Knowledge-Building Isn’t Just for Students
The knowledge- building curricula available to us are sufficient for the grades we teach, but teachers need more….We need to know what came before and what lies ahead in the students' educational journey. Most importantly, we need a deep, thorough understanding of the knowledge we teach at our own grade level. Teaching content we barely know, with no schema for understanding its larger context, is both frustrating and uncomfortable. Teachers deserve instruction in these areas as well. I believe this is the next critical step in professional development and teacher training.
Embracing Productive Struggle: Why It’s Essential for Literacy Learning
Productive struggle happens when students face a challenge that’s just tough enough to make them think, but not so hard that they shut down. It’s that sweet spot where learning happens. In a literacy classroom, this might look like a student working through a tricky text or figuring out how to decode a tough word. Sure, it’s not always comfortable, but that’s where the magic happens—when they push through the discomfort and find the solution on their own.
How to Talk So Teachers Will Listen
Dos:
Ground your advice in YOUR personal experience. Be vulnerable.
Connect that experience to practice and research.
Be conversational. Write like you speak.
Ask clarifying questions to understand the context and establish your sincere interest in the teacher’s question.
Dignify a careful question with a careful response. Take your time responding.
Be specific. “Listen to Sold A Story!!!!!!” doesn’t count.
Be nice and assume good faith.
Debates in the Dark; Instruction in the Light
When we discuss and debate classroom practice, we should bring it into the light with artifacts and concrete examples from actual classrooms: videos, writing samples, assessments, worksheets, slides. I know that both sides would agree that what Sarah experienced in 7th grade ELA class was ineffective and soulless. And I’m also confident that both sides would celebrate classrooms like this one or this one or this one where the teachers are leveraging strategies to get students learning and thinking more deeply about the text they’re reading.
AI Integration in Teaching Practices: Achieving Two Things at Once
For example, I asked ChatGBT to create a worksheet about the States of Matter, a 5th grade Next Generation Science Standard. In the worksheet, students construct similes about states of matter. So, my students might be working with a 4th grade reading standard, but they're doing it with 5th grade content. This creates an efficiency that mitigates some of the learning loss many have written about while also addressing a grade-level science goal.
I Have New Reading Materials. Now what?
All over the country, states are putting in place new legislation that guides how literacy can be taught. These laws have up-sides, like requiring robust foundational skills teaching, or screening students for reading difficulties. However, many of the laws also come with lists of approved curricular materials*. As districts select and purchase new materials, many teachers are opening shiny boxes of teachers’ guides and student readers and thinking: “Now what? I cannot possibly do every activity in this lesson plan given everything that I have to teach in a day.” Often, teachers don’t get much training on the program materials, so it’s tough to know which parts of the lesson are essential and which can be shortened or cut out.
Building Literacy Success: Nurturing Kinder Minds Through Literacy Stations
After independently researching the “Daily 5,” I learned that skills were not being challenged and not supporting the learning aligned or intentionally. So, the Daily 5 turned into Literacy Stations, which are grounded in the Science of Reading. The Literacy Stations would give my students the opportunity to work on the skills taught in whole group instruction independently while challenging and supporting their independent needs. In this blog, I will explain how Literacy Stations work in my classroom.
Fluency in Middle School: How It Works and Why It Matters
Imagine the low hum of students' choral reading (voices reading at the same time) with each other. Can you picture it if you close your eyes? The teacher walking the classroom as students vary their prosody and pacing to meet the cadence of the recently practiced echo reading the teacher conducted. Imagination isn’t required to achieve this scenario in my 7th Grade literacy classroom at Henderson Hopkins in Baltimore, MD. My students routinely echo read, choral read, and follow along – not because it’s a menial task the teacher is forcing them to do, but instead, because the teacher, me, has shared research and rationale as to why fluency matters and how fluency improves reading ability.
Small Group Foundational Literacy: Purposeful, Intentional, Connected
Interested in seeing what a purposeful small group foundational literacy lesson can look like? Wondering how to incorporate and connect several foundational skills into one lesson? Working on backwards design within a small group lesson?
This is the right blog for you!
My small group philosophy is that all learning activities should be intentional and relate to a common goal. We want students to understand the “why”- WHY they are manipulating words and sounds, WHY they are practicing word reading, WHY they are reading a specific text, the list goes on…
Putting the “Structure” into Structured Literacy: Part 4
In many phonics programs (including my Orton Gillingham training) a lot of time is spent on teaching consonant blends (r-blends, s-blends, etc..) and having students showing mastery of words such as swim, trip, and frog. In reality if we teach students how to blend words (blend is a verb) with the sounds they know we can have students reading longer (4-5 phoneme words) much faster. I used to spend 7-8 weeks of instruction in first grade teaching blends. Since switching to the UFLI program, words with 4-phonemes are introduced early on and then built over time with the phoneme-grapheme correspondences students have been taught. For example if you have taught /t/ /r/ /a/ /p/ then the word “trap” is now accessible.
