Instructional Content Specialist Elementary ELAR, Region 11
Kimberly Smith currently serves as an ESC Region 11 Elementary ELAR Instructional Content Specialist specializing in delivering creative, engaging, and research-based professional learning experiences. During her 28 years in education, she has served as an instructional coach, reading... Read More →
In today’s classrooms, teachers are often faced with a difficult challenge: how do we maintain grade-level rigor while still supporting struggling readers, multilingual learners, and students receiving special education services? This session introduces a practical, step-by-step instructional framework that scaffolds learning without lowering expectations. Participants will explore how to use structured supports, including anticipation guides, targeted annotation guides, collaborative reading, Harkness-style discussion, and a jigsaw short-constructed response writing protocol, to gradually release responsibility to students and build independence with complex texts and STAAR-aligned writing tasks. Attendees will see how these strategies reduce cognitive overload, increase engagement, and help all learners access rigorous academic standards. This highly interactive session explains models the full lesson cycle from start to finish, allowing participants to experience the strategies as students. Teachers will leave with ready-to-use tools such as annotation guides, sentence stems, structured discussion protocols, revision checklists, and writing scaffolds that can be implemented immediately in any secondary content classroom. Designed for general education, special education, and multilingual settings, this approach emphasizes accessibility, collaboration, and high-level thinking for every learner. By the end of the session, participants will confidently apply a system that maintains rigor, improves discourse and writing outcomes, and increases student independence across content areas.
