Before You Sign Up for Another Professional Development Opportunity, Read This
At the time I’m writing this, my kids are at soccer camp, and I’m sitting at the kitchen table trying to decide what to do…
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The Invisible Cognitive Load of Structured Literacy Teaching
Why teachers need systems, not more random resources If you know even the slightest bit about structured literacy teaching, you know that so much of…
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When Doing More Stops Working: A Sustainable Approach to Orton Gillingham Teaching
There is a moment that many Orton Gillingham teachers eventually reach. It usually does not happen at the beginning. At first, there is excitement. Teachers…
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The Summer Confidence Gap: Why Struggling Readers Need Maintenance, Not More School
Every year around this time, the same question comes up: how do we prevent the “summer slide”? But for struggling readers, especially students with dyslexia,…
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Why Teaching Suffixes Matters More Than Memorizing a List
There is a moment many of us have seen before. A student comes to a longer word in a connected text, pauses, stares at it,…
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Teaching Assimilated Prefixes in Structured and Systematic Way
If your students can decode big words but still misspell them, assimilated prefixes might be the missing piece. These are prefixes that change their spelling…
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Discourse in Structured Literacy: What It Is, Why It Matters (Especially for Dyslexia), and How to Teach It in OG Lessons
There is a moment many of us have seen. A student reads a decodable passage accurately. Maybe even fluently. Then you ask, “So what happened?”…
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How to Teach Rich Vocabulary While Students Still Read Basic Decodables
A teacher emailed me recently with a question that hits right at the heart of structured literacy and basic decodables. She said (and I’m paraphrasing…
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How to Make Sure Your Morphology Instruction Isn’t Happening on an Island
As Orton-Gillingham educators, teachers often wear many hats. In a single lesson, they may be teaching phonics, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, handwriting and reading comprehension. With…
