literacy
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A Simple Way to Teach the Science of Reading in Secondary ELA (using one poem!)
This post is part of the Teaching Poetry Fest series that includes tons of poetry ideas from over TWENTY secondary ELA teacher-authors. Be sure to follow the hop to Lit with Lyns’ post about Taking the Intimidation out of Teaching Poetry to keep the inspiration going. You can also check out the resource round-up to… Continue reading
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Six Ideas for Building Background Knowledge in your Secondary Classroom
Background knowledge is one of the components of Scarborough’s Reading Rope and a necessary part of reading comprehension. Without relevant background knowledge, students have nothing to spark that brain power necessary for understanding what they read. One of our go-to strategies for teaching comprehension is asking students to make connections to what they are reading.… Continue reading
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Understanding Comprehension: A Key to Learning
What Does It Really Mean to Comprehend? To be completely honest, when I first started looking into how to help my older students comprehend, I don’t think I fully understood what it meant to comprehend. Read words.Understand what they say. The end. But it is actually way more complex than that. The amount of work… Continue reading
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Understanding Scarborough’s Reading Rope: A Guide to Science of Reading in Secondary Settings
When it comes to teaching reading, teachers should seek effective frameworks to guide their approach to help students become skilled readers. One really powerful framework that you can use is Scarborough’s Reading Rope. This is another older idea that was introduced by Dr. Hollis Scarborough in 2001. However, it is still a really useful tool… Continue reading
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Enhance Reading Comprehension with Effective Grammar Lessons
Grammar instruction plays such a big role in improving reading comprehension! Grammar and syntax gives readers the tools to understand the structure and meaning of texts. At its core, grammar helps students grasp how words work together. GRAMMAR IS HOW we put words together to form coherent sentences, which is essential for decoding the meaning… Continue reading
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Utilizing Reading Diagnostic Data to Support Students’ Reading Progress
This post was originally posted on September 21, 2023 on my old blog. Reading is a fundamental skill that opens doors to almost everything else in life. For educators and parents, understanding a student’s reading level and progress is essential to provide effective support and ensure they reach their full potential. One valuable tool in… Continue reading
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The Importance of Middle School Fluency Instruction: Strategies and Benefits
Fluency in reading and speaking is a cornerstone of effective communication and a critical skill for academic success. In middle school, where students transition from learning to read to reading to learn, fluency becomes more important than ever. At this pivotal stage, students are exposed to increasingly complex texts and ideas, and their ability to… Continue reading
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Planning a Science of Reading Aligned Unit for Secondary ELA
One question that I always asked when I was getting into SoR was “HOOOOOW do I incorporate these things in my SECONDARY classroom?” I promise that I asked it just like that every single time too. Because… like, this is all well and good but I’m not going to have my teenagers breaking down phonemes… Continue reading
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Supplementing Your Curriculum with #SoRin2ndary
How can teachers integrate the Science of Reading research into Curriculum that is already full? Continue reading
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Unlocking Reading Success: Four Effective Methods to Enhance Word Knowledge in Teens
The Simple View of Reading is an idea that explains reading comprehension as the combination of two main components. These are decoding and language comprehension. This theory was developed by the researchers Gough and Tunmer in 1986. It is older than I am… NONETHELESS, it is still something we need to know about! SVR simplifies… Continue reading
