The process of organizing helps create the feeling of being in control (which is helpful since we work in a setting that often feels a bit chaotic!). In this blog, we’re sharing our process for keeping our students’ materials organized. We see students in an intervention setting but this same strategy could apply to the classroom as well! Keep reading to learn more.

You may be wondering if teaching students to rhyme is really necessary. Recently, research has been mixed on whether or not we should be targeting this skill in our instruction.

The argument here is that it isn't necessary to teach because it doesn't directly translate to reading in the same way blending does.

So…should we be teaching rhyming? Keep reading to find out.

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!

Graphic organizers are visual displays and incredible tools to help your students with writing and comprehension. Graphic organizers can also be called mind maps, concept maps, or concept webs, but they all have the same wonderful purpose - to solidify comprehension. Graphic organizers explicitly teach students how to connect and organize information. They visually show what information to prioritize as well as help students with brainstorming and connecting any background information.

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.

I was reflecting on why this field can be so difficult at times. I was considering the beliefs we have, the realities we face. This field is beyond rewarding and the impact we make as therapists as educators is truly second to none. But it’s hard.

And part of the reason it’s so hard is because we expect a lot from ourselves. And then we never seem to measure up no matter how many hours we put in. It often feels like there is no winning. When I started out in this field I thought I had two choices. I could only be one of two types of educators.

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.

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!

So data tracking is one of those necessary evils for all interventionists, special educators, speech language pathologists, teachers…we all can commiserate together.

But it’s one of those things that is just absolutely critical to determine whether or not students are growing and making progress in their intervention setting. We see students who are struggling to read and have gaps and we need to make sure those gaps are in fact closing.

So on top of all the other things we are managing in our reading intervention setting, from behavior management, to lesson introduction and skill targeting, we need to be tracking and monitoring data during our sessions.

Here are the three biggest mistakes we often see when supporting special education teams and interventionists…and no judgement here because we’ve #beenthere. Click through to read more and grab our data tracking sheets.

So this can be one of the most challenging things we face as reading interventionists - what activities do I pull to target specific weaknesses for my struggling readers? And how can I do that without spending a TON of extra time that I don’t really have?

We all want the very best for our students, it’s our mission and our goal to be providing the best possible instruction to help completely eliminate reading and spelling gaps.

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!

Welcome to week 4 in our series of The Reading & Spelling Rules That Nobody Taught You. In this post, we are going to talk about the fourth syllable type we teach to our students, Open Syllables.

The Open Syllable is the opposite of a Closed Syllable. In an open syllable, you have a vowel left alone at the end of the syllable. Our students like to remember that when nothing is behind the vowel, it can go for a looooong run and say its loooooong sound.

So we’ve been talking all about the reading and spelling rules that were brand new to us when we began to learn about Structured Literacy and the “science” behind the English language. Today, we are going to talk a little about the “Bossy-R” or the R-controlled syllable type. This one is a challenge!!!

Closed Syllables are the first of the syllable types that we teach to our students. Within this syllable type we cover the -ck, FLOSS, -tch, and -dge phonograms as well as the 1-1-1 doubling rule. Do you know all of these rules? Click through to find out!