Putting the “Structure” into Structured Literacy: Part 3
When using units from Fish Tank ELA I always maintain the topic, task, and text provided but occasionally found it useful to add in additional texts about the topic. This program has wonderful daily writing but the addition of daily oral language and syntax development has made the lessons even stronger. We do not have to give up teacher autonomy when adopting a new curriculum.
Putting the “Structure” into Structured Literacy: Part 2
I compared one popular reading program which uses a small group for all philosophy and my foundational skills block. Students in the popular reading program would receive 60 minutes of foundational skills instruction per week and 240 minutes of independent work time. In my foundational skills, block students are receiving 45-60 minutes of instruction per day and only 10-15 minutes of time is expected to be independent for students who are at or above grade level expectations. During the independent practice time students are either practicing reading or writing connected to the skill we are learning. This will drastically increase the amount of instructional time students receive.
Planning Literacy Instruction: When You Know Better and Want to Do Better
I’m writing this blog post to share some high-leverage, high-impact shifts teachers should be making regardless of their curricular materials. These shifts can be implemented tomorrow, and they are free. Additionally, these are shifts that work well in grades 3+. As an upper elementary, middle or high school teacher, it can be tricky entering this space. There seems to be an abundance of information and resources for k-2 teachers. The need for the instructional shifts highlighted by the science of reading is just as acute in upper elementary and middle school classrooms.
Teachers Leading Change
Are you a teacher who is passionate about the science of reading, structured literacy, and ensuring all kids learn how to read? Are you interested in becoming a change-maker? Are you trying to lead change in your classroom, school, or district but not sure where to begin? Leading change can be an overwhelming task. It’s hard to know where to begin. It makes sense to start in our classrooms, but can our reach go beyond our classroom doors? Here are some ideas of how to create change in three different spaces.
Putting the “Structure” into Structured Literacy Part 1
I then began to just use small groups sparingly after reading the book Focus by Mike Schmoker. Letting go of the small reading groups was one of the hardest instructional shifts I made. It was also the shift that I believe led to greater outcomes in student achievement. I was able to emphasize our whole class and individual needs in foundational skill areas using a systematic phonics program and aligned diagnostic assessments.
The Shift From Skills to Content
Instead of teaching comprehension as a set of skills, I now teach content. The Knowledge Matters Campaign is a great place to start to look for a content rich curriculum. Our ELA block no longer consists of modeling with trade books followed by independent practice. I outline each ELA lesson using the LETRS comprehension checklist. We begin by establishing our purpose for reading. Why are we reading this? What should we take away from the text? We quickly identify text structure and move onto vocabulary. I teach 3-5 tier 2 and 3 words per lesson. For each tier 2 word, I follow the LETRS 5 step sequence…
5 High-Impact Strategies for Reading Intervention
Below I will outline 5 evidence-based practices that I consistently utilize and layer into the curricular lessons I have been tasked with implementing this school year. One of the most challenging tasks posed to teachers is how to translate research and knowledge into classroom instruction. Specifically, what does evidence-based instruction look like, and how does it fit with what I am required to teach? Oftentimes after attending a professional development session I like to immediately try out a practice in my intervention space. If I find it to be effective with the students in front of me, I will try and find more ways to incorporate that practice. Here are 5 of the most effective strategies I’ve had a chance to embed in my curriculum and implement with intervention students this school year.
Who Says You Can’t Add Meaning to Foundational Literacy?
I’ve heard many questions about teaching early elementary students how to become skilled readers:
“How can decodable texts address reading comprehension?”
“How can you make time to incorporate both meaning and decoding into structured literacy lessons?”
“How can you incorporate meaning into word or sentence dictation?”
“How can the science of reading prepare students for the rigor of the upper elementary grades?”
In this blog, I’m going to provide some tangible examples of how I embed language comprehension into every structured literacy lesson.
Learning Styles for Lunch: What I Wish I Had Said
What we say and how we say it matter, even in smallest, more forgettable moments. A positive interaction in the faculty lounge might mean that the first grade teacher downloads a podcast you recommended for her commute. A perceived slight might mean that the second grade teacher tunes out the next time you start talking about knowledge-building. We aren’t going to change a person’s mind in a single interaction, but a single interaction can certainly change the course of a relationship.
Washing Our Hands of the Reading Wars
We need to start talking and thinking about systematic phonics and the science of reading not as a cure-all, but as a standard of care. It is not just the initiative of the decade; it’s a non-negotiable that rests at the foundation of all literacy instruction. It’s just how we teach kids to read. It’s how we care for our students, especially our most vulnerable and marginalized.