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!

We are so excited to share this resource with you today! Scoop Spelling changed my life! This strategy brought such relief to my students who struggled to spell multi-syllable words correctly and instantly boosted their confidence! This strategy is so simple to use!

First, make sure that your students are solid on syllabication; what syllables are and how to count them. This knowledge is the key to Scoop Spelling. If a student knows or can hear how a word breaks apart into syllables, then they can Scoop Spell!

Have you ever found yourself rifling through a drawer full of task cards, looking for the set that you need, only to pull out torn pages and crumpled, incomplete sets? We get it - we’ve been there too! Keep reading to learn more about the system we use to keep all of our task cards, flashcards, and review games organized.

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!

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!

We’re so glad you’re here. Now over the last month, we’ve been talking all about how to use the Science of Reading and effective reading instruction strategies to support students with varying needs. We’ve talked about supporting students who are reading on grade level, supporting students who struggle with decoding and word recognition, we’ve talked about supporting students who struggle with comprehension, and today we’re going to talk about our last group of students, students who struggle with word recognition and comprehension. Click through to learn more!

Today, we’re diving right into a pretty loaded topic! We wanted to start the conversation around what students need in order to effectively comprehend lessons in the classroom and what they need to be able to write effectively to demonstrate their knowledge.

Now obviously, this isn’t something we can fully communicate/solve in a single blog post. But … we do have a really good starting point! And, don’t worry, we also have some really good follow-up coming your way!

We know that we have a massive reading gap for so many students…

Knowing what we know - we keep questioning -

Why do we have so many struggling students when the research is clear on what evidence-based practices MUST look like to support our struggling readers?

Ultimately, there are a LOT of potential answers and factors at play when we consider this question but for us, it really comes down to 3 major categories. And…because we always teach our students to use graphic organization strategies to make sense of and organize information, we felt compelled to do the same!

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 ….

When students are struggling - it’s hard to know where to start and what the most important steps are in providing support to get them to where they need to be.

After working with hundreds of students, and evaluating thousands of students, we’ve realized that the most important thing that parents and educators can do to support struggling students actually has nothing to do with intervention or tutoring, accommodations, modifications, IEP or 504 Plans…

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. 

We’ve been there.

Planning for our students had us stressed. It had us burning out and tired. It was nothing short of exhausting, and on top of that, our students weren’t connecting with it. They weren’t growing in a way we would expect knowing how much work we were putting into it.

…and then we figured out why.

One of the best ways we can skyrocket student success in literacy is by setting the intention to do so. So obviously, if we want students to improve their literacy ability we need to recognize that they need to improve their literacy ability...

After that, the #1 thing you can do to improve a student's literacy ability is to set specific and measurable goals.

It's that time of year again! Time to go back to school! For some of your kids, this might be an exciting time. They are excited about new teachers and school supplies, and can't wait to see their friends again. 

For other kids, this may seem like the worst time of year. They might be anxious about the amount of work they will have this year, or having a new teacher. 

If you have been keeping up with our blogs, you will know that all this month we are talking about ways we can help cement strategies for our students who just aren't getting it.  If you are new to our blog, welcome! You can catch up on our last two posts here: 3 Ways to Generalize Skills Learned in Isolation and Is it Just My Kids, Or...

Does this sound familiar to you…..

Parent: How was your day?

Kid: Good.

Parent: That’s great! What did you do?

Kid: Nothing.

This month we are going to be talking about ways to cement stragies used during intervention. The tough part about this is that typically our students are at all different levels, and so many of these strategies need to be differentiated or scaffolded based on student ability.

A lot of our families ask how we can generalize the skills their children learn in an intervention setting into the home, and even the classroom, instead of just practicing them in isolation.

Discover effective strategies to support students struggling with emotional regulation in the classroom. Learn how to help them name their feelings, communicate appropriately, and regulate emotions positively. Empower your students for success!