There are so many different factors that play into learning to read and write effectively. It can often feel overwhelming because it seems like we need to hit on all of these skills separately and hope that it all comes together! This isn’t the case. With just one activity, you can hit on multiple skills and help your students grow!

When we look at the practice of teaching reading, there are two steps that we follow. Check out the blog to learn what these steps are and how to best combine the science/what the research tells us with your own data & experiences with students for the most effective SOR-based lessons.

We’re so glad you’re here. Now over the last month, we’ve been talking all about how to use the Science of Reading and effective reading instruction strategies to support students with varying needs. We’ve talked about supporting students who are reading on grade level, supporting students who struggle with decoding and word recognition, we’ve talked about supporting students who struggle with comprehension, and today we’re going to talk about our last group of students, students who struggle with word recognition and comprehension. Click through to learn more!

Today we are jumping in and discussing how SOR strategies can support students who read on (or above) grade level.

Now, if you are working as a reading interventionist or SPED teacher, you may not see these students often as they don’t appear to need a lot of additional support when it comes to reading. This doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t ways we can support these children to help them unlock their highest potential. Keep reading to learn how SOR strategies can support these students!

We’ve been at this for a while now! We’ve worked with hundreds of struggling students in a variety of different settings and one of the most important things we’ve learned is that students DO NOT struggle with reading for the same reasons!

And this is SO important to recognize, because if we don’t recognize this, then we try to support struggling readers using all the same strategies, and the bottom line is that just doesn’t work. For many reasons, but most importantly because in order to support ALL struggling readers, we need to know WHY they’re struggling to read!

In a 2019 study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, it was determined that over 66% of 4th graders were not reading at a proficient level. Part of this is because of the gap that exists between research-based practices and what’s being implemented in the classroom. Unfortunately many large curriculum publishers adopted by schools were not staying current with the ever-expanding body of research on the cognitive development of students.

In order to close this gap, we need to implement practices in the classroom that align with the Science of Reading. Check out this blog for ideas that you can use to support your students!

Over the last few weeks we have been talking about how there are many students who are reading below grade level, even after years of intervention. This week, we will be talking about an easy 3-phase approach to intervention that will allow all of us to change trajectories for students like this so that they can FINALLY get back to grade-level faster than ever before.

These students, like so many others, have continued to fall behind year after year. Often, they take on the label “non-responders” but this doesn’t have to be the case. Keep reading to learn more about why this student has continued to struggle year after year and how we can change the trajectory for students like her.

Our Tier 3 students are those who are considered to be significantly below grade level. These children are those that are identified and receive IEP services and support. Even with these supports, however, many students continue to struggle. Keep reading to learn why.

Students struggle for different reasons and in different capacities. In order to truly support our struggling readers, we must not only understand why students are struggling but also -

Where are students struggling to read specifically?

Which specific areas are causing students to be ineffective readers? Because the bottom line is if we are trying to support struggling readers, we need to stop applying one-size-fits-all approaches and we need to know what type of support is needed to get our struggling readers on track. Keep reading to learn more!

Here’s the deal, structured and systematic literacy intervention will get your students 90% of the way there. The true magic lies in the last 10%.

If you know us well by now, you know that we are huge proponents of evidence-based (research-based) literacy intervention. It is absolutely CRITICAL that we be following evidence-based practices especially to get our struggling readers to grade level.

But here’s the issue - and it’s a big issue because nobody is really talking about it.

It’s not enough alone.

While programs can and often will give suggested guidelines on where to start a student, how quickly to move through the program, and how to instruct the material, it is still your space to use clinical/professional judgement and to fill in concepts and review as needed. Trust your intuition - you know your students best!

How’s it going? Hopefully you’re hanging in there with all the craziness going on in the world recently. Today, we wanted to share a quick tip with you on how you can take your reading intervention to the next level for students who need an extra push.

One of the most important things we’ve learned in our intervention time is that you can use ONE activity in a bunch of different ways to target individual student needs and to uplevel your intervention.

Phonological awareness is one of those tasks that many feel is a skill that only primary teachers need to address.

However, for many students who struggle to read or spell with accuracy - a phonological processing issue is at the heart of it.

This means that we need to be explicitly teaching phonological awareness skills until they’re mastered. Now that being said - we need to be thoughtful and strategic in HOW we are doing this.

Check out this week’s intervention tip of the week to learn about how we differentiate for

This week’s reading intervention tip of the week - knowing how to identify reading breakdowns!

In this quick video we talk about the 5 key components you must be evaluating when you are looking for where a student may be breaking down.

If you know us well, you may have guessed them!

And in this video, we talk about how you can do this quickly! You can always use your own materials to make this work at your students’ grade and ability level but this will give you an outline on what it should include!

When I started out in this field, shifting from working purely as an Assessment Specialist (psychometrist if we want to get fancy) working alongside psychologists I was enamored with this approach that I heard so much about. I took the fancy Orton-GIllingham trainings, I made OG based activities & games, created OG based lessons, followed an OG Scope and Sequence…but it wasn’t enough. Here’s what I did next.

One of the most “eye-opening” moments for me in intervention, was when I had a student come in and ask, “what are the other kinds of letters besides vowels and consonants?” I didn’t understand. He asked again and when I explained that those were the only two kinds of letters, he was AMAZED. I had never thought to explain this to him before because I assumed he knew that there were no other types of letters…and that was the problem.