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Spark a Reading Transformation in Your Classroom with Focused Reading Activities
The Focused Reading Framework is a structured system that supports the full range of secondary readers simultaneously. It provides dual-purpose instruction for foundational fluency and advanced academic vocabulary, ensuring all students can document their critical reading journey with the TRIIPS strategy and achieve measurable growth.
The Crisis in the Classroom: Why Traditional Reading Methods Fail Today's Students
Students today face a different world. Ask them, and many will admit they're not big fans of traditional reading. Why?
Digital Overload: The answers to everything are at their fingertips through YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms, making long, complex texts seem irrelevant.
Reading Burnout: With jam-packed schedules, finding the time to dive into a good book often takes a back seat.
The Lost Joy: Most importantly, when school focuses so much on decoding, test-prep, and content coverage, it can overshadow the sheer joy of reading for pleasure.
One Framework, Multiple Skill Levels (Without Separate Lesson Plans)
You're tasked with supporting the full range of secondary readers—from those who need foundational decoding support to those ready for advanced academic challenges.
This Focused Reading TRIIPS Framework is built to address this challenge for your entire class, allowing you to:
- Provide essential decoding and fluency support for students who are avoiding reading because of anxiety or past struggles.
- Deliver high-level academic challenges for your advanced readers who are ready for critical analysis.
This streamlined system eliminates the need for separate lesson plans or time-consuming differentiation, ensuring you can lift every student's skills within the same unified, non-stigmatizing routine.
How Do You Reignite the Joy of Reading in a Standards-Based World?
As an English teacher, I totally get. Your students deserve those golden moments where they can just read for the sheer joy of it. But in a world of rigid standards, high-stakes testing, and constant demands, how do you justify "precious reading moments" that don't produce measurable, graded work? An more importantly, how do you encourage your students to produce those artifacts without them rolling their eyes over what they see as busy work?
This is where the Focused Reading TRIIPS Framework provides the essential balance. It is structured to:
Provide Data for the Gradebook: The TRIIPS documentation process requires students to generate regular artifacts (Tie-Ins, Reactions, Inquiries, etc.) that give you consistent, clear evidence of critical thinking for grading and feedback.
Maximize Instructional Time: By replacing traditional SSR with highly-structured, group-based activities, you ensure reading time is leveraged for maximum growth, aligning directly with literacy standards for fluency and comprehension.
Encourage Social Engagement: The reading notebooks and activities are designed to be social, ensuring students are learning about and engaging in reading with each other, which is developmentally appropriate and increases buy-in.
Elevate Student Reading and Engagement with Reading TRIIPS Focused Reading Projects
Over a decade of teaching middle and high school English, I've crafted a unique reading curriculum. Think about how much we all love a good adventure—be it wandering through a field nearby or scrolling through captivating photos from distant lands. I've channeled that love for travel into our reading journey using the acronym TRIIPS.
It’s all about encouraging students to embark on literary adventures, dive deep into the stories they choose, and then reflect and share their experiences. Just like a traveler documenting their escapades, our students can journey through books and bring back tales to share.
To ensure this journey leads to measurable growth, we replace traditional independent reading (SSR) with Focused Reading. In the TRIIPS framework, Focused Reading is reading that is self-selected by the student but is structured and often includes partner- or group-based activities to maximize engagement and learning.
Ready to set sail on this literary adventure?
Our Product Main Benefits
The Reading TRIIPS Framework provides students with choice within a structured routine, bridging the gap between fluency support and advanced critical thinking.
Ignites Student Motivation and Choice
Students are empowered to self-select their texts, which increases interest and motivation, turning reading from a passive chore into an active, enjoyable journey.
Encourages Social and Collaborative Learning
By incorporating activities like Fluency Pair-Ups and book groups, the framework leverages developmentally appropriate social engagement to deepen critical discussions and build essential communication skills.
Cultivates a Lifelong Reading Habit
The low-stakes, structured routine, combined with personal text selection, reduces reading anxiety and helps students shift their focus to genuine enjoyment and the discovery of new ideas.
Provides Dual-Purpose Skill Instruction
The system offers simultaneous support for the full range of readers, integrating foundational fluency practice (like Syllable Slice) with advanced linguistic challenges for college and career readiness.
Ensures Measurable Growth and Data
The TRIIPS documentation process requires students to generate regular, gradable artifacts (Tie-Ins, Reactions, Summaries) that provide clear evidence of their critical thinking and reading growth.
