Grades 3-12 Reading Language Arts

~Dr. Timothy Shanahan

He is known as "one of the world's premier literacy educators." Even though his quote above speaks of the child that can overcome anything, he is speaking to us. When the job is hard, when something you tried didn't work perfectly, when you get scores back and that one student still didn't pass, it's hard to keep that mindset, "Never give up..."

I do understand that feeling and I'm with you. We are teachers. That is what we do; we teach. And when a student needs help, they call on us. I'm proud to call myself a teacher, to be part of this community. As long as you need help, I'll never give up.

I hope what you find in this newsletter will be a help to you. Thank you, teachers.

The Open Education Resources (OER), COVID Emergency Release (CER) pilot digital assessments will be removed from all TEA platforms on July 31, 2025, including the TEA Test Delivery System (TDS) and the OER-Assessment Viewing Application (AVA).

No Bluebonnet Learning assessments will be ingested into the TDS.

Any district, campus, or educator who will continue to use the Amplify Texas curriculum must download all materials from the Texas Gateway: https://texasgateway.org/

Join us for this hybrid summer professional learning that brings our local community museums and more into our classrooms. The session will illustrate ways to connect content areas to the learning that takes place at our local points of interest. Participants will leave with STAAR/EOC connections as well as STEM and Fine Arts resources.

This session will be similar to our Mondays at the Museum session last summer! Join us as we visit new locations and learn some new classroom instruction strategies with a chance to earn up to 12 hours of professional learning credit.

Then, during June, July, and August, teachers will be given the opportunity to visit other museums (both in person or virtual) and local learning spots to continue the learning on their schedule. After a teacher visits one of the spots, they will complete a course assignment in order to get 1 hour CPE. Teachers can visit up to six more locations to each a total of 6 hours.

Between the in-person day and the 6 hour asynchronous options, teachers will earn 12 hours of CPE credit for their summer professional learning requirements.

June 3, 2025

Click Here to Register

Feeling squeezed for time but know your students need strong research skills? You're not alone! This interactive session is designed for busy elementary school librarians and teachers who want to maximize their impact when teachers don’t have much time to give. We'll:

• Debunk common research myths and focus on the information literacy skills students actually need in today's digital landscape.
• Explore practical, time-efficient strategies for seamlessly integrating research instruction into your existing routines.
• Provide ready-to-use lesson plans, tips, and tricks

Presented by Laurie Bruns

June 9, 2025 (9:00 AM--12:00 PM)

Click Here to Register

Feeling squeezed for time but know your students need strong research skills? You're not alone! This interactive session is designed for busy elementary school librarians and teachers who want to maximize their impact when teachers don’t have much time to give. We'll:

• Debunk common research myths and focus on the information literacy skills students actually need in today's digital landscape.
• Explore practical, time-efficient strategies for seamlessly integrating research instruction into your existing routines.
• Provide ready-to-use lesson plans, tips, and tricks

Presented by Laurie Bruns

June 9, 2025 (1:00 PM--4:00 PM)

Click Here to Register

This 2-day conference will allow you and your colleagues to travel together through sessions focused on the Science of Teaching Reading and closing the gaps of special student populations. We will utilize a passport into learning with keynote speakers and featured speakers you don't want to miss.

The sessions will focus on Grades K-5.

This year's speakers include:

• Melody Ilk--the Power of Literacy Success: What is Possible?
• Leslie Laud--Reading is Access; Writing is Power!
• Tosh McGaughy--Interactive Revising Strategies
• Thea Woodruff--Decision Making using Progress Monitoring

and many others!

June 11-12, 2025

Click Here to Register

This workshop, presented by Museum of Texas Tech University, is open to all K-12 teachers. The workshop will be covering fine arts, language arts, and social studies skills central to state teaching standards. Participants will receive CPE credit, based on attendance and participation.

This workshop includes gallery tours, a private tour of the ethnology collection, hands-on activities, and a review of Native American art.

TEKS include: Fine Arts, English Language Arts, and Social Studies.

This workshop was made possible with a generous donation from Mrs. Evelyn Davies.

June 13, 2025 at the Museum of Texas Tech University, 3301 4th Street, Lubbock, TX 79415

Click Here to Register with MoTTU

This professional learning session will provide practical answers for educators seeking to better identify and serve gifted multilingual learners. Participants will learn how to combine best practices in gifted education with best practices in education for multilingual learners to meet the needs of these students. Guidance and examples of how to combine sheltered instruction with Depth and Complexity will help participants simultaneously meet their students’ language and learning needs. Participants will leave with practical ideas to identify and serve gifted multilingual learners.

Marcy Voss currently serves as Chair of the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) Gifted and Talented Bilingual Education Special Interest Group and Facilitator for the TAGT Emerging Leaders Program. Marcy’s passion is helping multilingual students to think at higher levels through the use of differentiated curriculum that incorporates depth and complexity.

June 30, 2025

Click Here to Register

Sixth Grade through High School Teachers, this day was made for you!

This One-Day Conference was created specifically with the Secondary Reading Language Arts Teachers in mind. Students in the Secondary RLA classrooms may struggle with reading gaps, writing gaps, or language gaps. This day and these topics are so big it requires some Inter-Regional Collaboration! Eight Educational Specialists from the National Ranching Heritage Center, Region 15 (San Angelo), Region 16 (Amarillo), and Region 17 (Lubbock) are coming togther to help you fill those gaps.

Participants will have the option to choose from multiple sessions throughout the day. Are you looking for a Reading focus? We have that. Are you looking for a Writing focus? Yes, we have that too! Communication? Emergent Bilingual (EB) support? Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Content-Based Instruction? Yes. Yes. And Yes!

