One of the most important things we have to consider when we are supporting struggling students is:

How we will measure student progress?

This is absolutely CRITICAL in making sure that the plan we have designed to help them get back on track is actually working. This is proof that we are on track.

As parents of struggling students, we need to be requesting this information.

As educators responsible for delivering on student plans and goals we need to be sure we are tracking this information.

So the question becomes, what on earth are we looking for and how do we appropriately measure student progress?

In order to close the gap, we need to have appropriate goals based on individual student needs. As part of an IEP goals are set in specific areas. If a student is struggling in a specific area (e.g., language skills, motor ability, reading, writing, math, etc) they should receive goals in those specific areas.

As you know, we are obsessed with helping students reach their highest potential. In order to do this you must follow the ASSESS -> DESIGN -> IMPLEMENT framework. First, we must assess students with a combination of formal and informal assessment measures. Then we must design an appropriate plan and finally, we must implement the plan at the highest level.

The process of diagnosing dyslexia can often feel like this huge mysterious task! It is truly this multiple step challenge for parents, educators, medical professionals, and other professionals working with struggling students. Let’s break this down.

This week we are so excited to share information on identifying student challenges.

One of the most challenging aspects of helping a struggling reader is understanding specifically where and why they are struggling.

Once we can understand the specific areas in which a student is breaking down and/or the cause of the breakdown we can begin providing targeted instruction and intervention.

In honor of dyslexia awareness month, we wanted to take this opportunity to dispel some common myths about dyslexia and to provide further information to go check out if you’re worried your child or one of your students may have dyslexia.

Let’s dive right in…

We are wrapping up the 5 Core Components of Literacy this week with the final component, arguably the most important component, comprehension!

The end goal of reading is obviously…

Reading Comprehension

So how do we make sure that students are able to effectively comprehend what they read?

Reading fluency is really important however, we need to be careful not to over-emphasize its importance as one of the core components of literacy. I say this because Reading Fluency is one of the most common goals you will see created for struggling students.

This month we’ve been talking all about the 5 Core Components of Literacy. Today, we wanted to jump into an extremely important and yet often overlooked part of literacy instruction.

Many educators in the field have a love hate relationship with phonics. In the sense that some educators love a phonics approach one week and hate it the next (it can be extremely difficult to organize it all for Pete’s sake). And…some educators LOVE a phonics-based approach and others hate it in favor of a more whole-language approach.

Phonological Awareness is the understanding of the sound structure of our English language. This is a critical component of literacy development and must be included in effective reading instruction programs!

We cannot begin to “sound words out” if we don’t understand that letters represent sounds that string together to read words or pull apart to spell words.

We all know that this can be such a sticking point for our dyslexic kiddos. It's important to note that many students display difficulty with b/d until the end of second grade or about the age of 8. By the time a child is 8 years old the dreaded b/d reversal should be pretty much gone.

We’ve learned that by turning simple reading tasks into games it will provide students with the repetition they need to see success. We try to turn EVERYTHING into games and you’d be surprised because even those of you with older students will see that they enjoy this “gamification” of instruction as well.

Mastering English reading and spelling involves understanding blends and digraphs. Explore our comprehensive guide to teaching these crucial patterns effectively. From phonological awareness to real-world application, we provide strategies and resources for seamless learning.

Teaching early reading skills relies on working from the most basic skills and activities that students need to learn to be successful in the classroom and building a slow and steady progression of sounds. We recognize that teaching letter sounds and beginning blending is truly only one aspect to learning to read but it’s absolutely critical.

One of our favorite things to do with our students is to create interactive notebooks. We absolutely love it because it is a really great way to start off your systematic, structured, reading intervention. It's also a great way to keep students engaged!

Phonological awareness is a key foundation for building early reading skills.

It's an umbrella term that essentially refers to the ability to break words into individual sounds, blend sounds to create words (sounding it out), and the ability to manipulate sounds in our language through tasks like rhyming, changing the ending sounds of words or the order of words (like in Pig Latin).

One of the most effective ways to teach reading and spelling skills is to teach students about the Six Syllable Types and how to divide words into syllables using syllable division strategies. When we teach reading, we teach our students that sounds (consonant sounds and vowel sounds) come together to create syllables, syllables come together to create words, words come together to create phrases and sentences, and sentences come together to create paragraphs, which come together to create stories or information text.