An effective lesson planning process has the potential to transform your year.

For us educators, lesson planning can reduce stress because we have everything outlined. It also saves us a ton of time in the long run.

But did you know that lesson planning also benefits our students? When we have clear plans, students begin understanding routines, and the increased cohesion between our lesson components helps them get better results!

Keep reading to learn the 5 step process to creating effective literacy lesson plans AND to grab our FREE lesson planning guides!

An effective lesson planning process has the potential to transform your year.

For us educators, lesson planning can reduce stress because we have everything outlined. It also saves us a ton of time in the long run.

But did you know that lesson planning also benefits our students? When we have clear plans, students begin understanding routines, and the increased cohesion between our lesson components helps them get better results!

Keep reading to learn the 5 step process to creating effective literacy lesson plans AND to grab our FREE lesson planning guides!

Is there anything better than a great read-aloud when developing early literacy skills?

We think not!

One of the questions we get often is, “How do I align my read-aloud with the Science of Reading?”

Keep reading to learn more!

Raise your hand if you've ever been told that your literacy instruction is boring. 🙋‍♀️ If you're raising your hand - you're definitely not alone.

It can be difficult to teach these skills to students in a way that feels engaging and exciting because let's face it - the skills that we have to teach aren't very exciting. Luckily, there is a solution.

By putting lessons together in a way that focuses on students' interests, you can absolutely change the game in your literacy instruction. Keep reading to learn our step-by-step process for putting these lessons together.

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!

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.

Following the Science of Reading requires many lesson components we should be including in our literacy instruction.

Between explicitly teaching the 5 Core Components of Literacy, targeting student needs, tracking data, and pulling review activities - it can definitely feel like a lot!

But here’s the thing, research-based instruction that aligns with the Science of Reading does not have to be hard. All you need is a clear framework you can use to plan your lessons in alignment with research-based principles so that you know you are covering everything you need without it feeling super overwhelming!

Have you ever looked through your students’ lesson data and thought - “gosh, they just aren’t getting this?”

We’ve all been there. Today - we are going to break down what you can do when students need more practice and the importance of systematically reviewing previously learned concepts.

Learn the keys to effective literacy intervention implementation likened to driving a car: data fuels the journey, lesson design provides navigation, and execution is akin to driving. Adaptability is crucial, akin to navigating roadblocks. Stay true to research-based principles.

Last week, we talked about how literacy intervention is like driving a car. Today, we are talking about navigating your literacy intervention so that you can help students close the gap as QUICKLY as possible without burning yourself out.

One of the biggest problems we’ve seen over the years is that many students receive solid, research-based intervention, they learn the skills but then are unable to take those skills they’ve learned in the context of a structured and systematic approach and apply it to what they need to be doing in the classroom. They are unable to apply to their classroom reading assignments, their classroom writing assignments.

As more and more barriers are put up in education, it makes it harder for our kids to get the help that they need. We want to encourage you to make reading intervention simple. If we overcomplicate things it is only making it harder for our students to access, for us to deliver, and for students to get what they need. It doesn’t have to be hard. Let it be easy! Click through to find out the ACTUAL approach that will make literacy intervention effective for your students and easier for you!

In online sessions, it is even more essential to review previously learned concepts in case any of the skills weren’t cemented completely. Week to week, we continue to track errors and look for error patterns. If specific skills need to be worked on, we note them and include them in upcoming lessons. One of our favorite ways to do this is playing games. Open to grab one of our free digital games!

One of the most important things you can do for your students is to make sure to have a solid outline for what you will be covering and the order in which you will be covering these patterns.

This ensures that they are getting ALL the skills they need and that they can get used to the lesson format and structure - goodbye negative behaviors!

Today, we wanted to share with you our tip on planning out your intervention lessons. We use a curriculum map that helps to outline the target skills we want to make sure we are hitting in each of our lessons.

Today we wanted to talk about the best way to group students together for your reading intervention groups.

In this quick intervention tip of the week we talk about how important it is to ….

I love to provide literacy based centers that reinforce the learning that took place during the small group time. Students rotate through a series of centers where they can work independently (or with a partner at times) to further engage with literacy experiences. 

 If you look at our Suggested Literacy Block schedule, you will note that SMARTER Intervention lends itself nicely to this type of classroom system. 

One of the most “eye-opening” moments for me in intervention, was when I had a student come in and ask, “what are the other kinds of letters besides vowels and consonants?” I didn’t understand. He asked again and when I explained that those were the only two kinds of letters, he was AMAZED. I had never thought to explain this to him before because I assumed he knew that there were no other types of letters…and that was the problem.