Literacy Now

Project-based learning is one aspect of the Common Core’s with extra buzz. PBL engages students in purposeful ways by providing opportunities to develop a laundry list of 21st century skills in areas including critical thinking, research strategies, collaboration, communication, and literacy. If your head is spinning and you are wondering how you are going to make time for and create appropriate PBL opportunities for your elementary students, don’t worry! The good news is there are many ways to incorporate practical project-based learning into your elementary classroom.

Some quick and easy project-based learning opportunities include fourth-graders cruising the playground interviewing students about their after school snacks for the posters they will make to promote healthy nibbling; second-graders learning about chickens and read books to raise funds to provide chickens for families in third world countries; fifth-graders working in teams to write letters to the city council to promote better citywide recycling; and kindergartners baking and wrapping healthy dog treats for an animal shelter as they learn about taking care of animals.

Haven’t we always offered engaging hands-on projects in our elementary classrooms? Yes, but PBL is different. Rather than assessing student knowledge by grading the final product or administering a quiz on the text material, PBL involves “along the way” formative assessments and observations to evaluate how students are progressing in their research and collaboration.

The process for PBL may last several weeks and includes these steps:

• Start with a driving question or issue for students to consider (recycling, safety, healthy eating, the environment, school rules, etc).

• Research using multiple resources to address the issue and collaborate with others.

• Work together to create a project to share with an audience.

• Reflect on the process.  

 The celebration is in the experience, not just the end product! To ensure that you are including all the elements that make a project a true PBL experience check out the free resources on bie.org.

Here are some practical ways to get started or keep going with PBL in the elementary classroom:

Start with Read-Alouds to Inspire PBL Projects

Many wonderful read-aloud books can inspire students to think about ways they can get involved and is a way to find an interesting problem to solve or issue to explore. Here are some books that can serve as a base for projects. Thanks to Booksource for compiling this list.

Endangered Animals
Dobson, David. (1997). Can We Save Them? Endangered Species of North America. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishing.
Hirsch, Rebecca. (2010). Helping Endangered Animals. Mankato, MN: Cherry Lake Publishing.

Water Use
Frost, Helen. (2000). Keeping Water Clean. Minneapolis, MN: Capstone Press.
Strauss, Rochelle. (2007). One Well: The Story of Water on Earth. Toronto: Kids Can Press.

Environment
Williams, Rozanne Laczak. (1998). Let’s Take Care of the Earth. Cypress, CA: Creative Teaching Press.
Sturm, Jeanne. (2009). Our Footprint on Earth. Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Publishing.

Recycling
Barnham, Kay. (2007). Recycle. New York: Crabtree Press.
Green, Jen. (2005). Why Should I Recycle? Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.

Helping Others
Ring, Susan. (2005). Helping Hands. Minneapolis: Capstone Publishing.
Sundem, Garth. (2010). Real Kids, Real Stories, Real Change: Courageous Actions Around the World. Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing.

Exploring Your Neighborhood
Smith, David J. Illus. by Shelagh Armstrong (2011). If the World Were a Village: A Book about the World’s People. Toronto: Kids Can Press.
Sweeney, Joan. (1998). Me on the Map. New York City: Random House.

Safety
Meiners, Cheri J. (2006). Be Careful and Stay Safe. Minneapolis: Free Spirit Publishing.
Greathouse, Lisa. (2011). Emergency! Be Prepared. Huntington Beach: Shell Education.

Healthy Eating
Sohn, Emily and Diane Bair. (2012). Food and Nutrition: Eating to Win. Chicago: Norwood House Press.
Rockwell, Lizzy. (2009). Good Enough to Eat. New York City: HarperCollins Publishers.

Practical PBL Projects for Elementary Students

Work with your class to brainstorm a project that will address a central question regarding an issue or problem. Here are some projects:

• Writing letters

• Creating a collection—a museum or display

• Producing class books

• Conducting interviews

• Producing various media presentations—slideshows, video

• Writing articles for local papers or online school website

• Creating posters or brochures for local businesses or community organizations

• Writing procedural texts such as cookbooks or how-to guides

• Designing game boards

• Producing videos or plays

Inspire Projects with Hand to Heart/Paw/Earth

The Time for Kids nonfiction series has three really great texts by Jessica Cohn to inspire many different service projects on every page!

