As students progress through reading instruction and learn harder skills, it is imperative that we review previously learned concepts with them too. Without systematic review, we risk students losing previously mastered skills. Read on to see how we systematically review with our students - these strategies have made a huge difference for us!

Assuming a program, even an evidence-based program, works for all students without tracking your own data and adjusting as needed, puts students at risk to continue falling through the cracks. Click the image above to read more about a common belief that may be holding you back in your intervention.

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.

We know that data and data-driven instruction are CRITICAL to effective intervention so a few weeks ago we asked if you all would be interested in a free training around the subject of taking and using data in your lessons. The response was an overwhelming yes. That’s where “Data-Tracking December” was born. All month long, we will be releasing our data-tracking trainings and want to invite you to take this information (and a free resource - stay tuned next week!) and implement it in your sessions so that you can easily get students the results you have always wanted for them.

Alright friends, many of you have been asking us this question and we’re excited to share exactly how we teach spelling to our struggling readers and writers!

Here’s the truth - spelling is tricky!

And it’s usually one of the last abilities to fully progress for our struggling students. We tell students and parents that we expect growth to evolve in phases. We typically start at the sound level (making sure that students can associate sounds to letters), then we move up to the syllable level, then to the word level, phrase level, sentence level, and then finally the passage level.

One of the most common questions we have been getting is how to open a PowerPoint in Google Slides. Many schools use Google platforms for their online classrooms, but not everyone is familiar with how to use Google with lessons that originate in a different format! We’ve broken it down to a few easy steps you can follow to open any of your lessons in Google Slides!

Today we’re jumping right into one of our favorite things to talk about!

Literacy Intervention Data!!!

We’re fun at parties (well at least back when there used to be parties), trust us…

We know that diagnostic prescriptive instruction following a systematic and structured approach is the most effective way to get students to grade-level and beyond, but how exactly can we provide truly diagnostic and prescriptive instruction?

Today we wanted to share our intervention tip of the week! How to teach syllable division to support decoding skills.

We have a great resource you can use to learn WHY we should teach syllable division patterns!

And today we wanted to walk you through our process and give you some thoughts on why we use the “spot and dot” strategy…

This week we are so excited to share information on identifying student challenges.

One of the most challenging aspects of helping a struggling reader is understanding specifically where and why they are struggling.

Once we can understand the specific areas in which a student is breaking down and/or the cause of the breakdown we can begin providing targeted instruction and intervention.

We all know that this can be such a sticking point for our dyslexic kiddos. It's important to note that many students display difficulty with b/d until the end of second grade or about the age of 8. By the time a child is 8 years old the dreaded b/d reversal should be pretty much gone.

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.

Now, if you have been working with us for a while, you’ll know that we LOVE teaching with key images and phrases to help anchor skills for a student. For au/aw, we use the phrase “Yawn, I have to do the laundry.” This helps our struggling readers and spellers remember the rule. Keep reading for more tips, tricks and activities surrounding the au/aw vowel team.

OO can be a tricky vowel team because it has two sounds. Click through to read about our tips & tricks for teaching this vowel team!

We use both “oi” and “oy” to make the /oi/ sound (think of the words “boy” and “foil”). When that sound comes in the middle of a word, we use “oi.” If it comes at the end of the word, we will use “oy.” Keep reading to learn more about how we teach our students all about this vowel team!

Vowel teams can be tricky for students, but we have found that teaching them in this way has made a massive difference. Keep reading for ideas for teaching the OA/OE vowel teams!

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.