Teaching silent letters can be tricky! Silent letters appear all throughout the English language. The most common combinations are wr, kn, gn, and mb. Although I’ve seen that it is common to teach these all at once as “ghost letters”, I actually teach silent letters at different times. Surprisingly, students do tend to catch on very quickly to silent letters.  In this blog post, we’ll explore strategies for teaching silent letters to elementary students. What are Silent Letters? A silent letter is a letter in a word that is not pronounced when the word is spoken aloud. Despite being prese ..read more

As you know, teaching sound-symbol associations, spelling patterns, and syllable constructions is essential for reading success. When I first got into what we call The Science of Reading, my main focus was integrating more phonics. Then, I started learning a bit about morphology and over the years I have been figuring out how to put it all together. I am now totally convinced that we need to teach morphology to our beginning readers early and often. If you haven’t already, please check out my first post about morphology. This will give you a little background before you jump into how to teach ..read more

This morphology post has been a long time coming! I have started and stopped so many times because it feels so big! I have had an interest in morphology for years and have slowly been developing my understanding of morphology and dabbling with how to incorporate morphology in the elementary classroom. I’ve always been hesitant to complete and publish this post because I still don’t have all the answers. But I decided a little snippet about morphology is better than nothing! Morphology is one of the components of a Structured Literacy classroom. To read more about Structured Literacy, clic ..read more

One of the biggest challenges I face as a teacher is figuring out how to organize all of my materials! Creating phonics resources to use with my students actually brings me so much joy, but finding a way to organize and store them sometimes takes the wind out of my sail. Over the years, I’ve tried many different phonics storage solutions! I think I found a system that works for me, based on my space. In case anyone else out there struggles with organization and storage solutions, I thought I’d share what I do. To be honest, I am not an organized person by nature. I really struggle with being s ..read more

Vowel teams can be really tricky for our new readers and can especially be a headache for struggling readers. Let’s dig into what they are and how I teach them. What are Vowel Teams? Vowel teams are two or more letters that together produce one vowel sound. For example, the letters <a> and <i> together make one sound: the long a sound. Vowel teams are one of the syllable types. (Click here to read about all of the syllable types.) I always thought of “vowel teams” as the letter combinations that make one long vowel sound (like ai, oa, ay, ee, etc). However, vowel teams can really i ..read more

Recently I’ve been asked about decodable books: When to use them, why use them, and for how long. This is a hot button issue for many educators! Today I’m going to break down my understanding of both sides, along with my own opinion that has evolved over time. I am supportive of using decodable books for beginning and struggling readers. At the same time, students need to be exposed to rich literature through read-alouds from the beginning. Decodable books are a piece of the pie. It may be a larger piece for certain kids at certain times, but it should never be all that they are eating. (Is th ..read more

Hi everyone! With the sudden pivot to distance learning and the need for digital resources, I started making Boom Decks through Boom Learning. Think of Boom Cards as a digital learning app. It is incredibly user-friendly and engaging for kids. Since I started creating Boom Cards, I’ve had a lot of questions about them lately. Quick facts about Boom Cards: What are Boom Cards? Boom cards are self-grading digital task cards called “decks” with instant feedback. What platform can I use? You can play boom cards on iPads, computers, interactive whiteboards, Chromebooks, iPhones, Android tablets/p ..read more

When you hear someone say silent e words, do you automatically think of words where the silent e makes the first vowel say it’s name? Did you know that silent e does so more than that? I did not know there were so many jobs of the silent e when I started teaching. In fact, I didn’t know this even after teaching ten years! When I started learning some of the “secrets” to our language, I had so many aha moments. I call them secrets because it feels like they are secrets sometimes. Why aren’t these rules taught to all teachers in education programs? Why wasn’t I taught this? That mystery I cannot ..read more

Applying the alphabetic principal is the first step with phonics instruction. Once students learn these first sound-symbol relationships, they begin to read words. Good alphabet instruction systematically and explicitly teaches sound-symbol associations. In order to learn the letters of the alphabet, students need to first be able to visually discriminate between the different letter shapes. I learned from David Kilpatrick that we do not memorize words through visual memory. The input is visual, but the storage of those words are orthographic, phonological, and semantic. (Read a blog post abo ..read more

Effective spelling instruction emphasizes the structure of the English language. I’d like to start this post by throwing my past teacher self under the bus. That’s right, I can honestly tell you that I made a lot of mistakes for years. Was I dedicated? Heck yeah! Did I have the right intentions? For sure! Did I think I was doing the right thing? You betcha! For many years,  I treated spelling as an afterthought at best. Sure, I had spelling tests and did a little phonics instruction here and there, but I wasn’t teaching it well and I wasn’t assessing it properly either. Most importantly ..read more