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Are You Teaching the Key Comprehension Strategies Students Really Need
It’s discouraging to work hard and continue to see some students struggle to comprehend despite hours and hours of strategy instruction year after year after year. You might wonder: Am I missing something? Am I teaching the “right strategies”? Are there some...
5 Vital Language Development Strategies for Every Classroom
Reading Comprehension Can’t Happen Without Language Comprehension Lately, we’ve noticed that some small but mighty practices for supporting language development aren’t showing up so much in classrooms. These instructional moves are ways to teach vocabulary or language...
Making Phonics and Word Study Meaning-FULL: 10 EASY Ways to Embed More Meaning Into Decoding Instruction
Systematic and Explicit Phonics Instruction is a big deal, but . . . Everywhere we go these days, teachers are working hard to provide more explicit and systematic phonics and word study instruction. This is part of an effort to ensure that the students get...
Exploring Decodable Texts: A Go-To Resource
Talk of decodable texts is everywhere these days. And if you’re like many educators we know, you might be working to sort through the hype to make sense of it all. We’ve written a lot about decodable texts—exploring their significance, selection criteria, creative...
“The GOOD” and “The BAD” of Curriculum Evaluation and Literacy Program Selection
We all know that teachers, not programs, make the difference when it comes to effective instruction. Scientific research bears out this idea that teachers matter more than programs, especially when it comes to beginning reading (Bond 1966; Readence & Barone 1997)....
Sound Boxes: Using Elkonin Boxes to Enhance Phonemic Awareness in Early Literacy
Elkonin Sound Boxes: What They Are & How to Use Them Phonemic awareness serves as the foundation for a child's journey into the world of literacy, and Elkonin boxes offer a powerful tool for nurturing this crucial skill. In this post, we will explore Elkonin boxes...
Developing Word Power: How to Teach Morphology
In this post, we offer a simple Morphology Lesson Planning Template that provides a systematic approach to integrating morphology instruction into your classroom. When you consider vocabulary instruction, probably the first thing that comes to mind is teaching...
Still Confused About Sight Words vs. High Frequency Words: You Aren’t Alone
Do We Really Have to Know the Difference Between Sight Words and High-Frequency Words? If you're like us, you've likely used these two terms – high-frequency words and sight words – interchangeably. But to really understand the brain science of word learning (for all...
Getting to Know the Shifting the Balance for the Upper Elementary Classroom: Q&A with the Authors – Part 2
Last week, we shared the first part of our two-part Q&A series about how the newest Shifting the Balance 3-5 book that we wrote with Katie Egan Cunningham came to be. Today, we will continue to explore common questions readers have about the newest Shifting the...
Getting to Know Shifting the Balance for the Upper Elementary Classroom: Q&A with the Authors – Part 1
Q: Want to learn more about the newest Shifting the Balance book, which explores 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom? A: Keep reading because today’s blog is Part 1 of a 2-part Q&A series that answers some common questions...
Don’t be Fooled by a Fake! 12 Clues that a Copy of Shifting the Balance May be a Counterfeit
We have been touched by readers’ responses to our books, including our latest title, Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom, which we wrote with Katie Egan Cunningham. Along with your positive feedback, our...
Book Study Guides for BOTH Shifting the Balance Books NOW Available to Support Your Learning Journey
We’re really excited to share this study guide with you today, especially since so many people have been asking about it! As we were preparing to share this new study guide--written to support you as you dig into Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of...
Now 12 Shifts (and 4 Pathways Through Them) to Transform Your Reading Instruction
Over the past two years, we’ve been touched and humbled by your overwhelming response to our first Shifting the Balance book, which we wrote to support those of you who work with beginning readers. After it was published, we quickly realized that educators were also...
With a Teacher’s Head and a Mother’s Heart: A Shifting the Balance Upper Elementary Story (A Guest Blog Post by Katie Egan Cunningham)
With Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom about to be released, you might be wondering how this second Shifting the Balance book came to be. Well, there’s a story there that Jan, Kari, and I thought was...
The Six Shifts Podcast: Episodes about the SHIFTS in the NEW 3-5 book are now LIVE!
While it's true that most of the conversation about literacy practices these days seems to focus on the earliest grades, there is plenty of confusion and uncertainty about literacy instruction for older students, too. In Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the...
Showing Readers How to Navigate the Phases of Word Learning (Bonus): The Power of Teaching Readers to Try Alternate Sounds
We are glad you are here for this bonus blog as we reach the end (really!) of our six-part (turned seven-part) series on the ways that familiar prompts may or may not be good for students in the long run. As it turns out, some of the familiar prompts that we have...
Showing Readers How to Navigate the Phases of Word Learning (Part 6): The Power of Teaching Students to Blend Words
Over the last several weeks, we have taken a close look at some familiar prompts--along with their Beanie Baby mascots--that are often used in an attempt to support students when they are stuck on a word. Our journey through these common prompts has been mapped out...
Showing Young Readers How to Navigate the Phases of Word Reading (Part 5): The Downsides of Asking Children to Search for Chunks in Words
This is the fifth part of our series exploring how some of the ways we’ve been prompting readers can actually send them on unnecessary detours - or even worse, down dead-end roads - when it comes to developing reading fluency. If you’ve traveled with us through this...
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