Hand to Heart: Improving Communities: Some ideas from the text include writing letters of thanks to firefighters, sending care packages to soldiers, writing to newspapers or politicians, planting a garden, and making bookmarks to donate.

Hand to Paw: Protecting Animals: Some of the ideas for projects include: making homemade dog biscuits for a dog shelter, writing letters on endangered species, collecting pet food for a shelter, and putting a pet show and donating earnings to a pet shelter.

Hand to Earth: Saving the Environment: Some of the ideas for projects include: cutting down on water while brushing teeth, reusing plastic cups, unplugging appliances, recycling, and crafts from recyclables.  Students can research and measure their carbon footprint. 

Teach Students to Ask Questions/Research Across Texts

One easy way to help students research their topics and issues is to create a chart to display their questions and then answer the questions across several texts.
As the students read at least two texts (or more), they enter the information gained from each text.  Students use the information gathered to write letters, articles, or make a presentation.

Try Ready-Made Books and Projects with Heifer

Currently, I am working with preK—fifth-grade students to learn about chickens and we are raising funds to buy flocks for the Heifer Project.  We read the Heifer picture book, The Chicken and the Worm by Page McBrier to learn about chickens. Check out the many ready-made project-based learning suggestions on the Heifer Project website including the popular Read to Feed program as well as fabulous picture books you can order to read aloud to your class.  I keep coming back to Heifer Project because the PBL project possibilities are endless!

Lori Oczkus (loczkus52@earthlink.net) is an independent literacy consultant and author. Lori’s latest book is Just the Facts: Close Reading and the Comprehension of Informational Text (Shell/IRA, 2014). Lori can be reached at loczkus52@earthlink.net.

As a 35-year veteran of the International Reading Association, Judith Scott has seen a lot come and go. What have been constants, however, are themes close to her heart, like the building of vocabulary and the establishment and use of mentorships in the education field.

Scott wanted to be a teacher since elementary school and has spent more than a decade educating educators and researching topics, in addition to working as a member of the educational review board for Reading Research Quarterly.

How did you begin your career, and what led you to your current position?

My third grade teacher inspired me to become a teacher and circumstances fell into place that led me to become a professor.  I had come back to university to get an MA and Reading Specialist credential at the University of California, Davis with Linnea Ehri when my then boyfriend (and current husband) decided to get his MA in Recreational Administration. The Center for the Study of Reading (CSR) was in its heyday at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which had the program he wanted to attend.  At the time, they were laying off teachers in the local school districts so I entered the doctoral program and became a graduate student researcher with Dick Anderson working on Becoming a Nation of Readers.  The rest is history.  I was an associate professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia when this position opened up in 2000.  My family is in California and, with aging parents and two young children, I decided to return home.  I've been here in the department of education at the University of California, Santa Cruz for 14 years.

How long have you been a member of IRA? How has membership influenced your career?

I've been a member of IRA for about 35 years.  I joined as a student teacher following the advice of my teacher supervisor. IRA has had a profound impact on my career.  My decision to move to Illinois was strongly influenced by an IRA preconvention institute presented by CSR researchers in 1983. Then, when I moved to Canada, I became heavily involved in the Lower Mainland Council of the International Reading Association (LOMCIRA) where I served on the executive committee for many years.  My position as a member of the RRQ Editorial Review Board allows me to help maintain the high standard of outstanding research for this journal and to mentor new authors. I've presented at numerous IRA conferences and preconvention institutes, and I've served on several IRA committees, including a position as the co-chair of the IRA publications committee.

What do you consider to be your proudest career moment?

My proudest career moment was when I received the 2006 IRA John Chorlton Manning Award for Outstanding Public School Service.   This award was developed to “encourage and support reading professors by recognizing the importance of integrating teacher preparation, professional development, and related research with the work of public schools, classrooms, teachers, and students.”  I was particularly honored that the teachers and district personnel with whom I worked initiated the process, solicited letters, and put forth my nomination. 

Vocabulary is such a hot topic. Why is that and what discoveries in your research have surprised you?

