Traci Sorell writes award-winning fiction and nonfiction for young people of all ages, focusing primarily on the contemporary lives of Native peoples. Her debut nonfiction picture book We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga, illustrated by Frané Lessac, won an American Indian Youth Literature Award (AIYLA) Honor, an Orbis Pictus Honor, a Sibert Honor, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor. A former federal Indian law attorney and policy advocate, Traci is a 2021-22 Tulsa Artist Fellow and Cherokee Nation citizen who lives on her tribe’s reservation in northeastern Oklahoma.
Sound walls support students with learning those tricky high-frequency words. They also support students in retaining and learning to read unfamiliar words on their own. A sound wall does the work of matching our articulation of speech sounds/phonemes to the letters/graphemes that represent those sounds. Learn more about why you should make the switch from word walls to sound walls.
Teaching students to use transition words helps them improve their writing. Transition words help stories flow more smoothly, by providing logical organization and improving the connections between thoughts.
In order to make reading instruction research-based, the research itself must be trustworthy, teachers must be prepared to understand and use it, and efforts must be made to translate research findings into recommendations for instruction. This article describes the issues involved in each of these three areas.
Adventures come in many sizes; some are small, others huge. Some adventures are real, others are imagined. All adventures can be memorable especially during the long, warm days of summer.