Phonological Processing Explained: The Foundation of Reading Success
Quick Quiz: What’s Your Reading Teacher Personality? Find Out!
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How the Reading Brain Works: Understanding the Four-Part Processing Model
I’ll never forget the moment everything clicked for me about how reading actually works in the brain. I was sitting in a professional development session, watching a presenter explain brain scans of children learning to read, when she showed us the Four-Part Processing Model. For the first time in my career, I could see exactly […]
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Sustained Silent Reading in the Classroom: What the Research Really Says
It’s one of those questions that comes up in teacher lounges, professional development sessions, and literacy team meetings: “Is there a place for sustained silent reading in the school day?” If you’ve been teaching for any length of time, you know exactly what I’m talking about—those 15-20 minutes where everyone (teacher included) reads silently. Maybe […]
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The Magic of a Quality Read Aloud: Transforming Literacy Instruction in Your Classroom
As a literacy coach, I’ve walked into hundreds of classrooms over the years, and there’s something truly special about turning the corner and finding a teacher deeply engaged in a quality read aloud with their students. Those moments—where eyes are wide, bodies are still, and minds are clearly traveling somewhere else entirely—remind me why I […]
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Finding the Sweet Spot: How Much Time Should You Spend on Teaching Phonics?
If there’s one question I hear constantly in my literacy coaching sessions, it’s this: “How much time should I really be spending on teaching phonics?” Trust me, you’re not alone in wondering this. As teachers, we’re constantly juggling competing priorities within those precious instructional minutes. And with the renewed emphasis on the Science of Reading, […]
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Fluency and Comprehension: Teaching Students to Read in Meaningful Phrases (And Why It Matters)
Have you ever watched a struggling reader laboriously sound out each word, only to reach the end of the paragraph with little understanding of what they just read? This common classroom scenario illustrates the critical relationship between fluency and comprehension—a connection that’s often misunderstood or underappreciated in our reading instruction. The Research Behind Fluency and […]
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Making Your Classroom Sound Wall Work: A Teacher’s Complete Guide
I remember the first time I saw a beautifully crafted classroom sound wall on Pinterest. Like many of you, I thought, “If I just put this up in my classroom, my students’ reading will improve!” But as much as I love making things beautiful, simply having a pretty display isn’t enough. Today, let’s talk about […]
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Make Reading Click: How Sound Walls Help Students Connect Letters to Sounds
You know what I love about the Science of Reading? It keeps teaching us better ways to help our students succeed. One of the most powerful tools to emerge from this research are sound walls. Unlike traditional word walls that organize words by letters, sound walls tap into how our brains actually process language. And […]
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Deleting and Substituting Sounds: Simple Strategies for Teaching Sound Manipulation
You know those moments when you’re teaching phonemic awareness and you think, “There has to be a way to make this click for my kids”? I had one of those moments last week working with a struggling reader named Maya. We were practicing deleting and substituting sounds, and she just wasn’t getting it. Then I […]
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Teaching Blending and Segmenting: Your Guide to These Essential Reading Skills
You’re sitting with a small group of students, and you can see the wheels turning as they work to sound out a new word. We’ve all been there – watching our students stretch and blend sounds, sometimes smoothly, sometimes with a bit more struggle. Today, let’s dive deep into two absolutely crucial skills that make […]