Vocabulary is a hot topic because knowledge of word meanings is a cornerstone of all communication. The words a speaker or author choose makes a difference in communicating meaning. Word choice becomes particularly important in written language because the words an author choose carries the weight of meaning when people are removed from each other in distance and time.
Learning words is often a difficult, frustrating struggle, particularly for English Learners, and vocabulary lessons in schools are often tedious, uninspired, and boring. I've been surprised at how easily this can turn around in word-conscious classrooms when students develop a sense of purpose for learning words and ownership of academic language.  We've had students spend their play dates looking for cognates and interesting words. When word learning becomes a fun activity for meaningful purposes, classrooms sparkle.
What role does mentoring play in your career?

I believe learning is sociocultural, and all people learn best when they are involved in communities of learners.  The strong mentorship I received as a graduate student was incredibly important, as neither of my parents went to university and I was the first female in our large extended family to get either an undergraduate or an advanced degree. 
I have tried to develop communities of learners in all of my research projects, with doctoral students, practicing teachers, leaders in professional development, and university colleagues. Each of us adds expertise of value to the collective projects, and part of my mentorship style is to bring people together in joint ventures so that we can learn from one another.

What are you reading (personal, professional, or even children's/YA)?

I teach an undergraduate course on using multicultural children's literature in K-8 classrooms from a critical perspective.  One of my great joys is finding books with themes of social justice that I use to let undergraduates experience literature circles. Current books include Ryan's Esperanza Rising,  Alexie's  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, Erskine's Mockingbird, Howe's Totally Joe, Jimenez's, The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child, Nye's Habibi,  Resau's  Red Glass, Uchida's  Journey to Topaz, Williams-Garcia’s, One Crazy Summer and Yang's American Born Chinese.  I'm always on the lookout for these types of books.

What advice would you give a new teacher that either you received or wish you had?

When you interview for a job, ask questions about the pedagogical orientation of the administration and support for new teachers at the school. Many new teachers drop out of the teaching profession because teaching is incredibly hard work, and both appropriate and sustained mentorship and a supportive network of colleagues and administrators can make the transition to teaching so much easier. 
Pay attention to students as people with lives, interests, and experiences beyond the walls of school.  Draw on these funds of knowledge in your classrooms and help students become apprentices in academic settings. Keep focused on the big picture in addition to the goals for each lesson. As a teacher, you don't need to know all the answers.  If you help students learn how to do the research to find answers, to think critically, to have compassion for others and the world, to read widely, and to write well, you are giving them a solid foundation for life.

April Hall is editor of Reading Today Online. She can be reached at ahall@/.

As a teacher I am always on the lookout for ways to motivate my students and finding new and exciting ways for them to synthesize and present information while meeting the College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing can be a challenge.  Then I learned about ThingLink, a Web-, iOS-, and Android-based tool, and my mind began spinning with ideas as to how I could incorporate the ThingLink interactive images with student work.

Before bringing the ThingLink idea to my students, I signed up for the free Education account, and explored the website.  Getting started is quite simple, as teachers can create groups for their classes by following the on screen directions. Once students are enrolled, they can log in and begin creating. To start, students need an initial image to “tag” or annotate. This can be a screenshot of their writing, a creative commons image pertaining to their topic, or any student created image, and can be uploaded from the computer or through a web URL. From there, students will begin adding tags including links to websites, videos, photos, or simple text boxes.

When I discovered ThingLink, my students were in the middle of their Olympic Research Unit, and were preparing a research report from an athlete’s point of view. I added another dimension to their presentation in the form of a ThingLink about their chosen athlete.  Based on their research findings, students were expected to create an interactive ThingLink that included text descriptions, photos, a video, quotes, and a Google Map with the location(s) of the Olympics the athlete participated in.  When completed, I compiled the Olympian ThingLinks on a Symbaloo Webmix for students and parents to view.

The ideas for integrating ThingLink are limitless, and include using ThingLink to demonstrate knowledge of a topic, keep a portfolio of writings, or an alternative to a Google Maps Lit Trip. Whether you are looking for a way to transform student research projects, or a unique opportunity for students to document their learning, try Thinglink and explore the many additional uses.

Stephanie Laird is an Instructional Coach in the Southeast Polk School District where she works alongside teachers to impact student learning through the areas of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.  She holds a M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instructional Technology from Iowa State University, and is the International Reading Association’s 2014 Technology and Reading Award Winner.

