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.

Who doesn’t love a good organizational overhaul? I mean Home Edit meets Pinterest meets education - yes, please!

We get TONS of questions not just about how we organize our lessons with our students but also about how we organize ALL THE THINGS. The literal things that we need to use to deliver our instruction. Well, friends, we’ve got you covered because today we’re talking all about how we organize the materials we use with our students so we can spend more time actually working with our students, than finding all the materials.

Let’s dive right in shall we?

We spent years pulling resources from different programs and trying to piecemeal things together. Talk about a headache. It always felt like no matter how hard we tried, no matter how many different resources we collected, it wasn’t getting easier to target everything in our lessons.

That is until we finally figured out the secret to creating cohesive lesson plans.

Now - we want to share that secret with you! Keep reading to uncover the “not-so-secret” secret formula to creating cohesive literacy lesson plans.

Why are math word problems so difficult for so many of our students? That IS the question!

WORD PROBLEMS REQUIRE A NUMBER OF CRITICAL LITERACY AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING SKILLS

(which we talk about often!)

So let’s start by thinking through all the skills students need in order to solve math problems effectively.

You can't teach comprehension explicitly.

...at least, that's what we were told when we started in this field. 

After working with hundreds of students, we realized that comprehension can and should be taught explicitly.

...and that teaching it doesn't need to be as hard as we once believed. It just relies on us recognizing one important detail before we jump in. Click here to read more!

Raise your hand if vocabulary instruction has ever scared you. (We immediately raise our hands).

How do you teach it? Which words are we supposed to use? We had these questions, too. That is until we cracked the code and figured out how to easily incorporate vocabulary instruction into our literacy lessons across grade-levels. Click through to read more!

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!

Have you ever wondered what SOR-aligned phonics instruction looks like? Click here to keep reading & learn more!

Have you ever tried to organize something and had NO idea where to start?

Making sense of our phonics patterns used to feel that way! That is until we started to understand the six syllable types. These provide us with an organizational system for our phonics rules and help make reading & spelling infinitely easier for our students. Keep reading to learn more AND to grab our free Syllable Type Anchor Charts.

I'm sure we've all been there… in the middle of a lesson and our student says, "but I already know this!" 

Can you relate?  

As we work through the sound drill, it is important that we understand why this task is important and be able to explain to our students why it is a necessary part of our lesson. Keep reading to learn more!

To teach, or not to teach phonological awareness…this is the question (especially because research seems to be ever-changing in this area)!!

Check out this blog for answers to understand its importance, target specific skills, and integrate PA seamlessly into your lessons. Explore why phonological awareness matters for all ages and how to make it feel cohesive.

Phoneme segmenting is essential to spelling success. In order to spell a word (especially an unfamiliar one!) we first need to identify what sounds we hear. Keep reading to learn more about the importance of phoneme segmenting and how you can incorporate this instruction into your lessons!

Can you spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? Can your students? 

In all seriousness, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious isn't the most functional word to spell – but as students progress academically, they do need to be able to break down long words for reading and spelling. Keep reading to learn why syllable segmenting is necessary and how to incorporate this instruction into your lessons!

Phoneme isolation is a critical skill in both reading and spelling. 

It helps us sequence the sounds we hear when we sound words out. It allows us to differentiate between things like stop and spot. It can help students recognize their errors in spelling, too.

Improve spelling accuracy with phoneme isolation! Learn why it's crucial for reading and spelling success. Discover practical strategies and activities to support sound isolation in our blog.

Do your students ever mix up certain sounds? Maybe they mispronounce words, like calling milk "melk" or they spell "met" as "net." 

Enhance your students' auditory discrimination skills for better pronunciation and spelling! Explore why this skill is crucial for reading and spelling accuracy. Get practical tips and resources to support auditory discrimination in this blog.

Phonological awareness skills are often taught to support reading and spelling. But…did you know that some PA skills can directly support reading comprehension as well?

Discover how sentence segmenting enhances literacy skills beyond spelling and reading. Learn how to improve memory, comprehension, and writing structure.

Say this word without the first sound…

Say this word backward.

Change the last sound in this word…

Are phoneme manipulation skills really necessary?

In short, yes. Keep reading to learn more!

Raise your hand if you've ever told a student to "sound it out" when they were reading.

We imagine just about everyone's hand went up just then. And if this isn't something you've said to students, it's incredibly likely they've heard it from someone else.

But how exactly do we teach students to do this? Do we need to teach students to do this? Keep reading for answers to all of your phoneme blending questions!