clear purpose before students go off to work you will notice they stay on task longer. Small changes in the structure produce visible results quickly.

The deeper practices, building genuine student independence, developing your conferring skills, strengthening your responsive teaching, those take longer. They are crafts. And like any craft they deepen with deliberate practice over time.

Anders Ericsson's research on expertise shows that meaningful skill development happens through extended practice with gradual complexity, not through a single training event. John Hattie's research adds that teachers who use formative evaluation, checking what students are actually learning and adjusting accordingly, see some of the fastest gains of any teaching practice, with an effect size of 0.68. You do not have to wait for the deep practices to take hold before you start seeing your students differently.

Is this research-based? How do I know this isn't just another education trend?

The Teaching Structure is built on some of the most replicated and widely cited research in education. Not one study. A converging body of evidence from independent researchers across decades.

John Hattie's synthesis of over 1,600 meta-analyses, the largest aggregation of educational research ever conducted, identifies the practices at the core of the Teaching Structure as among the highest-impact practices in all of education. Feedback: 0.73 effect size. Formative evaluation: 0.68. Teacher-student relationships: 0.72. Explicit instruction: 0.57. These are not small effects. They are among the most robust findings in the field.

Brian Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, drawn from decades of classroom observation research across grade levels and content areas, describe the same practices: brief focused lessons, guided practice before independence, checking for understanding throughout. These principles have been independently replicated across countries, grade levels, and subject areas.

Nell Duke and Kelly Cartwright's Active View of Reading, Stanislas Dehaene's neuroscience research on how learning consolidates, and Keith Stanovich's Matthew effects research all point to the same conclusion: students need structured, extended practice time with teacher responsiveness, not more instruction, for learning to transfer.

We don’t ask you to take anyone's word for it. Every practice inside it traces directly to peer-reviewed research. The citations are listed in the bibliography section below. The researchers are named. Read them.

FAQ Bibliography

Darling-Hammond, L. (2000). Teacher quality and student achievement: A review of state policy evidence. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v8n1.2000

Dehaene, S. (2009). Reading in the brain: The new science of how we read. Viking.

Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25-S44. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.411

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363-406. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2955.100.3.363

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2008). Better learning through structured teaching: A framework for the gradual release of responsibility. ASCD.

Hattie, J. (2023). Visible learning: The sequel. Routledge.

International Literacy Association. (2018). The case for independent reading. ILA.

Joyce, B., & Showers, B. (2002). Student achievement through staff development (3rd ed.). ASCD.

North Dakota Department of Public Instruction. (2025). North Dakota state alignment document: Prepared Classroom, Ready to Teach, Ready to Learn and the Science of Reading. Based on North Dakota Century Code 15.1-21-12.1. https://ndlegis.gov/cencode/t15-1c21.pdf

Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3), 317-344. https://doi.org/10.1016/0361-476X(83)90019-X

RAND Corporation. (2012). Teachers matter: Understanding teachers' impact on student achievement. RAND.

Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know. American Educator, 36(1), 12-19.

Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 97-110). Guilford Press.

Shaywitz, S. (2020). Overcoming dyslexia (2nd ed.). Knopf.

Silverman, R. (2026, February 19). Interviewed in: Spector, C., Q&A: How the science of reading is reshaping literacy education. Phys.org / Stanford Graduate School of Education. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-qa-science-reshaping-literacy.html

Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Matthew effects in reading: Some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(4), 360-407. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.21.4.1

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257-285. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1202_4

Wolf, M. (2025). Elbow room: How the reading brain informs the teaching of reading. Albert Shanker Institute. https://www.shankerinstitute.org/read