About DiscoveREAD
DiscoveREAD lesson supports have been developed to support teachers in facilitating knowledge and language-rich reading programs. These units are based upon the Science, Social Studies and Language Arts Core Knowledge Curriculum.
This has been done under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
We highly recommend exploring these fantastic resources in depth.
These units should not replace any existing "learn to read" or "science of reading" approaches within a school as they do not explicitly cover any components of phonological awareness, decoding or word recognition.
Unit Structure
All DiscoverREAD units follow a common unit structure. A topic is covered across multiple units of work (generally 2-5 units).
Individual units are sequential within a topic (eg. Introduction to Ecology units should be taught sequentially). However, topics can be taught in any specific order. Its recommended to align units with other content areas (Science, HASS etc). Australian curriculum links are available in the Unit Overviews.
Year Level Sequence
The scope and sequence has been divided into four key stages (K, 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6) and further organised in A and B years. This is intentional to allow teaching in both straight and composite/mixed-aged classes.
Year A aligns with the Year 2, 4 and 6 Science and HASS curriculum, and Year B aligns with the Year 1, 3 and 5 curriculum.
Lesson Structure
Each lesson follows a common instructional format, based on Explicit Direct Instruction.
Recite, recall and apply knowledge that has been taught previously to assist in transferring knowledge to their long-term memory.
A statement describing the skill and concept that is being covered in the lesson.
Teach the concept, rule or content using written definitions. This often includes the use of labeled examples.
Follow written instructions to model the skill to students using clear academic language.
Guide students to solve matching problems. This is a highly structured step-by-step process where teachers are able to check for understanding at each step. It is recommended that this step is completed by students on mini-whiteboards.
Some lessons also include an optional independent activity/practice opportunity. Not all lessons include this, as it is suggested to align independent activity with other content knowledge (eg. HASS, Science) being taught alongside the skill.
Throughout concept development, there are additional "checking for understanding" questions. Within these questions are sentence frames to support students to answer in full sentences.