As a fresh batch of students began the school year, I shared with them previous projects I did with students in connection with space travel. They were intrigued and asked me if there were similar projects we could do. While searching for a program, I came across the International Reading Association (IRA), the International Literacy Day, and the partnership with NASA presenting the “Lift Off to Literacy” program for students. I read about Kjell Lindgren saying “Books have paved my path to space.” I realized this wasn’t exactly what the students asked for, but I could use 60-for-60 challenge as a jumping-off point for daily experiments and projects with a bigger goal of getting my students to read in non-traditional forms they wouldn’t dread.

With my Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) students (grades 6-8) I presented news articles related to daily curriculum topics. The students loved the opportunity to see the information and content in such a way that it wasn’t just classroom reading material (like a textbook). I often gave them a prompt to discuss or write an answer on our blog account prior to being shown the article of the day.

For example, we discussed rockets and space travel when I found a current article that Einstein’s Theory of Time Dilation had been verified. I asked the students to answer these questions prior to reading: “Would you want to travel to another planet, galaxy, solar system or star? Would you mind if someone you loved went without you?” After reading the article, we revisited their initial responses and many students said they changed their minds. Talk about conversation!

Here is some of the pre-writing:

“I would want to travel to another planet, galaxy, and solar system or star because you never know what’s out there, and I wanna see space! I love space it’s so pretty.”

“I would not like to travel to another planet. Many other places in the galaxy are dangerous. I would definitely mind (if someone I loved went), especially since they would probably never come back. I would probably miss them.”
Typical responses from middle school students, but then I had this one:

“No, I can't live without the people I love, I just couldn't go anywhere without them. Besides, it takes hundreds and thousands of years to travel to another galaxy or star, unless you travel as fast as a beam of light.”

These students had never heard of Einstein’s Theory of Dilation. Once we read the article, they all wanted to know if they could change their answers. The students talked about this article for days.

Each day is an experience of anticipation and excitement for the students and me. I can’t wait to introduce them to ideas, theories, concepts, inventions, innovations, and inventors in a way that isn’t a long, drawn-out story or lecture. I can use this to inspire the kids to read professional articles and documents on their own time. They often come in with articles scribbled in their engineering notebooks or on a tattered piece of paper asking if I will share that article immediately. And if they think I have forgotten to present the daily article, I am immediately hounded and reminded we need to do it. There can be no deviation in the game plan. The date, objective, mind puzzle, and “The Article.” It is forbidden that we should go in any other order. They also make sure that I assign reading articles for the weekend on our blog or that I make up the weekend days on Monday by doing an extra-long article or two articles. I am truly amazed, awed, and humbled by their hunger for this reading, writing, and discussion medium of just 60 seconds.

On one morning I planned to share an article about 3D printers which falls under every STEM category. The article was about cars being created with a 3D printer and I was fairly certain they had limited knowledge of this area. The first group of students burst into my room yelling “Did you see the 3D printer on the student morning news?” I had not, so they filled me in. It was the similar story to what I was going to present just in video format. We went on to read the article I had already selected. And these two events, occurring within 30 minutes of each other, lit a fire in their imaginations.

The first questions from them were centered on: “Why can’t we build our solutions and prototypes using one of those 3D printer things?” which led us in to the economics and financial ramifications of 3D printers, which led to “When can we get one?” They started researching the logistics and size requirements for the amount of space available in my room. The next day I found an article about a young boy who was given a prosthetic hand that resembled Iron Man’s hand. That article set off another round of “we can fix…” and then a technology assessment of 3D printers on the environment, economics, ethics, social, culture, and politics. These two days found me hard stretched to get my daily lesson in so I made a promise I would write grants to see if we can get one. I have been writing a grant about once a week.

In these 60 seconds I also like to note sometimes our history books and documents fail to give credit where credit is due. Many of the articles I present speak about these injustices and inspire many of what I consider underrepresented groups to be inspired, including women in technology. An example from the article is Ana Lovelace. After reading the article the students’ immediate response was “Did she have an engineering notebook?” or “Did she file for a patent?” or “Wasn’t that copyright infringement when they used her idea without giving her credit?” I was overwhelmed. I thought I was giving them the opportunity to see that females are often overlooked for their contributions and yes, they were indignant on that front, but they were mortified she didn’t have the social, cultural or technical clout to back up her work. All of this came from reading 60 seconds of a book review article.

