by Melinda | Aug 8, 2022 | Literacy
Creating phonics lesson plans is essential to help your students with reading, writing, and spelling. Phonics lesson planning based on systematic synthetic phonics doesn’t have to be hard. Let’s start with the what and why on systematic synthetic phonics. Synthetic... 
by Melinda | Jul 25, 2022 | Literacy
Too often students dread spelling and think of it as boring, rote memorization. Classroom spelling games to the rescue! I use classroom spelling games to bring variety to spelling review and spelling practice. You can even use them for a spelling warm up. Students... 
by Melinda | Jun 13, 2022 | Literacy, Time Saving Tips
“I don’t know what to write about.” How many times have you heard that when you ask students to start a new assignment or write in their daily writing journal? Not knowing where to start is a common stumbling block. Some students dread writing and get blocked before... 
by Melinda | May 30, 2022 | Literacy
Do you use games in your classroom? They are definitely a popular part of my teaching tool kit! I use games for physical education and brain breaks, but I also have a variety of math games, phonics games, vocabulary games, and reading and spelling games to help... 
by Melinda | Apr 18, 2022 | Literacy
Vocabulary instruction is essential. You may have seen the difference between students with a rich vocabulary and those without. And studies back that up. In a 2011 paper, Preventing a Vocabulary Lag: What Lessons Are Learned from Research, Sinatra, Zygouris-Coe, and... 
by Melinda | Apr 4, 2022 | Literacy
Synthetic phonics involves teaching kids to link sounds and symbols. In other words, students learn to connect phonemes to graphemes or sounds to letters. Synthetic phonics begins by teaching students to hear the sounds that make up words. Systematic synthetic phonics...