Do you have students who still struggle with the basic concepts of addition and subtraction? Has the rest of the class moved far ahead of these students? As a special ed teacher, I always said, “Let’s go back to the beginning.”

Sometimes crayons tell more than words

When teaching with decodables, how do you access comprehension? This post discusses using illustration as a means to comprehension.

Ditch it! 3 Literacy Practices that Need to Go. And what can you do instead?

1. Popcorn or round robin reading

2. Silent Reading: Sustained silent reading (SSR) and Drop Everything and Read (DEAR)

3. Rote Spelling Assignments (Such as Rainbow Reading)

If you are teaching reading with decodable books, hooray! Learning to decode using a structured, explicit phonics program is the best way to teach beginning readers. The only problem is that books labeled decodable are not all created the same.

It is everywhere! Podcasts, Facebook groups, blogs. Quick! Get on board or you’ll be behind the times! What exactly, is the Science of Reading?

Do you have students who are “stucK” on learning the letters of the alphabet? Do you have students who have “given up” on learning to identify letters? If so, there IS help. It’s a resource called MATCH-SELECT-NAME Alphabet Intervention & Letter Recognition Activities. This is an explicit, errorless method specifically designed for students who have Down Syndrome, autism, hearing problems, and for typical kindergarten and first grade students who need intervention.

We’ve all seen the lists: 100 Frequently used Sight Words that students need to know. If you are like me, you probably printed them out, and made flashcards for students to learn. Also like me, you probably realized that students were easily bored with flashcards alone.

If you have students with Down Syndrome, autism, or other learning challenges you know that this process needs to be broken down into steps. In the Fry Sight Words Learning bundle you can easily help students move through these steps.

Strong number sense is the foundation for all the building blocks of mathematics that follow. Despite its importance, number sense can be difficult to define. It may be because many of the concepts of number sense are acquired through everyday life and not through formal learning. In general, young children arrive at school already knowing what it means to have two turns at a game or to have five grapes to eat. But for some children, especially those with disabilities, those concepts must be explicitly taught. In this article we will define number sense as well as offer strategies to strengthen it in students.

Do you know how to differentiate a reading passage? It’s not as difficult as you might think! The simplest way to differentiate a passage is to:

• Substitute simpler vocabulary

• Break long sentences into two (or more) shorter sentences

Do you have students who have been unable to read despite years of phonics instruction?

Do you have students who still have not mastered their letter names and/or sounds?

Do you have students who have “given up” on learning how to read?

There is an alternative! A reading method that can teach struggling readers to read in just a few minutes! It’s called…

MATCH-SELECT-NAME