Veterans Day in the Classroom: Engaging Literacy Activities for Preschool and Kindergarten

Veterans Day is a wonderful opportunity to introduce preschool and kindergarten students to the importance of honoring those who have served. With age-appropriate activities, you can help your students understand the concept of bravery and service while building literacy skills.  This brand new Veterans Day literacy resource is simple to prepare and packed full with […]

Mastering Phonemic Awareness: The Key to Reading Success

Are you looking for the key to unlock reading success for your child? Look no further than mastering phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds (or phonemes) in spoken words. It is a crucial skill for early readers as it forms the foundation for decoding and spelling words.

Teaching the Alphabet- 5 Things You Need to Know!

When I began teaching many years ago, I realized I was feeling unprepared to teach reading. I decided to pursue my master’s degree in reading for this very reason. I had some pretty amazing professors who were ahead of their time. They were already teaching the science of reading, in my opinion. Especially when we […]

How To Teach Phonemic Awareness 9 Simple Definitions and Examples

Phonemic awareness comes under the umbrella of phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate the individual sounds in a word. It is very important for students to have this skills in order to do well later with phonics and higher level reading skills. Phonemic awareness teaches us to listen for and hear the individual sounds or phonemes in a word. PA helps students with spelling and writing later on.

Teaching Phonological Awareness Skills – Why Is Teaching Syllables Important and 7 Ways to Practice With Your Students

When readers understand how to break up a word in syllables, it makes it easier to read unknown words. When readers can read or “sound out” chunks , those chunks are easier to remember in our short term memory rather than remembering all the single phonemes in a word. Dividing words into chunks and blending the chunks together, speeds up the process of decoding which creates more fluent readers.

Is “The Science of Reading” Something New?

The best training, I ever had as a reading teacher, was my Orton Gillingham training. After I completed my master’s degree and became a reading specialist, I still felt like something was missing. I was teaching and tutoring and working with so many students who were still struggling with their reading. I fell in love with the approach because Orton Gillingham was already using direct, explicit phonics instruction.