Is there anything better than a great read-aloud when developing early literacy skills?

We think not!

One of the questions we get often is, “How do I align my read-aloud with the Science of Reading?”

Keep reading to learn more!

Have you ever thought to yourself - how in the world can I make this more engaging for my students?

If so, you are definitely not alone. Reading intervention is HARD for our students. We are asking them to complete tasks that have always felt difficult for them.

The good news - it’s easier than you might think to make lessons engaging for your students. Plus - when students are engaged, it’s more likely that they will learn the material. It’s a win-win!

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.

We’ve learned that by turning simple reading tasks into games it will provide students with the repetition they need to see success. We try to turn EVERYTHING into games and you’d be surprised because even those of you with older students will see that they enjoy this “gamification” of instruction as well.

One of our favorite things to do with our students is to create interactive notebooks. We absolutely love it because it is a really great way to start off your systematic, structured, reading intervention. It's also a great way to keep students engaged!

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...

Our students often need a lot of practice with welded sounds. So we created this fun game to practice with them. Typically when we play, we set a timer for 3-5 minutes (depending on how much time we have allotted for review).

Uncover the crucial components of effective literacy instruction. Discover how weaving authentic literature into lessons enhances decoding skills. Learn to balance decoding work and text application in small groups, adapting to each group's unique needs. Foster daily exposure to real books, promoting silent reading and read-aloud sessions for a comprehensive literacy approach.

So here at Ascend, we LOVE all things fall. As you can probably guess we were so excited to be able to throw some Halloween activities into our mix. Most of the students we work with really struggle with phonological awareness and while we have phonological awareness built into our lessons we know that some of our students need extra practice with it. So we have some fun phonological awareness practice activities for you.

The wonderful thing about this very simple game is that you can use it in so many different ways depending on the skill you are trying to target. It's also truly NO PREP. If you don't have this grid it's so easy to just write out the tic-tac-toe lines on a whiteboard or piece of paper and students love this game.

Discover the key to unlocking consistent growth in reading intervention: engagement. Dive into creative strategies to make learning exciting, turning dry material into dynamic games. Move beyond traditional worksheets and explore interactive methods that keep students connected and excited about learning!