Many middle school teachers think of themselves as content experts. We know that students who do not learn to read will have difficulty mastering academic content; therefore it is everyone’s charge to continue teaching students to read as they move through middle school. Learning to read and mastering reading is a continuous process through adulthood, especially in this day where our text structures, resources, and genres have changed. Our students must learn to “read” and manipulate texts in order to properly synthesize information from a variety of sources. They must become efficient readers and information processors in order to be successful.
	· “Good” readers use cognitive strategies as they read. · Some reading strategies are more appropriate and more effective for certain genres. · Modeling reading, making the implicit explicit, is essential for teaching students to become strategic readers. · Students need time to practice reading.
	This is a two unit online course. Each unit is equivalent to 12 hours of study. Therefore, two units equal 24 hours of study time. Students will have five weeks to complete this course. Your final project will be to reflect on your learning. You will be required to reflect on the Enduring Understandings and how your thinking may have changed over the course of the class. Please see the Course Rubric for the guidelines for the final reflection.. Be sure to complete each topic's “Warm Up” and “Assignment" section. This will expose you to much of the information necessary to write the final reflection. This course consists of two one unit segments, both of which must be enrolled in concurrently. Over the five week period allotted for the course, you should plan on spending a total of 24 hours covering the material and developing your project. Your course participation and final reflection will be both inform your course grade.
	If you are new to online learning or to our Etudes interface you will want to take some time to learn how to navigate around this course. Once inside the course, you will use the menu on the right hand side of each page. You can navigate by returning to the Table of Contents. There you will find links to the weekly activities. After reading through the Course Description, return to the Course Calendar located in the Table of Contents and click on the Warm Up for Topic A. You can then follow the links through the material for each topic. There are two topics for weeks one and two and one topic for weeks three, four and five. In weeks three, four, and five you will be completing your reading unit alongside of the topic discussions. Online classes are wonderful because they are truly "anytime/anywhere," but this requires some careful planning and commitment. Just like a face to face class, you should put this class on your calendar and try to stick to a routine or schedule. The class is "asynchronous" meaning that everyone does not have to be logged in at the same time, so you can determine your own schedule--the one that works best for you. I'd suggest that you plan to participate in the course five times each week for approximately an hour at a time. Look at your calendar and determine which 4-5 hours a week works best for you, and keep to your schedule just as you would if you were attending a face to face class.