We’re Jan Burkins and Kari Yates.

As experienced educators and consultants, we have deep roots in early childhood education and share a passion for supporting students (and you — their teachers) in the earliest stages of reading and writing development.

We were surprised to learn (as you might be!) that the traditional method of having children “just memorize” high-frequency words just isn’t brain-friendly.

In fact, the brain just can’t learn more than a very few words that way. So we studied how the brain learns words and even wrote a book called Shifting the Balance, which has a chapter dedicated entirely to revising word learning practices.

Once we learned about Orthographic Mapping, an in-the-brain process identified by researcher Linnea Ehri, we were astonished. Not only had we not been leveraging the power of orthographic mapping, but the traditional methods we were using had actually been making it harder for children to learn sight words. 

But once we understood, we wanted to spread the word by helping teachers like you learn these critical instructional routines for supporting orthographic mapping. So we started looking for materials that could support you.

But everything we found came up short in one way or another.

We couldn’t find the resources we needed to help you implement orthographic mapping in the engaging ways we wanted, so we just decided to make them.

So we decided to make Sight Word Success because we know that you’re right there with us in wanting to make learning to read easier – not harder – for your students.