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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Showing Young Readers How to Navigate the Phases of Word Reading (Part 4): Why Skipping the Word Is Problematic
This is our fourth installment in a 6-part series about how practices for supporting readers when they are stuck on a word can either help them find their way...
Showing Young Readers How to Navigate the Phases of Word Reading (Part 3): Why Looking at the First Letter of the Word Isn’t Enough (even when “read” correctly)
This post is our third in a 6-part series about how you can support readers who are trying to read a word they don’t know. Deciding how to prompt readers when...
Showing Young Readers How to Navigate the Phases of Word Reading (Part 2): Why Looking at the Pictures Isn’t as Helpful as We Thought
In our last blog, we used a map-reading metaphor to introduce Linnea Ehri’s phases of word learning (1987, 1995, 2002, 2005, 2017). Today we take that...
Showing Young Readers How to Navigate the Phases of Word Reading (Part 1): A Journey Through Ehri’s Phases
It is summer! Perhaps you are traveling somewhere. While you probably rely on the little person inside your phone to tell you which way to go, we want you to...
Today, We Celebrate You
We think every day is the right day to celebrate the work of educators. So, for every single teacher committed to making our schools better places for kids,...
4 Things that Might Surprise You About ❤️ Heart Words
As more and more schools are making shifts to more brain-friendly practices, many have embraced the idea of marking certain parts of a high-frequency word...
What is Word-by-Word Reading, and Why is it Okay for Beginning Readers?
Listening to proficient readers, it is easy to assume that the word you hear them say is the word their brain is processing. From the outside-in, it just...
We’ve Got News to Share! 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom is coming soon!
Friends, When we wrote our little book, Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom, we wanted it to be...
A Phonics Lesson Planning “Easy Button!”
We love it when educators ask for something to simplify their busy lives, and we can find a way to make it happen! Since our Fall 2022 blog series...
Decodable Texts Q&A (Part 6): More Ideas for Getting Started
In this Decodable Text Series, we’ve been exploring questions about the place, the purpose, and the practicality of using decodable...
Decodable Texts Q&A (Part 5): What About FREE Decodable Books and Texts?
Tax-free. Gluten-free. Free sample. Free time. Free shipping. Free parking. Who doesn’t love a freebie? We know we...
Let us know if you’d like to stay connected with updates, information, and notifications of new content.