Blends and digraphs are a crucial step forward for young readers. It requires them to put two or more letters together and make a new sound or to smoothly blend the sounds together. We need easy, but yet effective activities to scaffold readers in this skill. One of the first ways to begin is to help students hear the sounds…. View Post
To level books or not to level books? That seems to be the question lately. Lots of debates occur over this topic leveling books, especially on Twitter. I do have leveled books in my classroom and in my school but they are books for guided reading. There is a place for leveled books and that would be for your guided… View Post
It’s time for the RTI meeting so your team can make some informed decisions. You’ve gone through the whole process of universal screenings, placing students in tiers and progress monitoring. Now you need to make decisions based on the data that was collected. But where do you start? It is helpful if you have a guide to get you started… View Post
Progress monitoring is such a powerful tool for your classroom and small groups! We use progress monitoring to gauge student performance in response to instruction. Progress monitoring should drive our instruction decisions. On our recent posts covering RTI, we have covered the How and Why of RTI and Understanding Universal Screenings. Today, we learn about the power in using progress… View Post
We are all about understanding Universal Screenings in our series covering RTI today. RTI (Response to Intervention) is not a program, but a proactive and preventative process that begins with universal screenings. Universal screenings should be given between one and three times per year to check the overall progress of students. Universal screenings are very important to your RTI process!… View Post
RTI (Response to Intervention) seems move people in opposite directions. Either teachers and administrators love it when RTI is implemented well or they hate RTI and feel that it is worthless and time consuming. I am the RTI coordinator for my school. I feel that RTI is so worth it and can help students be successful where before they were… View Post
Our last installment in our series this month on guided reading organization is tips on how to organize student materials for guided reading time. Student reading notebooks, pencils, dry erase markers, etc…can easily become a mess! Things get pushed to the side to be dealt with later because in the moment who has time to deal with it all, right?… View Post