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School leaders! Want to customize literacy PD for your school this year? We can help.

School leaders! Want to customize literacy PD for your school this year? We can help.

by Jan and Kari | Aug 30, 2022 | Beyond the Book

If you’re a school leader, an instructional coach, or a teacher longing for science-aligned but practical professional development, we have something that can help. With the current push for more science-aligned literacy practices and with the start of a new school...
4 Simple Steps for Using Elkonin Boxes to Help Children Lock Words in Memory

4 Simple Steps for Using Elkonin Boxes to Help Children Lock Words in Memory

by Jan and Kari | Aug 26, 2022 | Phonemic Awareness

Orthographic mapping (Ehri, 2014) is essentially alignment work. It is the brain making sense of, or proving, how the sounds in a spoken word (phonemes) match up with the series of sound-spellings in the same word (graphemes).  So, if orthographic mapping is truly an...
Sight Word learning in 1-4 exposures! That’s crazy talk! Or is it?

Sight Word learning in 1-4 exposures! That’s crazy talk! Or is it?

by Jan and Kari | Aug 19, 2022 | High-Frequency Words

If we asked you to guess how many encounters with a new word a typical reader needs to be able to retrieve the word instantly and automatically, without guessing, decoding, or relying on other hacks . . . what number would you guess? 20? 30? 40? More? Well, you might...
Looking for a bit of ✨magic✨in your sight word instruction? Start here!

Looking for a bit of ✨magic✨in your sight word instruction? Start here!

by Jan and Kari | Aug 16, 2022 | Fluency, High-Frequency Words, Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Word Reading Instruction

If you’re looking for a bit of magic in your sight word instruction, you’re in the right place! The real magic, of course, comes from HOW you teach high-frequency words. And spoiler alert – successful word instruction has everything to do with leveraging the...
“But you KNOW that word!” Sound familiar?

“But you KNOW that word!” Sound familiar?

by Jan and Kari | Aug 3, 2022 | High-Frequency Words

We’ve all been there! We’ve all said some version of this phrase! After chanting and practicing and highlighting and rainbow writing a word repeatedly, a student encounters the word in print (or goes to use it in their writing) and looks at it like it’s a martian with...

Recent Posts

  • Recognizing Reading Comprehension Difficulties: Challenges, Indicators, and Effective Teaching Moves
  • First Grade Heart Words: Finding and Teaching the Words That Matter Most
  • Mental Models: Comprehension Under Construction
  • How to Teach High Frequency Words (Without All the Frustration)
  • Orthographic Mapping: Explanations, Examples, and Activities

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