Searching for an easier, quicker way to assess your mid 1st Grade or older students for small group reading instruction? In our previous post, “How to Quickly Assess for Small Group Reading Instruction (K-1)” we talked about grouping kindergarten to first-grade level readers. But, in this post, we’re exploring how three simple activities (Switch It, Read […]
Formal exams aren’t always the best form of assessment when it comes to determining a child’s reading ability. Exams take a lot of time, and they put a lot of unnecessary pressure on our kiddos. Instead, I’m going to show you how a handful of reading assessments can help you group students for small group reading […]
How It All Started….And a Special Opportunity I’m here today in 2019 with this blog all because of two 6th grade boys who didn’t know how to read way back in 1998. But which was worse–the 2 middle school boys in my classroom who didn’t know how to read OR… …the language arts teacher (me!) […]
As teachers, we’re bombarded with tests. Sometimes, it can feel like that’s all we’re doing with our kiddos….the irony is that we’re not even giving our kids the most important reading test of all! Most of the time, we’re diagnosing our kid’s reading level (or identifying reading problems) with comprehension-based assessments. While these tests are fine […]
So…you’ve got a Level A/B reader in your classroom, it’s the middle of the year, and you’re both stuck. You’ve tried every activity under the sun, and you’re giving them tons of repetition and using multi-sensory activities left and right. But they’re still at Level A/B…what should you do? One of the most common questions I […]
Did you know that over 100 years ago the first female physician in Italy laid the groundwork for what most preschool kids do in their classrooms today? Hands-on manipulatives? Yep! Small furniture for little bodies? Yep! A keen eye on development? Yep! These ideas and more can be traced to Dr. Maria Montessori, yet, unfortunately, many of […]
What’s the first step we should take when teaching someone to read? Most of you will probably assume its teaching the alphabet. However, the alphabet is NOT really the foundation of our written code works. The foundation is actually the alphabetic principle, which is the concept that our written language is a code for sounds.Words consists […]
The alphabet has done us wrong! 😉 I know this is shocking news to many of you but let me elaborate. The alphabet is not the REAL foundation of how we learn to read. In this blog post, I’m going to reveal exactly why the alphabet isn’t the best foundation for teaching young students to read. You’ll […]
Much of educational research is bunk. There I said it. And, yes, I’m a researcher. 😮 BUT… Some educational research transcends fads, small sample sizes, and over-drawn conclusions. Some educational research truly disseminates insightful conclusions based on multiple, diverse, long-ranging studies. John Hattie’s research is one such shining example. Across many years, Hattie has demonstrated, through meta-analytic studies, which educational intervention […]
Do you have a few struggling readers that have fallen behind the rest of the class? You may have a class of 20 great readers, but perhaps a few of them aren’t quite at the same level as the rest of the other students. The underlying source of their problem is likely that they have a […]