Follow this link for more information!

July 10, 2025

Click Here to Register

Social Studies lessons are fun and introduce many new concepts. But—what if we could teach the students more?

Join us as we turn Social Studies Lessons from Ranch Life Learning into a writing lesson. Through reading, exploring, discussion, and research students create understanding. See how students can use complex texts to build their vocabulary, analyze the writing of others, and demonstrate their comprehension through their own writing.

July 24, 2025

Click Here to Register

Humanities Texas is excited to announce our summer 2025 webinars for secondary-level social studies and English language arts teachers in Texas schools!

· Teachers can apply today on the Humanities Texas website.

· The TEKS-aligned programs are FREE to teachers and their schools.

· Teachers will receive CPE credit and curricular materials.

· Teachers will work closely with scholars and teachers from across the state.

Using Primary Sources to Teach Major Topics in U.S. History in their Constitutional Context

Webinar Series: July 7–9, 9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. CT

This webinar series will provide social studies teachers with resources and tools to teach about milestone topics in U.S. history in their constitutional context. Each day’s three-hour session will be presented with a mix of content and pedagogy and will include hands-on work with primary sources.

The High School Canon: Then and Now

Webinar Series: July 7 and 8, 1:00–3:00 p.m. CT

This webinar series for English language arts teachers will explore the history of the changes and continuity in the canon of most commonly assigned books since the 1960s, as well as past and contemporary approaches to teaching classic texts.

Teaching Film Adaptations

Webinar: July 14, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

The webinar will explore the process of teaching film adaptations of literary texts in the secondary English language arts classroom. The presentation will cover some of the differences between teaching film and literature, as well as important terms and approaches to film analysis. Specific adaptations to be covered include The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Diary of Anne Frank.

Using Last Seen Ads to Teaching about Slavery and Reconstruction

Webinar Series: July 15–16, 1:00–2:30 p.m.

This webinar series will introduce teachers to the Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery project and accompanying resources available for classroom use. Participants will analyze ads, collaborate on ways to use ads in the classroom, create individualized collections of ads, and read short-story narratives based on the ads created especially for students. Teachers will receive concrete strategies and materials for using the ads to teach about slavery, the domestic slave trade, the lives of the enslaved, and Reconstruction.

TEA is seeking educators and subject-matter experts across Texas to serve as instructional materials reviewers for the 2025 IMRA review process.

As part of this selective group, IMRA reviewers make a significant impact on Texas public education while working with a collaborative group of dedicated educators from across the state. Reviewers will work in small teams to conduct quality reviews and collaborate with other educators to produce ratings and reports for assigned reading language arts, phonics, and mathematics products. IMRA reviewers are provided a competitive stipend and continuing professional education (CPE) credits for their contributions to this statewide initiative.

To learn more about the IMRA process, visit the IMRA web page.

For questions regarding IMRA, please submit an Instructional Materials Help Desk Ticket.

Did you know? The STAAR Assessment is online and students, starting in 3rd Grade, have to type their Short-Constructed Responses and Extended-Constructed Responses with a KEYBOARD? All Across Texas little fingers are poised above a QWERTY-board. Searching, searching... Peck! Searching, searching... Peck! It's enough to make a Reading Language Arts Teacher read a blog!

TCEA's Sara Reed has shared an excellent blog in this month's technotes. I urge you to check it out: How to Teach Typing in Upper Elementary and Middle School.

Boost your students' critical thinking and persuasive writing skills with these wonderful TexQuest resources. Click on the image to the right to view the video.

For further assistance and your schools TexQuest credentials, contact Julie Rogers: jrogers@esc17.net.

FactSnap is an extension you can install on your desktop. Once installed, it allows the reader to verify information while browsing the web. It compares claims against relevant sources from the web with the help of AI and, within seconds, lets you know if a statement is accurate, suspicious, or incorrect.

Perfect? No. It's AI. It uses existing web sources and GPT-40 to evaluate against these sources. FactSnap provides a good start to fact checking.

Click Here to check out TCEA's technotes on FactSnap.

For more information and to view these resources, go to: TEA-STAAR Reading Resources

TEA delivers a newsletter specifically for English Language Arts educators. The most recent, March 2025, has information on the following:

• English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS)
• Celebrate National Reading Month
• English Language Arts Timely Topic: Advanced Placement Innovative Courses as Substitutions for English III and IV
• The Texas Virtual School Network (TXVSN) Can Help Meet Students’ Course Needs
• Innovative Course Application Cycle

To read the full newsletter, visit TEA's English Language Arts Newsletter.

To make more room on this Smore, the downloadable and editable resources can be found at the Reading Language Arts Resources Smore.

TexQuest is a statewide digital resources program that provides anytime, anywhere access to high quality, authoritative digital resources to all educators, students, and students' immediate families in Texas K-12 public schools and open enrollment charter schools. Supported, in part, by appropriations from the Texas State Legislature, Texas districts pay a small per student participation fee to gain access to TexQuest resources from the providers listed on this page.

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission administers all aspects of the TexQuest program and is responsible for the selection and coordination of all TexQuest resources, as well as district invoicing.

If you are unsure if your district takes part in the TexQuest, contact Julie Rogers at jrogers@esc17.net.

3-12 Reading Language Arts Specialist

Email: jlafuente@esc17.net
Website: Region 17 Reading Language Arts
Location: 1111 West Loop 289, Lubbock, TX, USA
Phone: (806)281-5878
Twitter: @JerardL