science-of-reading
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Writing to Boost Reading Comprehension
When we think about the Science of Reading, writing doesn’t always come to mind first. But the truth is, writing plays a powerful role in strengthening students’ comprehension—especially when aligned to the same levels we address in Scarborough’s Reading Rope: word recognition and language comprehension. Scarborough’s Reading Rope reminds us that reading comprehension is a Continue reading
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Top Paragraph Activities for Engaging Students and Building Comprehension
We’re almost at the end of this blog series! We’ve discussed word level comprehension, sentence level decoding and now we’re looking at whole paragraphs. Understanding how paragraphs, or small parts of a text, work together is essential for reading comprehension. Strong topic sentences, logical paragraph order, and effective transition words guide readers through an author’s Continue reading
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Teaching Sentence-Level Decoding in the Context of Texts: Engaging Activities for Middle and High School Teachers
When teaching middle and high school students, one of the most crucial skills for reading comprehension… but one that gets eliminated or skimmed over waaaaaaay toooooooo often, is sentence-level decoding. Usually, when we hear the word decoding, we automatically think of decoding words and assume that it is an elementary level skill that we don’t Continue reading
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10 Engaging Vocabulary Activities for Stronger Word Knowledge in Secondary ELA
Building strong word knowledge is essential for students’ reading comprehension, writing skills, and overall language development. It is the most foundational part of reading but, often, our students come to us behind. There are absolutely times when interventions are necessary. I have another blog post on what those might look like for your secondary students, Continue reading
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Five Essential Steps to Comprehension
In a world full of information, understanding what you read is one of the most essential skills a person can have. Whether you’re enjoying a novel, perusing a news article, or tackling a technical manual, comprehension helps you grasp the meaning, connect to new ideas, and make informed decisions. So here are the five necessary Continue reading
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All of the #SoRin2ndary Components in One Lesson!
One of the biggest buzz words in education right now is The Science of Reading. Without going into too many of my soapbox issues about SoR research, I want to tell you that this information is just as important for secondary teachers as it is for our elementary school counterparts. Reading is one of the 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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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
