We're going to share a potentially unpopular opinion...

Teaching reading IS NOT rocket science. 

While this is a popular expression, we’ve seen it impact the literacy field in a negative way. Keep reading to learn more about the problems with saying "teaching reading is rocket science.”

Now if you’re like us and you’re obsessed with the science of reading, you may already know that there is a very systematic and structure in which you can teach phonics to help give struggling and beginning readers the tools they need to be successful (and hey - no shame if not, you can check out our phonics blog too). But, did you know there is also really clear set of reading comprehension skills that students need to be successful comprehenders?!

When we think about reading intervention, reading fluency is definitely one of the first things that come to mind. Today, we are breaking down exactly what reading fluency is and the ACTUAL skills we should be targeting.

Don’t get us wrong - we fully believe that morphology is important! In our program, we have two full levels devoted to morphology.

We need to recognize, however, that morphology is only a very small piece of vocabulary and we need to be explicitly teaching vocabulary with ALL of our students, regardless of age or level. Read on to learn exactly what vocabulary instruction needs to include to support vocabulary development.

So we asked our Intervention Insiders Community to give us feedback on what’s up with online intervention. And we received some really awesome questions. So we wanted to take this week to dive in and answer some of those questions.

If you have been following us for a while, you know that we are super passionate about SLPs being a perfect fit to deliver literacy instruction. Their unique background lends itself so well to supporting students when it comes to reading and writing support. This week we want to spotlight an incredible SLP who has also been serving students through literacy instruction. Open to watch our video interview!

This month we’ve been talking all about the 5 Core Components of Literacy. Today, we wanted to jump into an extremely important and yet often overlooked part of literacy instruction.

Many educators in the field have a love hate relationship with phonics. In the sense that some educators love a phonics approach one week and hate it the next (it can be extremely difficult to organize it all for Pete’s sake). And…some educators LOVE a phonics-based approach and others hate it in favor of a more whole-language approach.

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.

Teaching early reading skills relies on working from the most basic skills and activities that students need to learn to be successful in the classroom and building a slow and steady progression of sounds. We recognize that teaching letter sounds and beginning blending is truly only one aspect to learning to read but it’s absolutely critical.

Whether you are a teacher, a parent, an SLP, or an interventionist, if you’re anything like us…which you are, because you’re here, you care about providing top notch intervention or instruction for your students. However, with all the differing opinions out there in the field of education it can be difficult to know if what you’re doing is the right thing. Click through to read about our 7 Must Haves for effective, research-based reading intervention.

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.

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!

When we think of Reading Intervention, we often refer to the Jenga Tower. This stems from the game Jenga where players take turns strategically pulling  blocks out of a tower. Each block is then placed on top of the tower, creating a progressively taller and more unstable structure.

Here we are with our last syllable type! If you’ve been with us since the beginning of this series you’re all caught up on the crazy reading and spelling rules you may have never heard of - we certainly hadn’t. If you missed learning about all the spelling rules with the other syllable types - go back and check them out!

The second syllable type we teach students is our VCE (Vowel Consonant E) Syllable Type. Perhaps, if I told you it was also called the Magic E Syllable, it would sound familiar? Click through to read about VCE syllables and all of the rules we teach within this syllable type!

There is a lot to providing high quality reading instruction. One of the most important pieces we always want to focus on is providing explicit decoding strategies. Research indicates that explicit instruction is one of the best ways to support our students’ reading ability!