Improve reading by learning how to teach sight words using a research-based method. Perfect for teachers working with the Fry words. With limited time to teach reading, it makes sense to focus on teaching words students will encounter frequently. Enter: the Fry Words. Dr. Edward Fry developed a list of the most commonly used words…
Teach reading comprehension effectively using the gradual release method. Lost in a Teacher’s Guide I was brand new to Utah. Like, hadn’t even found a place to live so I was staying in my cousin’s basement kind of new. Being a planner, I had gotten early access to my new classroom and lugged out all…
Reading comprehension strategies for 2nd graders and how to teach them. This post contains affiliate links. What Successful 2nd-Grade Readers Know and How to Teach It Reading Comprehension Strategies are Like a Messy Closet You know how when you try to clean out a closet, things get complicated really fast? Soon you end up…
Reading comprehension strategies for parents, teachers, and tutors to use with first graders This post contains affiliate links. Don’t Get So Busy With Decoding that You Forget This In a school hallway lit by fluorescent lights, I sat across a desk from a student. The tip of my pen hovered over a testing booklet as…
Strategies, interventions, and activities to improve reading skills in kids with dyslexia, for teachers and parents. This post contains affiliate links. When Reading Skills Aren’t Clicking Lauren* sorted cards with -at endings into one pile and -am endings into another pile. Then she read the -at list: “Bat, cat, sat, …happy?” guessed Lauren. “Let’s use…
Inside: Follow these five steps to teach a child to read. Helpful for parents, homeschoolers, and teachers that are teaching beginning readers. This post contains affiliate links. I looked like a mother hen with my chick gathered around me. Sitting on the floor with my legs crossed, I stared into six eager pairs…
How to make reading comprehension instruction engaging with ideas from the book Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst This post contains affiliate links. The Problem With Reading Comprehension Questions The book was thick and heavy with a dark blue cover. The print was small and the pictures were…
One year I had a juggernaut of a word wall (how’s that for vocabulary?…haha!) Adding a word frequently involved standing on precariously stacked kid-sized furniture or trying to check if a word was straight from an awkward crouch with my head held sideways. Each day when I read my students a picture book, I…
If I were ever on a game show and asked to name all 50 states in alphabetical order, I could absolutely do it. And it’s not because I have a savant-like memory, it’s because in 8th grade we learned a song that listed all states in ABC order. I might not remember much else from…
Reading Strategies What reading strategies do students need to learn, anyway? It would be so nice if the standards would just spell it out for us! Unfortunately, I’ve never seen that. I’ve racked my brain and made this cheat sheet of the reading strategies I’ve frequently seen in teacher’s guides, professional books, and trainings. Click…