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School leaders! Want to customize literacy PD for your school this year? We can help.
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...
4 Simple Steps for Using Elkonin Boxes to Help Children Lock Words in Memory
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...
Sight Word learning in 1-4 exposures! That’s crazy talk! Or is it?
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...
Looking for a bit of ✨magic✨in your sight word instruction? Start here!
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...
“But you KNOW that word!” Sound familiar?
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...
Confused about the difference between sight words and high-frequency words? This can help.
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...
Looking for read-aloud titles to nurture word learning? We have a list for you!
Words! Oh, wonderful words.Serendipity, keen, disparate, convivial, camaraderie, eclectic, gratuitous, inveterate--and the list goes on and on (and on!) We...
7+ Tools to Help YOU Make Learning to Read Easier for Students (Including a Lesson Template for Scaffolding Orthographic Mapping)
If you are a teacher or literacy interventionist struggling to: assess students in meaningful ways, provide more effective differentiated instruction, manage...
Looking for free decodable texts? We wrote one for you!
What could be more fun than thinking about pups? We really can’t think of much.Speaking of puppies, if you’re familiar with our book, Shifting the Balance,...
Wondering how to provide fun independent practice specific phonics concepts? Try this fun partner game!
Last week we offered seven ways to use our “Decodable Lists and Sentences” to supplement and support your phonics instruction. Based on the positive response...
7 Ways to Use Our Decodable Word Lists and Sentences (Part 2)
Last week, we introduced you to our two sets of decodable word lists, and we even suggested you might want to organize them in a binder for easy access. And...
7 Ways to Use Our Decodable Word Lists and Sentences (Part 1)
Maybe you already knew about our Decodable Word Lists and Sentences. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you saw the lists and weren’t sure what to do with them. Whatever...
Laying Language Track for the Word Reading Train
In Chapter 1 of Shifting the Balance, we untangle a widespread misunderstanding about reading comprehension. It is “Misunderstanding 4” in the chapter that is...
METANOIA . . .
We didn’t know this word a few weeks ago. But since we first became aware of it, we seem to be noticing it more and more. Maybe it’s because we’re immersed...
Structure vs. Choice? Urgency vs. Joy?
We’ve been thinking lately about the opposing tensions in our lives and the ways these tensions often leave us longing for a perfect balance. The idea that...
Making Learning to Decipher Easier – Rather than Harder – For Spies Everywhere
We think of offering brain-friendly phonics instruction as being a bit like saying, “Hey, would you like to learn to decipher a secret code? I can teach...
How do We Shift the Balance for 3-5 Students?
It has been almost a year since Shifting the Balance: Bringing the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom hit real and virtual bookshelves....
Hold the Vision. Trust the Process.
You may already know how much we LOVE the New Year with its fresh start and promise.But, even by the time calendar turns over to February, we can sometimes...
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