I honestly did not realize what a difference just one or two minutes could make in the lives of these students. At first I was afraid the students would have already heard about the subject in the articles I was presenting through television, but quickly found the articles I utilize aren’t always mainstream or that the way an article is presented makes it totally interesting to them. Stumbling on the 60-for-60 challenge was serendipity at its best.

Thelma Kastl is a STEM educator at West Wilkes Middle School in North Carolina where she teaches grades 6-8. She holds a bachelor's in Technology Education from the Appalachian State University and a master's in Instructional Technology from Appalachian State University. She is North Carolina’s First Wind Senator. She has additional degrees and certifications in electronics, psychology and environmental studies and has taught Project Lead the Way engineering courses at Duke University and Seattle University. She has also taught technology education courses at Appalachian State University and Electronics at Wilkes Community College. She was Ashe County Career Center and Ashe County High School Teacher of the Year, in addition to the International Technology Education and Engineering Educators Associations Teacher of the Year and received Program of the Year. She can be contacted at kastlt@wilkes.k12.nc.us or technology.kastl@gmail.com.

Two years ago my life changed with a cocktail napkin at a dyslexia conference in Baltimore. I spent two days listening to Peter Bowers, the founder of The WordWorks Literacy Centre in Ontario, Canada, and Gina Cooke, the author of the blog LEX: Linguist-Educator Exchange, in the booth next to me, talking to dozens of people about something that just sounded like “another program for those with dyslexia.”

But after two days, I figured all those people talking to Peter and Gina with such newfound enthusiasm must be on to something. I turned to Peter and said, in my most skeptical voice, “Okay, tell me what all this hullabaloo is about.” He simply wrote the word “sign” down on a napkin and then created this word sum for me:

sign + al = signal

Then he asked me what I noticed about the “g” in the new word. That’s when it hit me: The word “sign” is not a sight word. The “g” is there to mark its connection to “signal,” “signature,” and “resign.” In fact, there is no such thing as a sight word. English makes sense.

We’ll get to specific classroom strategies in a moment, but it’s important, first, to look at the foundation for “real spelling.”

Decades ago, both Carol Chomsky (in the Harvard Educational Review in 1970) and Richard Venezky (in Reading Research Quarterly in 1967 and  The American Way of Spelling in 1999) put forth very informative and compelling reasons for teaching the English language the way it was meant to be understood. Their description of English spelling offered educators everything we needed to know to dispel the rampant misunderstanding in classrooms everywhere, that the written language is supposed to be a sound/symbol representation, and that any word that deviates from this belief is an “exception” or a “red, sight, or crazy” word that just needs to be memorized. They explained grapheme/phoneme understanding is still critically important to understanding the language, but we cannot possibly know how a word will be pronounced (or read) until we know how it appears within a grammatical and morphological context. Venezky said, “…the simple fact is that the present orthography is not merely a letter-to-sound system riddled with imperfections, but, instead, a more complex and more regular relationship wherein phoneme and morpheme share leading roles.”

I was starting to notice an underlying structure of English and was ready to take on some more of my long-held assumptions about English orthography. I analyzed more word sums and found the true suffix is the Latinate “-ion,” not “-tion” and “-sion.”  Here is an easy word to illustrate this orthographic fact: the word “action” has the base “act” and the suffix “-ion” which is illustrated in this word sum: “act” + “-ion” à action. If we suggest the hypothesis is that the suffix is “-tion” and put it into a word sum to test that hypothesis, we get “ac” + “-tion” and I realized that “ac” cannot be the base. The base has to be “act,” and therefore the suffix has to be “-ion.” With this new information I could then build a matrix for a whole family of words related in meaning and spelling to the base “act,” but like “sign,” the base had different pronunciations depending on what suffix was added!

Shown here is a word matrix to help illustrate the concept (created with the free mini-matrix maker):

In this one matrix the student would have learned the grapheme “t” can represent different pronunciations depending on its place in a word. Think “actual” and “acting.” With this one matrix a student understands 23 words and the underlying principle of “-ion” which makes hundreds of other words available to them.

Now, back to the “-ion” suffix. Would it not be a better approach to teach all students– including those with dyslexia how the language works rather than having them guess which one says /ʒən/ and which one says /ʃən/ For argument’s sake, try this word on for size: the word “tension” is represented in a word sum as “tense/” + “-ion” à tension. The single silent “e” is replaced by the vowel suffix “-ion.” It’s a simple suffixing pattern. Some students understand this logic more easily and are able to understand it early, given the opportunity.

