Thankfully, as teachers, college taught us everything we need to know about teaching the sounds of English… right?! Wait. Did you learn everything you needed to know? I hope so, but I often hear from teachers who felt ill-prepared to teach certain concepts in their classroom. (And I personally used to have some gaps in my own knowledge!) Information about the different sounds of English is something I wish I had learned earlier in my teaching career. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn about this until later on. Knowing it now, though, has helped me understand more deeply how Eng ..read more

Quite often, children who struggle with reading often struggle with phonemic awareness. And that makes sense, right? If you have trouble hearing the sounds in words, it’s going to be harder to put sounds together when you’re decoding. It’s also going to be harder to spell words if you can’t clearly hear their sounds. Phoneme blending and segmenting are two critical components of phonological awareness. It’s beneficial (especially for K-1 teachers) to spend a few minutes each day working on developing students’ phonemic awareness skills, both with and without letters. Even with this level of in ..read more

Another name for how-to writing is “procedural nonfiction.” It’s all around us, and we may not even know that! Even as adults, we come across how-to writing all the time! Sometimes it’s step-by-step guides, like “How to Assemble XYZ Piece of Furniture.” Or it could be directions for a new game given as a gift. How-to books, in its simplest terms, teach the reader how to do something.  In theory, how-to writing should be one of the easiest things for students to do! You’re literally asking them to tell you about something they already know how to do. Why, then, can it s ..read more

Are you preparing for an interview for your first reading specialist position? Or considering taking the leap to search for reading specialist jobs? If so, you’ll probably want to rehearse with a list of reading specialist interview questions ahead of time! I remember my own interview for my first reading specialist job like it was yesterday – even though it happened over a decade ago! I was interviewing in a district different from the one where I worked, and I had no idea what to expect. My contact brought me into the interview room, and…I was greeted by about 15 principals! ? The size of my ..read more

Getting Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students to have an opinion is not a difficult task! They love to argue about “the best” and “their favorite” things quite often! You probably hear students talking about: the best pet to have why they deserve extra “free choice” time in the classroom their favorite book from the school library the best season throughout the year It’s easy for most young students to verbalize their own opinions to anyone who will listen! So if they can talk about their opinions, what are some fun ways to get them writing about different ..read more

Have you ever considered becoming a reading specialist? Or wondered what exactly a reading specialist does? In this post, I’ll share a complete picture of how to become a reading specialist, as well as what I absolutely love about this job! Before we dive in, however, I want to offer you my A to Z Guide to Becoming a Reading Specialist. This is a free PDF that includes all the information from this post, reading specialist interview questions and sample answers, AND my favorite websites and recommended resources for becoming and working as a reading specialist. Grab the A to Z Guide to Becomin ..read more

A literacy specialist, often referred to as a reading specialist, is an educator who specializes in literacy (skills related to teaching reading and writing). Most literacy specialists, at least in the United States, work in K-12 education. Literacy specialists typically have training above and beyond a bachelor’s degree. Want to know more about what a literacy specialist does to help students? Keep reading! While I’ll share details about the job of a literacy specialist, I’ll first cover some information on how to become a literacy specialist. And by the way, I am a literacy specialist and ha ..read more

If you’re an educator, you probably chose this career because you want to help kids succeed. But what about when a child struggles with reading? You may work with students having issues with: decoding fluency reading comprehension or all of the above! What’s really tricky about reading challenges is that sometimes it looks like a student is struggling with one area, but there’s actually a hidden root cause that isn’t obvious at first. For example, we might see that a second grade student has poor reading fluency and think, oh, we need to focus on building fluency and getting them to read mor ..read more

How do you identify students’ strengths and areas of growth in math? How do you meet this big range of needs? Having a math diagnostic assessment that’s easy to use AND provides data that’s easy to understand is key. You’ll also want the information to be transferred into clear, actionable steps. In this post, I’ll go through a free math diagnostic assessment I offer. I’ll explain how to use it, the different components, and most importantly, what to do with the information once you’re done. What Is A Math Diagnostic Assessment? A math diagnostic assessment is used to “diagnose” or ident ..read more

Sound boxes, or Elkonin boxes, are an effective tool for visually showing students individual sounds in words. They can be a great way to help students make a connection between phonological awareness skills and phonics. Let’s first go through a few definitions: phonological awareness = refers to the awareness of sounds in words (no letters involved) phonemic awareness = one (important) type of phonological awareness; phonemic awareness is the awareness of individual speech sounds, like the /m/ sound in “moon” or the /sh/ sound in “fish” phonics = the relationship between sounds and letters ..read more