JillE Literacy
Rigby JillE Literacy is a collection of books, poems, and resources for whole-class and small-group literacy learning that:
- ENGAGE young readers with diverse texts that open their hearts and expand their minds,
- EMPOWER teachers with embedded instruction that makes the most of every teaching moment, and
- Systematically teach the skills students need to close learning gaps and EXCEL as readers.
JillE Literacy was created to do three things better than any other literacy resources available today—
engage
TEXTS THAT CAPTURE HEARTS AND MINDS
There is no room for struggle, pain, or boredom in reading. To engage young readers, teachers need books and poems that spark emotion, imagination, critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity. Just as you can’t light a fire with a wet match, you can’t kindle a love of reading with boring, lifeless texts.
Engagement is key.
As teachers, we need to ask:
- Will this text engage students?
- Will it make them laugh, or feel moved in some way?
- Will they be encouraged to think, make connections, visualize because the words are painting pictures in their heads?
- And will it have an impact on their social and emotional learning?
The texts in JillE Literacy were created to spark emotion, imagination, critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity with engaging stories, intriguing topics, and striking visuals, while providing multiple opportunities to teach essential literacy and social-emotional skills.
“My students love the shared books and poems that Jill Eggleton has written. The rhyme and repetition give them confidence to share and read!“
– Marcy Colwell, EL Specialist
To see some of the engaging materials in JillE Literacy, check out these sample books, poems, and resources:
empower
BUILT-IN TOOLS THAT MAKE THE MOST OF EVERY TEACHABLE MOMENT
Today’s teachers are challenged like never before. It seems there is never enough time in the day for planning, for teaching, for giving every student the individual attention and support they deserve.
Teachers need books that work as hard as they do.
A former elementary classroom teacher herself, Jill Eggleton created JillE Literacy with built-in tools and lessons that let teachers spend less time planning and more time teaching.
Built-in teaching panels include all the instructional prompts teachers need to lead a whole-class or small-group lesson, right there on the page for easy reference. This saves planning time and helps teachers take advantage of every teaching opportunity embedded in the text.
The built-in teacher support in every resource helps teachers implement evidence-based practices based in the science of reading. The lesson plans and teaching panels show exactly what, where, and when to teach essential skills across all strands of literacy, providing comprehensive support that leaves nothing to chance.
Using JillE Literacy is like having an experienced literacy coach beside you every step of the way.
“The panels that come on the pages of JilleE books provide teachers with an invaluable tool. We are able to ask deep level questions while providing support and continuous exposure to skills and strategies early, emergent, and fluent readers need at each stage of development. They are my favorite resource to use when teaching reading!”
– Cathy Huhnerkoch, First Grade Teacher
For more information, check out the built-in support in these sample books, poems, and lessons:
excel
STRUCTURED AND SYSTEMATIC INSTRUCTION EMBEDDED IN EVERY TEXT
Learning to read is complex. It requires children to weave together a wide variety of decoding, language, and comprehension skills. For many children, this process does not come naturally.
Literacy skills need to be explicitly and systematically taught.
That’s why JillE Literacy embeds explicit instruction in decoding, comprehension, and other literacy skills throughout every text, which allows students to learn, apply, and extend these skills in the context of authentic reading.
Examples of specific skills taught:
Specific Decoding Strategies
- Using initial letters and sounds to begin decoding words
- Blending sounds from left to right
- Looking for known letters, blends, and digraphs
- Using meaning, syntax, and visual clues to support decoding
- Monitoring accuracy
- Using familiar spelling patterns
- Using word parts, such as prefixes, suffixes, and syllables
Specific Comprehension Skills
- Making and checking predictions
- Asking and answering questions
- Retelling and summarizing
- Making connections and inferences
- Visualizing, comparing, and contrasting
- Analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing
- Identifying main ideas, causes and effects, problems and solutions, theme, and author’s purpose
- Supporting ideas with text evidence
JillE Literacy is built on research-proven approaches, strategies, and practices that teach the skills students need to become successful readers and writers. These include oral language and vocabulary, phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics knowledge, and comprehension skills and strategies. Motivation and engagement also play a pivotal role.
The skills taught are firmly grounded in the science of reading, following those outlined in the Simple View of Reading, Scarborough’s Reading Rope model, and Duke’s Active View of Reading. An intentional sequence of instruction and review takes the guesswork out of scaffolded support and allows students to systematically expand their skills as they grow toward reading proficiency.
The direct and systematic phonics instruction follows a developmental sequence that builds over time and incorporates ongoing review and practice. This systematic approach helps students acquire the phonological skills that provide a solid foundation for decoding, fluency, and reading comprehension.
“I have been a teacher for 18 years, and I have become a much better teacher of reading and comprehension by using the panel suggestions in the leveled and shared reading books. The notes do a GREAT job meeting students’ diverse needs.”
– Renee Schultz, Kindergarten Teacher
Designed for differentiation and equity
Equity means meeting each child where they are with exactly the supports they need to thrive.
Language and reading abilities vary from child to child—regardless of age. That’s why it’s essential to differentiate materials and instruction based on children’s stage of language and literacy development rather than their chronological age.
JillE Literacy supports all learners with:
Whole-class resources that use scaffolded read-aloud and shared reading approaches to make grade-level texts accessible to all students, regardless of stage. Vibrant illustrations and rich language build a love of reading while teaching essential literacy skills in context.
- Shared Books
- Poetry Cards
- Read Aloud Books
Small-group resources that use leveled materials to target the skills appropriate to each student’s developmental stage. Each classroom kit includes a wide range of leveled books with corresponding teaching versions that take the guesswork out of small-group reading instruction.
