The Importance of Adaptive Literacy Instruction: Now More Than Ever

Decades of research demonstrate that adaptive teaching enhances student literacy achievement. We conducted a study to investigate occurrences of adaptive teaching and the reflection process of one expert teacher during literacy instruction. We observed lessons using the Adaptive Teaching Observation Protocol (ATOP) and interviewed the teacher after each observed lesson. Our findings show that the teacher demonstrated a high level of responsiveness by making several unplanned instructional adaptations during lessons. This manuscript offers descriptive examples of adaptive teaching to illustrate how teachers integrate research‐based instruction (i.e., science of reading [SoR]) to effectively meet the literacy needs of all learners in today's diverse classrooms.