Today, we’re taking a bit of a detour away from our typical content. We find this topic SO IMPORTANT that we wanted to take this week of reflection a bit further. Because we just celebrated Thanksgiving here in the States we decided to take this time to reflect with each of you.

Working in the education field can be tough.

Rewarding and incredible, but also tough.

Games are a great way to differentiate your lessons to target specific skills with your students. Every week, we take data to see where our students are growing, where they consistently do well, and where they need extra support. When we find these holes and gaps, we supplement with a review game to target tricky skills.

Alright friends, many of you have been asking us this question and we’re excited to share exactly how we teach spelling to our struggling readers and writers!

Here’s the truth - spelling is tricky!

And it’s usually one of the last abilities to fully progress for our struggling students. We tell students and parents that we expect growth to evolve in phases. We typically start at the sound level (making sure that students can associate sounds to letters), then we move up to the syllable level, then to the word level, phrase level, sentence level, and then finally the passage level.

One of the most common questions we have been getting is how to open a PowerPoint in Google Slides. Many schools use Google platforms for their online classrooms, but not everyone is familiar with how to use Google with lessons that originate in a different format! We’ve broken it down to a few easy steps you can follow to open any of your lessons in Google Slides!

We wanted to take this conversation a step further and dig into some common co-occurring struggles we see in our students with dyslexia. Specifically language, attention, mathematics, and social-emotional difficulties.

So let’s dive in!

Many students struggle to learn how to read effectively or efficiently.

RESEARCH INDICATES THAT THERE ARE THREE DIFFERENT TYPES OF READING DISABILITIES.

These three types of disabilities relate to (if you know us…you’re probably guessing it right now!!!)

YEP…..

The Literacy Processing Triangle

We find that it is CRITICAL to share a few key pieces of information with our stakeholders. Our stakeholders are all of the people who have a vested interest in our students’ success (parents, other educators, administrators, our coworkers, etc). Click into this blog for more tips, tricks, and information.

Today we’re jumping right into one of our favorite things to talk about!

Literacy Intervention Data!!!

We’re fun at parties (well at least back when there used to be parties), trust us…

We know that diagnostic prescriptive instruction following a systematic and structured approach is the most effective way to get students to grade-level and beyond, but how exactly can we provide truly diagnostic and prescriptive instruction?

Here’s the deal, structured and systematic literacy intervention will get your students 90% of the way there. The true magic lies in the last 10%.

If you know us well by now, you know that we are huge proponents of evidence-based (research-based) literacy intervention. It is absolutely CRITICAL that we be following evidence-based practices especially to get our struggling readers to grade level.

But here’s the issue - and it’s a big issue because nobody is really talking about it.

It’s not enough alone.

If you have been with us for a while, then you know we get super excited when it comes to data. We love using it to write treatment plans for students, to monitor growth, to assess whether or not the student needs something different, etc. We use data to make every decision in our intervention and we wouldn’t be able to run our practice effectively without it.

So, when we transitioned to seeing students online, the natural question was how in the world we’d be able to assess and progress monitor virtually.

This is a bold claim - we understand. But here’s the thing we’ve noticed after years of intervention work and years of working with hundreds of literacy interventionists.

The culture of literacy intervention has built up this idea that we have to be perfect to get started. This idea that if we don’t do everything just so …. our students will suffer. It’s led to this idea that there is a “perfect way” to implement effective literacy intervention.

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.

So we asked our Intervention Insiders Community to give us feedback on what’s up with online intervention. And we received some really awesome questions. So we wanted to take this week to dive in and answer some of those questions.

Today - we wanted to share some of the physical materials we’re finding helpful in keeping our online sessions engaging. Now, most of our students are doing AMAZINGLY well at adapting to the online space.

While programs can and often will give suggested guidelines on where to start a student, how quickly to move through the program, and how to instruct the material, it is still your space to use clinical/professional judgement and to fill in concepts and review as needed. Trust your intuition - you know your students best!

It’s that time of year again - back to school. In the weeks that are usually filled with fresh school supplies, neatly organized classrooms/offices, excitement and butterflies, this year seems off. Whether you are returning to school in-person, students are returning in a hybrid-model, or you are seeing students completely virtually, for many, this back-to-school season has been nothing short of confusing and frustrating.

In order to hopefully make your transition into this school year a bit less overwhelming, we wanted to share 3 secrets that will help you be prepared for whatever this year throws your way.

The problem for many of our students is that they don’t know how to format paragraphs or more complex written pieces effectively. So just like we do with all other aspects of literacy, we put together a framework for students to follow.