Science of Reading for Secondary
How does the Science of Reading research really relate to readers beyond elementary school? SoR is not just phonics. The implications of the research goes so far beyond phonics. It explains how even skilled readers put meaning together and it can guide teachers in their planning, daily lessons and overall approach to teaching secondary students.
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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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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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Establishing a Classroom of Readers: A Back to School Round Up
As we head back into the classrooms this fall, we’re all thinking about that first week of school and how we will get started. I would love to share with you some of the things that I do on those first few days of school. First, I think to start, we need a little recap… Continue reading
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What is your SoR Origin Story?
Do you know how many times I googled Science of Reading for Secondary, and in as many iterations as I could think of, before I found ANYTHING genuinely helpful? Have you done the same thing? Under any other circumstances, I would say that I’m just crazy but since I’ve had the same conversation with many… Continue reading
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Five Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary (and their unfortunate pitfalls)
This post was originally published on my first website on July 23, 2023 Is there an end all, be all approach to vocabulary instruction in the secondary ELA classroom? Here’s my take: Development of a robust vocabulary is fundamental to fostering strong communication skills and enhancing overall academic achievement. However, what is the best way… Continue reading
