In this field, we are bombarded with theories, approaches, information and often, it can be difficult to know exactly what resources you need.

Whether you are looking for activities to supplement a program that your school has provided you with, or, you are looking for a comprehensive curriculum, there are a few things that you should always be looking for. Keep reading to learn more…

While 2020 was an interesting year to say the least, we were glad to have learned so many lessons. One of which, was how to stay organized in a completely digital space. We transitioned lessons to a completely digital format, student interaction, you name it! And with all the changes, we realized Tracking data digitally was another great way to communicate students’ growth and what was happening in our sessions with our students’ parents and with our colleagues. Today, we wanted to walk you through how we track our literacy data in a digital format!

We are back again with the next step in Data Tracking! This week we are talking all about analyzing your data. Now, we know that the word analyze brings about a heavy weight - but hear us out. Analyzing your data doesn’t have to be hard. One of the biggest mistakes we see is when well-meaning interventionists and SLPs rely on evidence/research based programs without analyzing their own data to make sure that students are actually making growth.

Games are a great way to differentiate your lessons to target specific skills with your students. Every week, we take data to see where our students are growing, where they consistently do well, and where they need extra support. When we find these holes and gaps, we supplement with a review game to target tricky skills.

One of the most important things you can do for your students is to make sure to have a solid outline for what you will be covering and the order in which you will be covering these patterns.

This ensures that they are getting ALL the skills they need and that they can get used to the lesson format and structure - goodbye negative behaviors!

Today, we wanted to share with you our tip on planning out your intervention lessons. We use a curriculum map that helps to outline the target skills we want to make sure we are hitting in each of our lessons.

One of the most important things we have to consider when we are supporting struggling students is:

How we will measure student progress?

This is absolutely CRITICAL in making sure that the plan we have designed to help them get back on track is actually working. This is proof that we are on track.

As parents of struggling students, we need to be requesting this information.

As educators responsible for delivering on student plans and goals we need to be sure we are tracking this information.

So the question becomes, what on earth are we looking for and how do we appropriately measure student progress?

One of the most effective ways to teach reading and spelling skills is to teach students about the Six Syllable Types and how to divide words into syllables using syllable division strategies. When we teach reading, we teach our students that sounds (consonant sounds and vowel sounds) come together to create syllables, syllables come together to create words, words come together to create phrases and sentences, and sentences come together to create paragraphs, which come together to create stories or information text.

With so many ways to get long E sound, we wanted to show you how we teach the ‘ee’ and ‘ey’ vowel teams. Open to read about our approach and grab our ee/ey center activities.

Both “ai” and “ay” say the long A sound. We use “ai” in the middle of the word (think rain, pail, train, mail) and “ay” at the end of the word (play, stay, day, May).

We try to progress monitor consistently to make sure students are on track with the concepts we are teaching. It is important that we are consistently spiraling back to previously instructed concepts to make sure they are getting it. Therefore, because we are already doing this it makes sense for us to create goals around mastery of words we have explicitly taught.

We’ve been there.

Planning for our students had us stressed. It had us burning out and tired. It was nothing short of exhausting, and on top of that, our students weren’t connecting with it. They weren’t growing in a way we would expect knowing how much work we were putting into it.

…and then we figured out why.

Organizing our intervention materials is the key to our success, right?

When I’m not prepped and ready – my instruction and delivery suffer. This week I'm going to share with you how I keep my intervention materials organized.

The Suggested Schedule Freebie that you downloaded last week is your road map. I keep this at the front of my lesson plan binder – always.

If you have been keeping up with our blogs, you will know that all this month we are talking about ways we can help cement strategies for our students who just aren't getting it.  If you are new to our blog, welcome! You can catch up on our last two posts here: 3 Ways to Generalize Skills Learned in Isolation and Is it Just My Kids, Or...

We are so excited to share this resource with you today! Scoop Spelling changed my life! This strategy brought such relief to my students who struggled to spell multi-syllable words correctly and instantly boosted their confidence! This strategy is so simple to use!

First, make sure that your students are solid on syllabication; what syllables are and how to count them. This knowledge is the key to Scoop Spelling. If a student knows or can hear how a word breaks apart into syllables, then they can Scoop Spell!

Master syllable division strategies for decoding multisyllabic words! Learn essential rules like Rabbit, Reptile, Tiger, Camel, and Hornet divisions. Decode with confidence and enhance reading skills.

It can be really difficult to hit all the core components of a lesson when you are trying to wrangle your small groups or hold the attention of your 1:1 students. One of the best ways to get massive results without the overwhelm is to have organized binders and materials where you can hold all of your intervention activities for your students. We have a streamlined process we use for every student so we aren’t living in a constant state of overwhelm.