UFLI Pop-Up Sacramento
Associate teacher in 2A
July 16-17
The UFLI conference was a workshop that worked through the best practices for growing orthographic mapping and teaching articulatory gestures The first day was a large review of the Science of Reading that tied to the work that Ana did with us in the '25-'26 school year, and the second day was focused on the routines/steps that go into a week of UFLI. The explicit teaching of each step of a UFLI lesson was really helpful to know why and how each step works for student learning.
- Takeaways: Choral reading allows for multiple opportunities for students to practice teaching. Partner is only 50% and echo doesn't allow students to work through reading at all. The automaticity of the drills and routines create stronger learners/readers for this type of work and sticks with them longer. Another takeaway is that explicit instruction for all students grows their automaticity and accuracy.
- My goal of learning more about literacy instruction and curriculum was directly supported by the information that I learned over the course of the two days. I feel equipped to communicate the importance of UFLI and the routines to others in my community. Additionally, I now know that UFLI offers many opportunities for me (as an AT) to practice observational data collection to know where we need to support students in small groups (and when are times to check for understanding for a possible group reshuffle). This supports a goal I had at the beginning of the year to learn how assessments and observational data can be tracked and used to support student learning.
- I have learned how to ensure valuable, high quality instruction for UFLI to support student learning. I am very excited to explore more literacy data, research, and professional developments.
I attended this conference with Quise and we both agree that we would recommend the opportunity to dive deeper into UFLI instruction for those that are going into the first year of their UFLI teaching. I would say that this conference would not be necessary for someone in their second or third year, but beyond year 3, it would be an important review. (Or if someone has gone into UFLI without some sort of professional development or learning opportunity with someone who is knowledgeable in UFLI instruction)