We recommend using a robust benchmarking assessment that looks at students’ progress three times a year: early in the school year, in the middle of the year, and at the end of the school year. We also recommend short progress monitoring check-ins on students’ literacy learning each week or every other week. With students who […]
Decodable books have been used for reading instruction for years. They can be very useful for providing students with opportunities to practice new phonics skills. But many teachers resist using them because of a variety of flaws in some of the decodable books on the market. A great number of decodable books have silly, nonsensical […]
Making Words is an engaging word building activity that helps link your students’ knowledge of letter-sound relationships with phonemic awareness. If you have used this activity in the past, you know how much students learn from it, but I now recommend some changes in how the activity is done so students can practice both encoding […]
I am thrilled with the newest Digital Reader feature: Reading Goals. When we first built the Digital Reader (digitalreader.com), we were thinking about a simple platform that could help teachers access books remotely. We did not imagine it would become such an important resource for you now that you are back in your classrooms!
Shared reading provides a wonderful opportunity to guide and support students as they read aloud together from a large version of text. Our kindergarten students enter school with a wide variety of experiences with books and print. Some may already be readers, while others may have only a little knowledge of letters, sounds, words, and/or […]
by Amy Bowlin When we talk about guided reading, we don’t often think about writing being an important part of the lesson—but it is! Embedded in every Literacy Footprints lesson is an opportunity for students to write about what they read. Writing plays an important role in building students’ literacy skills. Unfortunately, in the hectic […]
As we get ready to launch a new batch of emergent readers–hopefully, this year in school and not remotely–I think it is a good time to consider the purpose of the early-level books we use for instruction. I suspect critics of leveled books misunderstand their purpose. We need to do a better job of explaining […]
I eavesdropped on my granddaughter Mae’s remote first grade class this morning and felt awed by how comfortable the class seemed with participating and conversing online. Mae is doing great, and the best part of the situation is that my son and his family have been here in Florida with us for several weeks—because she […]
I am noticing that we have many Emergent readers spending a long time reading at Levels A and B. If we want to accelerate learning, we need to move students quickly out of the highly patterned text and into Level C. At Level C, there are many more opportunities to learn literacy processing strategies. The […]
Rereading books plays an important role in helping students consolidate new learning and build fluency. The first time a student reads a book, they may have quite a few challenges to work out. Sorting through these challenges can take time and will often slow down beginning readers. It is very important for students to reread […]