For The Love Of Literacy

Many students who struggle with literacy also struggle with math. Understanding the number system requires engaging linguistic, cognitive, executive functions and conceptual understanding -- just like literacy. Meaning is as important to math learning as it does in literacy. Math that is taught as a series of isolated procedures, facts and “islands of knowledge” disconnected from meaning will make little sense - just as it does with reading. Math makes sense when students...

Teaching about morphemes (the meaningful components of words), sentence structure (syntax) and grammar (the framework for organizing words and sentences) isn’t hard, once you learn about two new resources: Mary Beth Steven’s Dramatic Scripts and Meghan Hicks and Louise Hewitt’s The Sentence Studio. In fact, you can learn about these vital components of language as you teach your students by using their scripts, sentence and text practices. Their common goal is to create insightful readers and...

If you have ever wondered why your students struggle with word reading, or read accurately but with limited comprehension, then you may want to flip your approach to reading instruction. Start at the sentence level by using Xiuhong Tong and Hélène Deacon’s groundbreaking Linguistics Pathways Model, which provides two parallel paths leading to reading comprehension. The first pathway leads to word recognition by morphological decoding. Deacon and Tong show how word reading and meaning arise fr...

Bonnie Feeney, a dyslexic mother and Jen Petrich, her PhD neuroscientist daughter discuss dyslexia from a unique perspective—one of from a journey of personal discovery and the other from studying brain science. Hear how their journeys came together, enriching both their lives. Learn the difficulties that dyslexics confront within and beyond the classroom. Dyslexics share more than a diagnosis and supporting them requires more than just a reading intervention. They deserve our respect a...

“Spell what you mean, not just what you hear,” is researcher and speech pathologist Kim Murphy’s advice to students. While spelling instruction often focuses on pronunciation, spelling-meaning instruction makes so much more sense to students and their teachers. Graphemes (letter patterns) and morphemes, the meaningful core of every written word, spell words in predictable and consistent ways, even as their pronunciation shifts. Joined by Peter Bowers, creator of Structured Word Inquiry...

Three experienced teachers show how to get even your most resistant students to become fascinated by words and sentences. They explain how to turn memory-draining spelling homework into an activity that enriches vocabulary, sight word mapping and provides a deep understanding of how words are constructed. If morphology and the English spelling system doesn't make sense to you and your students, they will by the end of the podcast. Mary Beth, Lisa and Skot explain how structured word inq...

A wonderful plan for teachers, starting with five-year-old students on up to secondary school, to create a community of students who love exploring language, starting with the written and spoken word. Based on Ann Whiting and Lyn Anderson's beautiful books, A Field Guide to Words and A Year in Words. Children learn how the English spelling system, or orthography, works and how it is the foundation of reading, spelling and writing. Children learn to explore the three components of the spelling...

The High Frequency Word Project, is an explicit, systematic resource that teaches the 130 high frequency words using strategies that make them stick. Each of these critical words is taught on multiple levels, from sounds and spellings to the morphological meaning, and how they are defined in sentences. Each word is further defined using something new: linguistically-accurate and fascinating stories about high frequency words’ etymologies providing the missing link to explain the mysterious pa...

Would you like to turn your Read Alouds into a dynamic lesson that improves language comprehension - the upper strands of Scarborough's Rope - as well as reading comprehension and sentence writing? Trina Spencer and Doug Peterson not only have been researching these topics for decades but have made Story Champs, a series of ready-to-use stories and scaffolds. See their videos below and watch a 15 minute lesson were a student goes from describing a story in three words to retelling the story u...

Listen to three of the most important voices in literacy, Linnea Ehri, Peter Bowers and Kenn Apel, talk about the important role of morphology in reading, vocabulary, spelling and sight word development. Linnea Ehri updates her theory of orthographic mapping to emphasize the role that morphology plays not just in the four initial phases but when words are stored in sight word memory directly - without needing to be sounded out. The spelling of morphemes is critical to developing sight w...

Jennifer Constantine and Kara Lee have written an implementation guide to one of the most exciting areas of literacy instruction - Structured Word Inquiry. They are the authors of Structured Word Inquiry – An Implementation Guide for Teachers. About the book: We invite you to uncover the transformative power of Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) with this comprehensive implementation guide. SWI unveils the orderly structure underlying English spelling and empowers educators to demystify its comp...