Preparing for SEEDS lessons includes gathering necessary resources, previewing the lessons frames, and understanding individual needs.
- Gathering Resources: Before any SEEDS lesson, collecting the appropriate materials is crucial to ensuring smooth and effective instruction. Many of these resources are part of the SEEDS Educator’s Kit or are available digitally on the Learning Portal.
- Previewing Lessons: Previewing lessons and strategies is an essential part of preparing to teach, helping you become fluent and confident in your delivery.
- Review Lesson Frames: Familiarize yourself with the objectives, suggested language, and sequence of steps in the Lesson Frames. While they offer structure, they are guides, not word-for-word scripts, encouraging adaptation as you become more comfortable.
- Understand Instructional Focus: For multi-day strategies like the 3-Day Repeated Read-Aloud, understand how the instructional focus shifts each day (e.g., surface-level comprehension, understanding story structure, and making connections).
- Practice: The framework emphasizes that learning and applying new skills is a process. Educators are encouraged to practice lessons, such as repeated read-alouds or Match-Point-Say activities, first without children. This deliberate practice helps build confidence and fluency, with most uncomfortable feelings subsiding after 6–8 trials, and proficiency achieved after about 20–30 attempts.
- Prepare for Scaffolding: Before teaching, think about how you will scaffold learning. Scaffolding helps children move from an emergent stage to a developing stage, and then to a fluent stage. The Lesson Frames and Planning Tools guide this process.
- Understanding Individual Needs: Systematic reflection and planning are integral to tailoring instruction to individual needs.
- Formative Assessment: SEEDS educators use formative assessments (like the Reflection and Planning Tools) to monitor children’s learning on an ongoing basis. This helps identify areas in which children might be struggling and what they need next.
- SEEDS Qualities Reflection Tool: Use this tool in conjunction with Planning Tools to reflect on how your instruction aligns with the five SEEDS Qualities (Sensitivity, Encouragement, Education, Development Through Doing, and Self-Image Support). This tool also includes specific questions for supporting multilingual learners.
- Determine Learning Stages: Observe children’s behaviors and use anecdotal notes to determine whether they are in an emergent, developing, or fluent learning stage for the targeted skill.
- Plan Differentiated Instruction: Based on the learning stages, use the Planning Tools to select appropriate teaching practices and scaffolding techniques. The tools offer specific suggestions for how to support children at each stage.
By diligently following these steps, you can create a rich, supportive, and effective learning environment that empowers every child to succeed in their early literacy journey.