Bridging Research and Reality: Balancing Foundational Skills Instruction in the Classroom

Presented by Alisa VanHekken, M.Ed., Chief Academic Officer, Heggerty; and Alana Mangham, M.S., Director of Curriculum Development, Heggerty

Sponsored by Heggerty

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Aligning the latest research on reading instruction with the realities of your classroom isn’t always easy. Join Alana Mangham, Director of Curriculum Development at Heggerty, as she helps you sift through the research and shares strategies for providing explicit and systematic foundational skills instruction in order to equip students to become confident decoders of print.

By watching this edWebinar you learn practical instructional strategies to engage and support a reluctant reader toward becoming a skilled reader by bridging phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics to early reading. Viewers learn strategies that they can immediately implement in their classrooms that support the word recognition strand of Scarborough’s Reading Rope.

This recorded edWebinar is of interest to PreK-5 teachers, librarians, and school and district leaders.

About the Presenters

Alisa VanHekken is an experienced teacher and reading specialist. Alisa taught kindergarten and first grade and provided reading support services as a reading specialist. She holds a master’s degree in reading and literacy, along with an ESL endorsement and an administrative endorsement. Alisa was trained in the phonemic awareness curriculum by Dr. Heggerty himself and worked closely with him for over six years. Alisa began working at Heggerty in 2013 and serves as the chief academic officer. Alisa is the co-author of Bridge the Gap and the Early Pre-Kindergarten curriculum.

Alana Mangham, M.S. is a director of curriculum development for Heggerty. Prior to joining the Heggerty team, Alana was a member of Louisiana’s Early Literacy Commission and is currently the Reading League Louisiana Chapter’s vice president. Alana has taught in both New York City and Louisiana and spent seven years at the district level during which her work as the Rapides Parish ELA curriculum specialist was documented by EAB in Narrowing the Third-Grade Reading Gap. Alana has been a guest alongside Dr. Louisa Moats on Education Week, featured on Amplify’s Science of Reading podcast, and has published an article in the May/June 2020 issue of The Reading League Journal. With extensive experience delivering professional development to educators and leaders alike, Alana is excited to share her passion for literacy, marrying facts of science, research, and field experiences with a fun, applicable, no-nonsense approach.

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Heggerty is a literacy education company providing the #1 phonemic awareness curriculum for preschool and elementary classrooms. Founded nearly 20 years ago by Dr. Michael Heggerty, we provide digital and print curriculum, classroom resources, and professional development to help educators empower the next generation of readers. Learn more at www.Heggerty.org.