Why can’t children read? To start, the age of English, the difficulty of memorizing English spellings,. and the dull nature of phonics reps. Many years ago, a parent of a friend was a high school teacher in a rural district. He told us, “There are these kids, maybe four or five per class, and they …
This is First Grade When I started teaching, my mentor teacher hold me how scary First was. “First graders can’t read. They come in and they don’t know reading at all.” She continued: “They come in with zip. You teach them from ground zero.” Recommendation? A lot of phonics and blending practice. But she acknowledged …
Case Study: Help, My First Graders Can’t Read! 8 Steps to Get Them Reading Read More »
February Teaching Blues are a thing. How to fight back? Perhaps a quick course in self-reflection about the techne’ of teaching? I’ve seen more than one email addressed to teachers this week that talks about the “February Blues” or the blah of February or some other description of the fact that there are days in …
February Teaching Blues and the “Techne” of Teaching Read More »
An Example Reading Intervention for First Graders based on the Science of Reading When I came to my elementary school at Christmas of 2022 I began working with the students right away using a phonics based method, along with fluency and comprehension exercises (vocabulary wasn’t part of the curriculum). This intervention was designed based on …
How Long Does a Sufficient Phonics Component Take? Read More »
We have been talking in the intervention office this year about “high rep kids.” These are students who will become fluent readers but only after doing high repetition drills (like phonics drills for letter-sound knowledge or CVC nonsense word drills for blending). There seems to be very little information about this phenomenon on the web. …
“Teaching is where the magic happens.” Some years ago I got involved in teaching, dragged through the back door – the home schooling door. It all started when my daughter began kindergarten knowing all her sounds and letter names, and they told her, “Reading? Nothing doing, we’re only doing 19 letters of the alphabet this …
Hi teacher friends. Today my goal is arguing that teaching is a great profession. Its not uncommon these days, when a college student considers a career in teaching, that parents, friends, others want to dissuade them. The adults frown and shake their heads. Teachers “don’t get paid enough” and that’s just the beginning. This information …
Hi teacher friends, how is it going with supporting struggling students in your classroom and at your school? Most of you and your fellow teachers are discussing struggling students in groups during PD, and no doubt you’ve heard the meeting called “MTSS.” Perhaps you’ve heard teachers debating whether MTSS is working. Maybe you even wonder …
At our school, the day before yesterday was the day of the data. The day the principal came out and told us the news. How much the students had gained. And how many hadn’t gained. Some, he said, had somehow gone backward. We weren’t doing as well at the year before. He didn’t want to …
Differentiated Instruction or DI, is an academic term which simply means having classroom lessons from which all students can learn, regardless of their current knowledge base. DI is a new idea, having originated around the turn of the 21st century. It contradicts the idea of traditional American instruction, in which it was considered enough …