- Leveled Books
- Take & Teach Books
- Take & Teach Lessons and Activities
JillE Literacy supports English learners with:
- An emphasis on oral language and vocabulary, partner talk, and scaffolded instructional approaches that support learners at all levels of language acquisition.
- Two types of additional support specific to English learners included in the Take & Teach Lesson for every Leveled Book.
ENGLISH LEARNER SUPPORT
Point to and name specific objects or animals on each page (e.g., plant, caterpillar, leaf, tree, bird, cat). Have students repeat the name and then find the word on the page.
Spanish cognate: planta (plant)
ENGLISH LEARNER SUPPORT
- Point to and name each photograph on the graphic organizer (e.g., plant, caterpillar, bird, cat).
- The _____ eats the _____.
- What do you see in each picture? What do the arrows mean?
EL Support Key: ■ ■ ■ Substantial ■ ■ Moderate ■ Light
Designed for easy, flexible implementation
JillE Literacy provides a wealth of diverse and flexible resources that can be easily used alongside other books and programs, no matter what kind of core reading curriculum you use.
TRADITIONAL
In classrooms with a traditional reading basal, JillE Literacy can expand reading instruction into new areas, with built-in support that helps teachers incorporate new instructional approaches.
COMBINATION
In classrooms that utilize a combination of whole-class and small-group instructional approaches, JillE Literacy can provide an infusion of engaging texts with built-in tools for teaching essential skills in context.
DO-IT-YOURSELF
In classrooms that use a patchwork of resources to teach literacy skills, JillE Literacy can help teachers focus on the most critical teaching opportunities and eliminate hours of planning time.
JillE Literacy works hand in hand with a variety of other programs, offering
- Seamless, effective support for whole-class and small-group instruction,
- Engaging stories, poems, and informational texts, and
- Structured lessons and activities that teach and reinforce essential language, literacy, and SEL skills.
Do you use HMH Into Reading in your classroom? Download our Companion Guide to find out how JillE Literacy can help you build student engagement, empower literacy instruction, and help all students excel.
Daily support for essential skills
JillE Literacy makes it easy to support reading and writing skills every day of the week. Use the lesson plans, teaching panels, and activities built into every resource to teach and reinforce:
- Oral language
- Vocabulary and background knowledge
- Phonemic awareness and phonics
- High-frequency words
- Decoding strategies
- Reading fluency
- Comprehension skills and strategies
- Social-emotional learning
These are the essential skills supported by the science of reading, an emerging scientific consensus that encompasses decades of research about how children learn to read.
Writing activities inside every book and poem help students transfer reading skills to writing and offer essential writing practice across many forms and purposes.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Whole-Class Instruction
Shared Books & Poetry Cards
Use the Day 1 panels to support oral language, comprehension, and social-emotional learning.
Use the Day 2 panels to identify and work with engaging and challenging vocabulary.
Use the Day 3 panels to help students read with fluency.
Use the Day 4 panels to reinforce phonemic awareness, phonics, and word study skills.
Use the Day 5 panels to give every student an opportunity to respond creatively to the text.
Read Aloud Books
Use the notes on the inside front cover to introduce, guide, and extend the reading. Follow up each reading with a different response activity from the inside back cover, which include writing, creative arts, speaking & listening, language & vocabulary, independent reading, and social-emotional learning.
Small-Group and
Independent Learning
Leveled Books
Take & Teach Books and Lessons
Meet with two to three reading groups per day while the other students are engaged in independent learning activities. Use the built-in teaching panels and support in the Take & Teach Books and Lessons to explicitly teach decoding strategies, reading comprehension, reading fluency, and to support English learners and social-emotional learning.
Use the writing activities built into every Leveled Book to give students the opportunity to respond to the text and to apply the phonics skills and high-frequency words they have learned to their writing.
Have students respond to the Shared Book.
In addition to the embedded prompts and lessons in every text, a comprehensive Teacher’s Handbook provides simple and practical guidance for whole-class instruction, small-group instruction, and assessment, as well as classroom organization and learning centers.
This high level of teacher support saves planning time and takes the guesswork out of preparing structured and scaffolded literacy lessons. Using JillE Literacy is like having a master teacher and literacy coach beside you every step of the way.
Only JillE Literacy offers high-quality, engaging texts combined with the built-in teaching support that makes it easy to teach and reinforce literacy and social-emotional skills in context.
Want to know more?
Check out these resources for more information about this extraordinary program:
Designed for social-emotional learning
Every fiction title in JillE Literacy was intentionally written to support social-emotional learning.
Thought-provoking stories feature engaging characters children can identify with and storylines that provide authentic opportunities for children to explore emotions, empathize, connect, and walk in another’s shoes.
Built-in discussion prompts and mini-lessons help students explore essential social-emotional competencies within the safety of a contained fictional world.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING
Appreciating Diversity
Have students draw a picture of themselves, then write three things that make them different or unique around their picture. Hang up the pictures around the room and have students go on a ‘diversity walk’ around the room. As students look at each picture, have them think about these questions:
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING
Resisting Social Pressure
Explain to students that Tiger didn’t want to float on the log because he couldn’t swim, but he didn’t want to say ‘no’ to Monkey. Tell students that it can be hard to say ‘no’ sometimes when you know that something isn’t a good idea, but others want you to do it.
Ask students to draw a picture of a time they wanted to say ‘no,’ but others made them feel like they couldn’t. Have students share their pictures with the group and discuss why they found it difficult to say ‘no.’ Discuss how they could act if they find themselves in a similar situation again.
Supported SEL competencies