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Since soon after I first taught my daughter Colleen to read back in the mid 1990’s, an experience that set me on this obsessive literacy journey, I have been ultra-aware of the crucial role segmenting plays in reading as well as spelling. Colleen was in 2nd grade and could memorize words like a pro– both in […]
Let’s Marie Kondo literacy instruction! Or, follow the advice from the dynamic, amazing teacher and trainer Anita Archer: “Cut the fluff and teach the stuff.” Have you ever noticed that we all want things easier (and better) but often don’t know how to do it or find ourselves sabotaging our progress or resisting choosing to […]
Phonemic awareness is a hot topic in recent months and years, and rightly so! The literacy research is rock solid on the importance of phonemic awareness in reading instruction. Back in the mid-90’s, when researching how to teach reading, what I learned about effectively and efficiently teaching reading was heavily infused with phonemic awareness instruction, […]
Have you ever read a book and wanted to find someone else who had read it so you could discuss it with them? After reading The Shack many years ago, I remember feeling almost desperate to find someone to have a conversation with about that book. I finally resorted to Googling ‘discussions about The Shack’! However, online discussions just […]
Anytime is a fantastic time to take advantage of read alouds! In this blog, I’ll share some ways for both teachers and parents to do this along with touching on how to enhance your read alouds whether reading to one child or an entire classroom. INCREASING VOCABULARY – ENHANCED READ ALOUDS There are countless benefits […]
The point of all reading instruction is for the learner to be able to accurately and automatically read the words on the page so they are able to understand what they are reading. In previous blogs, I have focused on the problems with pretend reading, how to motivate students, effective, efficient, explicit instruction to teach […]
There has been much buzz, discussion, and debate around phonological and phonemic awareness instruction lately. Is instruction with larger units such as syllables and onset-rime necessary? Can emerging readers start at the phoneme or sound level? Should this be taught to students 2nd grade and older? Should instruction include letters, manipulatives, just auditory or some/all of […]
Twice in my life I’ve had the pleasure of living on tropical islands. For 3 years in the 1980s we lived at the Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the ’90s, we lived for 2 years on Guam, which is located between Hawaii and Japan. Guam is one of 15 of the Mariana Islands, […]
The 2019-2020 school year proved to be quite the year for US schools (and schools all over the world). In Michigan, where there were 120,000+ kindergartners across nearly 3,000 schools, it was also the sixth year the state implemented common core standards in full. Julie VanLier, a Michigan Kindergarten Teacher of nearly 20 years, explains […]
Part 2: Accelerate Instruction As we established in Part 1 of this blog series, English is an alphabetic code. The skills needed to manage this code and the concepts that are unique to the code are covered in Part 1. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend doing so. You may find it helpful to give […]