Public WRS Introductory Course (In-Person) / 2425-02F3B832
May 20 2025 8:30 AM (EST) - May 22 2025 3:30 PM (EST)
8:30AM - 3:30PM ET
Co-Sponsored By: Massachusetts Branch of the IDA & IDA-Northern New England Alliance
Description
This course provides participants with an overview of the Wilson Reading System® (WRS) 4th Edition curriculum and serves as the prerequisite for WRS Level I Certification. Over three consecutive days (16.5 hours), this course examines how WRS addresses the teaching of phonemic awareness, word identification, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension through an integrated study of phonology, morphology, and orthography with students in grade two and above with persistent phonological coding deficits.
Participants learn about reading research, dyslexia, appropriate student identification and placement, program implementation, progress monitoring, scheduling, and creating a successful learning environment. Principles of language structure and how to teach language with direct, multisensory methods are demonstrated and practiced during the course. Participants explore the standard 10-part Wilson Lesson Plan and practice planning and delivering a lesson while receiving modeling and feedback from a Wilson® Credentialed Trainer during the course.
Course Objectives
Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to:
Define dyslexia and describe common characteristics.
Explain the process of identifying appropriate students and placing them in the Wilson Reading System.
Understand the principles of instruction: explicit, sequential and cumulative, engaging multiple learning modalities with multisensory techniques, repetition, and feedback.
Create an optimal learning environment, prepare a lesson plan, and practice techniques.
Understand the key components of instruction and presentation of lessons in three blocks:
Block 1 – Word Study/Foundational Reading Skills: Lesson Plan Parts 1-5
Phonemic Awareness, Decoding, Vocabulary, High Frequency Word Reading, Single-Word Accuracy/Automaticity, Phrasing/Prosody, Fluency and Comprehension at the Sentence Level
Block 2 – Spelling/Foundational Writing Skills: Lesson Plan Parts 6-8
Phoneme Segmentation, Encoding (Spelling), English Spelling Rules, High Frequency Word Spelling, Vocabulary, Concept Mark Up, Sentence-Level Punctuation and Proofreading
Block 3 – Fluency/Comprehension: Lesson Plan Parts 9-10
Vocabulary, Listening/Silent and Oral Reading Fluency and Comprehension, Narrative and Informational Text
One graduate credit (optional) is available through Fitchburg State University, Fitchburg, MA upon completion of course requirements. Please see Process for Graduate Credit for details.
