by Melinda | Nov 1, 2021 | Literacy
You know your students need explicit phonics instruction. You’re determined to keep them engaged and not sacrifice rigor … but also, you’re tired. It’s time to look for shortcuts, not ones that shortchange students or skimp on quality, but ones that save you time. ... 
by Melinda | Sep 20, 2021 | Literacy
Response to intervention (RTI) is a three-tier approach that can be used for any subject. This approach is designed to catch kids early and keep them from falling through the cracks. The tiered approach makes the most of school resources, by moving from whole-class to... 
by Melinda | Aug 23, 2021 | Literacy
Do you work with struggling readers? Reading intervention is key to help improve reading skills as reading impacts many areas of learning. A good reading intervention program addresses the five keys to reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and... 
by Melinda | Aug 9, 2021 | Literacy
Recently I’ve been talking about segmenting and blending. Both build on phoneme isolation. Phoneme manipulation is a reading skill that builds on those skills. Phoneme manipulation is the practice of inserting, deleting, or substituting sounds in words. Phoneme... 
by Melinda | Jul 26, 2021 | Literacy
Phoneme segmentation is the process of pulling apart sounds. Practicing segmenting phonemes, identifying sounds, and pairing them with graphemes helps students grasp how sounds and letters work together. This is crucial for reading and spelling. Segmenting and... 
by Melinda | Jul 12, 2021 | Literacy
There are 26 letters of the English alphabet, but there are 44 sounds of English. Kids learn letters, but they also need to learn phonemes and graphemes. And once they’ve gotten that, they need to segment, blend, and manipulate sounds. Let’s break all that down and...