Simply For Teachers

  Your students have the skills, but it's not coming together into correct sentences....you have some options! Correct sentence level writing is imperative for successful paragraphs and essays.   When a student struggles in writing, many times we find that they are struggling at the sentence level.  By drilling down to the basics, we can give students the confidence to compose complete and meaningful sentences. Some of these strategies can be used in our whole group instruction, a Tier One intervention.  By establishing routines that support sentence level writing, we are giving our students expectations & shared language that you can take to a tier two in small groups. Approaches like Modeling & Shared Writing are easy ways to infuse sentence level instruction into your daily routines for the entire class. CUPS is a simple & meaningful self-monitoring tool that can be taught and used with the entire class.  The approach teaches studen...

  Decoding is going great!  Now we have to work on fluency....so what can we do when it's not natural?  Here are some various ways that you can address fluency, more specifically rate & prosody.   These approaches range from intensive, direct instruction to practice and independent.  You can use a combination of these methods or pick one to start implementing today!  Remember, you are the secret sauce!  Teachers make the difference and pick what works best for their instruction & students. In my opinion, rereading works well for most students....but sometimes we need more explicit instruction.  All of these options can be highly effective, so just start trying them out.   Visit my TPT store Simply Primary, for resources that support exercises like rereading, smiles & eyeballs and "fun voices". Try decodable sentences : Try decodable readers : Thank You!

  High Frequency Words refers to words that are the most frequently found in text.  It is an umbrella term and can encompass words that are both irregular and regular.  For this purposes of answering this question, I am deliberately using the term "high frequency words".   You've taught the words you need your student(s) to know but they are still struggling with recognizing these words in text (or in isolation)......now what? Here are some elements to incorporate in your weekly instruction.... Incorporating these elements into your core routine will help with retention.  However, some students need some more support.  Try these strategies to further help your students obtain the necessary orthographic mapping.... You can find some print and go high frequency word curriculums with everything you need for an entire year in my TPT Store, Simply Primary. Features: words organized in marking period lists quarterly assessments quarterly letters for fam...

  Welcome to the next post in our series....What do I do when? This post will focus on the encoding side of using sounds...spelling!  Remember that reading and writing are two sides of the same coin. We should not teach them in isolation, but respect their relationship and teach them in tandem.   We teach the sounds in isolation paired with the correct grapheme, so we are teaching students to not only recognize the grapheme/sound relationship (phonics/decoding) but also to be able to produce the correct grapheme when given the sound (spelling/encoding). By directly instructing these two actions we are establishing the connection between speaking, reading, and writing.  This is a very powerful way to establish literacy skills. Let's say you've been directly teaching the sound/letter relationships and your student(s) can recognize them and even produce them when in isolation....but when they go to spell it all falls apart.  Now what? How can you help them mak...

One of the best parts of my job is problem solving.  Literacy is so complex and we have to troubleshoot to find what works best for our students.  Daily, I have conversations with teachers about "what to do when".  There is never one "right" answer or one approach that works for everyone.  Instead, I present a series of options because I know that each situation is slightly different. Welcome to the "What Do I Do When..." series!  I'll be posing common questions or problems that teachers bring to me regularly and how we approach them together.   Our first question "What do I do when a student can say the sounds but cannot blend?"... Again, there is no silver bullet.  As teachers, we have to be prepared with a number of possible solutions.  The best advice is to start at the simplest possible solution, monitor, and respond.  For example with this particular question I would first want to know how explicitly the teacher is modeling blendin...

  Picture books are one of the most meaningful and engaging instructional tools we have at our disposal as teachers.  They are wide reaching in content and theme.  We use them to model and to entertain....daily (at least we should). Using picture books to drive discussions around important topics, such as gratitude level the playing field for our students.  If nothing else, the events in the story build the background knowledge and set the stage to make connections.  Not all of our students come with wealth of life experiences or vocabulary.  Picture books can bridge that gap!   Plus picture books provide an opportunity to have a discussion around sensitive or difficult topics in a safe space.  When you are talking about the behavior or situation regarding characters, then there is nothing specific to students.  You can talk about the characters or the dilemma without offending anyone or breaching any privacy.  Let me be clear,...