I used to think I needed to use a different text for each strategy I taught. I spent hours upon hours searching for the “perfect” book for each lesson. I would ask my colleagues questions like, “What text do you use to teach fill-in-the-blank strategy
As we continue to navigate pandemic teaching, there is a clear need for small group instruction. With so many disruptions over the past two school years, students are reading at a wider variety of levels than we have seen in the past. Children want attention
One way to build a more equitable and just society is to help students master the foundational skills that beget fluent reading. Once fluent, students are able to access all types of text, especially ones of personal interest. In turn, fluency and text choice motivate older readers, leading to greater reading volume and
April is National Poetry Month -- but please don’t relegate poems to only one month! Rather, use them all year long to get kids excited about language and to build foundational literacy skills. Poems can be used to teach fluency, vocabulary, phonic patterns, text structure, speaking and listening, author study, and comprehension. Most children find poems engaging and enjoy reading, writing, and presenting them. Perhaps this is due to the brevity, rhythms, and rhymes of poems, as
What if the point of comprehension instruction isn’t really comprehension? Wait, hear us out. What if there is something more than simply working to understand a text? Like you, we spend a lot of time trying to ensure that students are able to understand what
This is the number one question teachers have been asking me for the past three decades. You want to be able to differentiate and teach kids in small-group time, but how do you make sure the rest of the class is practicing the skills you’ve
“A good beginning makes a good ending” goes the old English proverb. And likewise: “Work well begun is work half done.” The most effective teachers don’t take student engagement for granted. Yet in our work in classrooms, we see that not enough attention is paid to good beginnings; this lack
We find the same issues cropping up in conversations with thousands of teachers across the U.S. You face a high-stakes conundrum when it comes to planning instruction: either create curriculum from scratch, cobbling together their own resources with ones from online repositories that have little to no quality control OR follow a mandated, scripted
This is Balanced Literacy. The idea of balanced literacy is a relic from the reading war days; it used to be understood as simply reading and writing—and there is a connection there. But balanced literacy is so much more than that—it’s an entire approach to literacy
In these first weeks of school, teaching -- comprised of equal parts science, art, psychology, and honed wisdom -- can feel like the “easy” part. It’s introducing and practicing new routines that can leave new and seasoned educators feeling exhausted. It may not come as a surprise