Education resources for parents and teachers
To kick off this month, I'm hosting a giveaway for the fantastic book, 7 Mighty Moves, by Lindsay Kemeny. This is a wonderful book by a classroom teacher who made the switch from balanced to structured literacy after everything she knew didn't help her severely dyslexic son learn to read. The good news is that now he's thriving - thanks to what she learned and implemented. In the book, Lindsay shares 7 ... Read More
Invented spelling has always been a hot topic in the reading world. What exactly is it - and should you allow your students to use it? First things first. What is invented spelling? Invented spelling is when students spell words based on the phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge that they have, even if the word is not spelled conventionally. The above octopus, spelled "ODPS," was drawn by my now ... Read More
Welcome back to our spelling series! In this post we'll discuss spelling rules and which ones are worth teaching. First, I should note that I am talking about spelling, not reading rules. Some rules, like the FLOSS rule, make perfect sense when it comes to teaching spelling. But I don't think that we need to explicitly teach this rule for children to read words like hill, miss, and buzz. It's enough to ... Read More
In this post we'll be looking at the six syllable types and considering the question: Should you teach them? What are the syllable types? Most written English syllables can be organized into six kinds of syllables (called syllable types) based on their spelling. Because every syllable has a single vowel phoneme (sound), the syllable types are defined by the location and/or spelling of the vowel ... Read More
Welcome to the second post in my series about teaching spelling! Today we'll be diving deep into the structure of words as I answer this question: What do phonology, orthography, and morphology have to do with spelling? Sometimes my oldest son likes to take regular English words and pronounce them "correctly." For example, he'll say, "The word raining should really be pronounced /r/ /a/ /i/ /n/ /i/ /n/ ... Read More
Welcome to the first post in my series about teaching spelling! How to teach spelling: Do's and don'ts Let's examine some "do's" and "don'ts" for teaching spelling in the primary grades. A scope and sequence tells you what to teach, and when. A quality scope and sequence orders skills from simple to more complex. DON'T create personalized spelling lists for each student - when you watch for words ... Read More
This is the final episode in our series about reading comprehension strategies! Let's talk summarizing. What does it mean to summarize a text? When you summarize a text, you give a brief statement of the main points. Why should students learn to summarize? Summarizing goes hand-in-hand with comprehension monitoring and is a powerful strategy for improving comprehension (National Reading Panel, ... Read More
Welcome back to our series about reading comprehension strategies! What are reading comprehension strategies? First, let's review what reading comprehension strategies actually are. According to Shanahan et al (2010), comprehension strategies are deliberate mental actions to improve reading comprehension. In other words, you do something on purpose to help you understand the text. Teach ... Read More
Welcome back to our series about reading comprehension strategies! An awareness of the different kinds of expository text structure can help students understand informational text. In this post I'll list the five different kinds of expository text structure and share a routine you can follow when teaching them. What is text structure? Text structure is how an author organizes a text. Research shows that ... Read More
Welcome back to our series about reading comprehension strategies! In this post I'll explain how an awareness of text structure can help students understand text. I'll also share a simple routine for teaching narrative text structure. What is text structure? Text structure is how an author organizes a text. Research shows that explicit instruction in text structure leads to gains in reading comprehension ... Read More
