How have teachers integrated the Toolkit into their balanced literacy program?
One school uses the Toolkit in their balanced literacy program. After teaching all of the kids the lessons in the Monitor Comprehension Strategy Book, the teachers teach Toolkit lessons in small, needs-based guided reading groups. The school is steeped in comprehension strategy instruction, so some second-graders, for instance, already have a strong foundation in making connections and questioning in nonfiction text. So the teacher begins Toolkit instruction for them with the Infer & Visualize strategy book. Other guided reading groups may be working on activating and connecting to background knowledge or asking questions, depending on their needs. In another class team of first-grade teachers work together to plan out Toolkit instruction over the first months of the school year. Kids are already familiar with nonfiction as a genre, so the teachers introduce one Toolkit lesson at the beginning of each week. The launch lesson is completed in one longer block, and after the teacher model
