Good spellers aren’t born, they are taught! Nearly 90 percent of English words can be spelled if a student knows basic patterns, principles, and rules of spelling. Good spellers end up as better readers and writers.
In this special Reading Rockets video series, experts answer real questions from families about reading and writing, and how to support their children at home.
Learn more about the four types of reading assessments: universal screeners, diagnostic tests, progress monitoring tools, and summative assessments. It’s important to begin by asking yourself: “What do I want to know about my students? What do I want to assess?”
The best strategy for developing reading fluency is to provide your students with many opportunities to read the same passage orally several times. To do this, you should first know what to have your students read. Second, you should know how to have your students read aloud repeatedly.
If 40 percent of all third-graders are not reading adequately today, reducing this substantially by the time children being born today reach third grade will be an enormous undertaking.
It’s not an easy thing, learning to read. This article provides a brief overview of what is involved and what parents, teachers, and everyone else who touches the life of a child can do to help those who struggle.
We need to do a better job with definitions in our field, and I’d start with making sure that everyone is recognizing the distinctions among curriculum and instruction and assessment.
There are many beliefs and a great deal of dogma associated with reading acquisition, and people are often reluctant to let go of their beliefs despite contradictory research evidence. Here are 10 of the most popular and most potentially pernicious myths that influence reading education.
A science of reading requires that our prescriptions for teaching be tempered by rigorous instructional evaluations. If a claim hasn’t been tried out and found effective, then the claims aren’t part of reading science.
Learn about the “writing rope” — a model for understanding the interwoven elements that support writing, developed by literacy expert Joan Sedita. Get the basics on the five key strands and how to provide explicit instruction for each strand.
This guidance from the International Reading Association represents a consensus of the thinking of literacy leaders in the field who support thoughtful implementation of the Standards for student literacy achievement. Seven key topics are addressed: use of challenging texts; foundational skills; comprehension; vocabulary; writing; content area literacy; and diverse learners.
Screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring are essential to making sure that all students become fluent readers — and the words-correct per-minute (WCPM) procedure can work for all three. Here’s how teachers can use it to make well-informed and timely decisions about the instructional needs of their students.
