...because every child deserves reading success.
Why Calculating Correct Words Per Minute Matters We often find ourselves discussing fluency rate and the proper way to score fluency assessments. Some people are in the camp of counting ‘words per minute’. Others hold the stance of scoring ‘correct words per minute’. We firmly believe in scoring ‘correct words per minute’ because fluency is not just…
Decodable Texts are a Powerful Tool What’s the big deal about decodable texts? Approximately 20% of the population is prone to a language based learning disability. For these learners, reading does not come ‘naturally’. To meet with reading success, repeated opportunities to practice code are non-negotiable. Systematic, sequential, and cumulative practice with the alphabetic…
A Cornerstone for Reading Success What is the Alphabetic Principle? Along with phonemic awareness (the ability to blend and segment the sounds in words), the alphabetic principle is essential for reading success. The alphabetic principle is the understanding that letters and letter patterns represent sounds in the spoken language.
Phonemic Awareness: A Prerequisite for Reading Success What is phonemic awareness and why do young readers need to develop it? It is important to develop phonemic awareness in emergent readers because it is an oral language skill that includes a number of discrete skills: rhyming isolating beginning, middle, and ending sounds segmenting and blending phonemes…
Helping Emergent Readers Pronounce Letter Sounds Correctly What do you mean by there’s a right way and a wrong way to pronounce letters?
Developing Automatic Recognition of Letters and Sounds What are fluency grids? Fluency grids are a simple tool that provides targeted instruction for emergent readers. After careful analysis of a letter-sound assessment, the teacher can create a fluency grid with 2-6 letters requiring additional practice. When instructing emergent readers in letter/sound recognition (i.e. the alphabetic principle), the focus…