Are you counting down the days till summer break? Who’s not, right? With over-testing, kids’ spring fever, students who are not progressing as we hoped, and the arrival of warm, blue skies, we may be a tad less effective in our teaching in the last few weeks and days. I know I’ve gotten too worn-down […]
No other professional would put up with the craziness that you’ve seen (and endured) over the years, right, my teacher friend? But your work is our future. Thank you. Sorry we don’t say it enough. In honor of you, this Teacher Appreciation week 2018, please download the beautiful quote image above. {Click here.} A token […]
Are you worn down from teaching a student (or a group of students) who have seem to have a “sieve brain”? Thereās nothing more frustrating than teaching phonics repeatedly to a student and yet none of it seems to stick! You teach important content with all the bells and whistles–multisensory, movement, repetition, etc. And then […]
How It All Started….And a Special Opportunity I’m here today in 2018 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!) […]
Miracles of miracles you’re keeping pace with your reading series’ phonics scope and sequence…. But you have this niggling voice in the back of your head causing you doubt every time to you listen to a couple of your groups during guided reading. One student, for example, is attempting to read this text aloud, “She […]
Watch this interview of a 1st grade teacher, Colleen, about her new experiences implementing Reading Simplified. Colleen is struck by how much more rapidly her class is developing a strong foundation; already in October they are where they would typically be by December or January. Want what Colleen has? Join the Reading Simplified Academy […]
Much of educational research is bunk. There I said it. And, yes, I’m a researcher. š® BUT… SomeĀ educational research transcends fads, small sample sizes, and over-drawn conclusions. SomeĀ 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 […]
A first grader’s tries Write It with a focus on the /i_e/ sound.
Play a variation on the Candy Land game that targets one Advanced Phonics vowel sound at a time. In addition, select words that are high frequency words for that target sound. This way you’ll be reinforcing long vowel spellings as well as high frequency words! And kids will love to play so the extra Eyes […]
Join us for a post-Halloween-candy-overdose party! BYOC…Bring Your Own Candy. š We’ll play with the candy to become experts in phonemic awareness and phonics. If you teach reading, these are the fundamentals of our language that you need to know. Researchers have repeatedly discovered that elementary teachers have poor knowledge of phonemic awareness and phonics […]