In the case of students with dyslexia, orthographic instruction still responds to the need for morphophonemic awareness, it responds to the explicitness needed, it is multisensory and, best of all, it accomplishes our goal with a boatload of rhyme and reason along with enough critical thinking to make the Common Core authors jump for joy.

Homophones Set the Tone

Introducing the concept that spelling is meaning-based versus sound-based can be accomplished with an introduction to homophones. The homophones <see> and <sea> are a great place to start. I simply write the words down next to each other and ask the student to announce the word, which means they tell me the letter names, not the sounds they ‘make' and they do not try to sound out the word, they only tell me the letters in the words. Once they verbally announce the letters they are then prompted to pronounce the words. If they are unable to do so, I tell them the word. I then ask them to analyze each word and tell me if they are spelled the same. Once they identify that the spellings are different, I then ask them what each word means. Finally, they hypothesize why they think the words are spelled differently despite being pronounced the same. Students, including students with dyslexia, understand that they are spelled differently because they mean different things. Bingo…they understand the concept. This is also a jumping off point to point out that we already see two different graphemes <ee> and <ea> that can represent the /e/ phoneme.

My student is then encouraged to keep a list of homophones learned as he or she encounters them. Other homophones that can be used for this introductory activity are: hear/here, to/too/two, where/wear. Each pair has a rich etymological history that you can investigate with your student to find out why they are spelled differently.

Teach Grapheme/Phoneme Options

We should not say, <f> says /f/ like in fun. First of all, letters do not talk. Secondly, students need to understand that most phonemes can be represented by more than one grapheme and /f/ is the perfect example. We often teach phonemes by targeting just one grapheme that represents it. So, if we want to target the /f/ phoneme, we might use words starting with <f> and say something like, “<f> is for /f/ like in <fun>.” But given that instruction, what is a child supposed to make of words like <laugh> or <phone>? One option is to simply say, “One way of writing /f/ is with <f>.” That may spark children to ask “What are some other ways?” You could then share words like <leaf>, <fun>, <knife> and <phone>, <graph> and <rough>, <laugh> and use them to investigate three ways of writing /f/. In this way, the child is not taught in such a way to think that words like <laugh> and <phone> are “tricky.” Studying spellings becomes an investigation not memorization and this particularly important for students with dyslexia who are already using extra cognitive effort to read and spell. Students can create sound option charts. They add to the chart as they investigate and encounter new words. Below is an example of a sound option chart for the phoneme /f/:

phoneme /f/	<f>, <ff>: stiff, leaf, fun, find, knife
	<ph>: phone, gopher, dolphin
	<-ugh>: rough, cough, laugh, enough

The student finds the words for the sound option chart by looking through literature or simply adding the words as they notice them. This is a living document and students will continuously add new words. For students with dyslexia, this creates a sense of organization and predictability they need. (For more in-depth activities, visit Beyond the Word.)

This is just the tip of the iceberg—and I mean the very tip. If I had 10 more pages, I would just be getting started.  I hope you had at least one aha moment and I hope this has left you with many questions or motivated you to learn more to become more fluent in English orthography and teaching orthography. For published research on this understanding of English spelling and instruction, you can start here.  Then, take a look at some of these free resources:

• The WordWorks Literacy Centre
• Real Spelling
• Linguist-Educator Exchange
• Online Etymology Dictionary
• Orthographians Facebook page

Kelli Sandman-Hurley (dyslexiaspec@gmail.com) is the co-owner of the Dyslexia Training Institute. She received her doctorate in literacy with a specialization in reading and dyslexia from San Diego State University and the University of San Diego. She is a trained special education advocate assisting parents and children through the Individual Education Plan (IEP) and 504 Plan process. Dr. Kelli is an adjunct professor of reading, literacy coordinator and a tutor trainer. Kelli is trained by a fellow of the Orton-Gillingham Academy and in the Lindamood-Bell, RAVE-O and Wilson Reading Programs. Kelli is the Past-President of the San Diego Branch of the International Dyslexia Association, as well as a board member of the Southern California Library Literacy Network (SCLLN). She co-created and produced “Dyslexia for a Day: A Simulation of Dyslexia,” is a frequent speaker at conferences, and is currently writing “Dyslexia: Decoding the System.”