Unlocks Complex Academic Vocabulary
Tools like the Advanced Word Mapping and Morphology Logs teach students to code-break multisyllabic words, providing a master key to expand their academic vocabulary across all subject areas.
What You Get
The New Activity Set: Foundational Skills That Plug Directly into Your Focused Reading Routine
Bridging the Gap to Advanced Reading Teacher's Implementation Guide
This guide provides the purpose and rationale for the new activities, along with a simple integration framework for weaving them into your existing Focused Reading routine. It includes step-by-step instructions for implementing all new components.
Syllable Slice Mini-Lesson (5-Minute Warm-Up)
This ready-to-use routine teaches students sequential processing to methodically slice multisyllabic words, directly boosting decoding accuracy and fluency in a non-stigmatizing, whole-class warm-up format.
Fluency Pair-Ups (The Radio Read Technique)
A low-stakes, partner-based activity designed to improve fluency (speed, accuracy, and expression). By practicing the "Radio Read" technique, students shift their cognitive energy from decoding words to focusing on meaning, unlocking deeper comprehension.
Advanced Word Mapping Log
This log formalizes your journaling component, teaching students Orthographic Mapping to permanently store new, challenging vocabulary. It guides students to connect a word's spelling (graphemes), sound (phonemes), and meaning (morphology) for instant, effortless retrieval.
Advanced Morphology Log
This graphic organizer integrates into your book groups, turning reading into a linguistic investigation. Students track Latin and Greek roots and affixes to gain a master key for unlocking and understanding the complex academic words encountered in STEM and higher-level texts.
The Core TRIIPS Components
Teacher Guide
This guide includes the purpose and rationale for the year-long reading journey, instructions for setting up the reader's notebooks, and ideas for projects students can engage in as they discover who they are as readers.
Student Guide
Print or upload this guide to Google Classroom or another closed course management system for access by students in your class.
Reading Autobiography Lesson
Not only will you earn about who your students are as readers (knowing your students is one of the most important elements of accomplished teaching, according to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards), they will need to spend time analyzing their own experiences as readers and how it is they have arrived where they are, whether they are avid readers or reading avoiders. Download this lesson below.
Mini-Lessons Slideshow
Introduce your students to each element of the reading TRIIPS on which they will embarks this year, including Tie-ins (connections), Reactions, Inferences, Inquiries (Questions), Predictions, and Summaries. Download the slideshow as a PowerPoint file, but you can upload it to Google Drive.
Student Reader Surveys
The best way to encourage students to read books or articles is to help them find reading that they are interested in. You can best do that by simply asking the students. Of course, if you're like most secondary teachers and have dozens of students, it might take you weeks to talk to each one. With this Google Forms survey, you can ask all of them and them pour through their answers and send them recommendations on your planning period, at home, or anywhere!
Reading Challenge Signup
Some students love a challenge! (Yes, I know that others aren't such fans…) So we've incorporated a reading challenge in which students are facing off against themselves and their reading pasts. Encourage your students to read more than they did last year, or to read a wider range of genres. Any growth your students experience is a win! (Replace the academic standards section with the relevant standards from your state or school.)
Reader's Notebook Graphic Organizers
Tracking reading isn't about you grading the numbers–it's about students evaluating their own reading habits. Did they read this week? What did they read? Did they abandon a book? Is there a pattern that they see in what they choose to read and what they abandon? Students setup this tracking system and use it throughout the year to watch their growth as readers.
Structured Reading Response Graphic Organizers
What is reading without conversations? Students, after all, are very social. With this graphic organizer, students are not only encouraged to choose or create a question to answer about their reading, but also to quote text, cite their source, and write commentary that analyses what they have read. Students are also encouraged to respond to each other!
Reader's Notebook Rubric
Once a month, or on your schedule, students evaluate their progress in their reader's notebooks. Have they maintained their current reading list? Do they have a list of books they want to read in the future? Have they finished reading any books? Students fill out the rubric and you take a quick peek at their notebooks to verify. No grading at home!
Creative Alternatives to Your Reader's Notebook or Culminating Projects
Encourage your students to share their reading with each other and a wider audience. Students can choose from projects such as a printed book advertisement to an online book trailer they upload to YouTube. Push them to use their imaginations as they persuade each other to read! Can be used for students who struggle with the notebook or as culminating project options for all students.
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