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Category: Morphology

Must-Have Morphology Resources

Morphology 101: Getting Started with Teaching Morphemes

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🏫FYI, I'm talking about school here, but if can

🏫FYI, I'm talking about school here, but if can be used in other parts of your life I'm not here to gatekeep quotes.

😟This is where I was as a balanced literacy teacher. New information came out, and I just couldn't fit it in with what I had been taught about how children learned to read.

😠So I rejected the evidence, I got angry, and I kept doing what I was doing. But, I eventually began to listen. And I looked at my own teaching, and when I realized that my scores were not matching what I wanted, I understood that maybe there was something to all this.

❤️It's okay to be angry when new information comes in that challenges some of your core beliefs. And it's okay to need time to process it. You don't have to change your mind just because someone told you that you were wrong or your way isn't the most effective way.

❤️But what I do hope is that we will all listen, and that we eventually make shifts in our teaching based on what EVIDENCE is showing us, not emotions. Because as Pam Kastner said, our only fidelity should be to the evidence.

❤️If this reminder spoke to you, don't forget to like and share!

#readingteacher #scienceofreading

📚If you're teaching from a core curriculum, cha

📚If you're teaching from a core curriculum, chances are there's lots of texts that you're supposed to read outloud to your students. And, well, they aren't all equally interesting.

😃So what can we do to keep ALL students engaged during a read-aloud? With a little planning and a few simples ideas, your read-alouds can go from unengaging and boring to one where all students participate and learn.

1️⃣ Short, targeted independent reading: Even in a read-aloud, you can ask students to read some of the text themselves. I preview the text, then choose a paragraph or a few sentences that I think the students can read on their own. I ask all students to whisper read it to themselves. (This works well when students have their own copy of the text.)

2️⃣ Thumbs up/thumbs down. Never underestimate the power of a simple physical movement to keep kids engaged. I don't care if it's thumbs up/thumbs down, having cards with yes/no, asking them to sit or stand: if you can get students engaged in movement while reading, it will help with engagement.

3️⃣ Partner Chats: Turn and Talk, EEKK, whatever you call it. Having MEANINGFUL questions for kids to ask each other is a powerful way to keep the engagement high and the learning going.

4️⃣ When all kids have the text in front of them, highlighting is powerful. Ask them to highlight the answer to a question you have in a specific paragraph. While reading, I'll tell my students "As I'm reading outloud, I want you to think about this question. When I read the answer, highlight and be ready to share."

5️⃣ Cloze Drop: While reading, drop off in the middle of a sentence and ask students to finish. This is especially powerful when they have to read outloud a key idea from the paragraph.

❓Which of these do you want to give a try? Are there any you are already doing or something else we could do? Let me know your thoughts and ideas in the comments below!

#readaloud #readingteacher #readingclass #teachingreading

🦀If you are a teacher in Virginia, STOP what yo

🦀If you are a teacher in Virginia, STOP what you are doing! If you're not in Virginia, I think you're going to want to hear this anyway!

👇Comment "trouble" below and I'll DM the 🔗to listen!

📚In this episode, Mike Crusco joins me as we discuss the problems with the newest universal screener in Virginia-the Virginia Language and Literacy Screener (VALLSS).

📖While the statewide universal screener, PALS, certainly needed to be updated, there are still several problems with the new screener that need to be addressed. This episode is specific for the Virginia assessment, but is useful for all educators as many states are passing literacy acts with specific requirements.

⏺️In this episode, Mike and I discuss:

📍What VALLSS is and how it has changed from PALS,
📍Why VALLSS is NOT a universal screener, despite the claim that it is,
📍Why the information is useful but not necessary,
📍and what we hope will change.

↗️Mike and I both believe that the Virginia Literacy Act and VALLSS were created in good faith, but there are places we can and should improve.

😍If you're a teacher in Virginia, this is a must-listen. If you're a teacher outside of Virginia, use this episode to guide you in the future as new legislation comes through wherever you live! Tag a friend who needs to hear.

👇Comment "trouble" below and I'll DM the 🔗to listen!

#universalscreener #assessment #readingteacher #wecandobetter

📚David Kilpatrick was one of the very first peo

📚David Kilpatrick was one of the very first people I read when I entered the world of structured literacy. When I read about phonemic awareness, I remember thinking I had finally found the magic wand to solve my reading troubles.

🪄It took a few years, but I finally realized that there is no magic wand when it comes to teaching reading, and the ideas about phonemic awareness that have been floating around aren't actually rooted in research.

❓What does the research say? We know from the National Reading Panel and other research a few things:

📌segmenting and blending are the most important skills to teach
📌10-15 minutes a day of oral-only phonemic awareness instruction is unnecessary
📌The more skills you teach at one time, the less effective the instruction is
📌We don't have evidence to support a need for teaching advanced phonemic awareness skills (adding, subtracting, substituting, deleting
📌There's actual evidence to support some proficient readers struggle with advanced phonemic awareness tasks.

❓So where does that leave us? We teach segmenting and blending in short, targeted ways, like asking students to segment and blends words with a particular phonics patterns before we teach the sound-symbol relationship.

😍And you KNOW I've worked to make all our lives easier by creating phoneme lists that are just print and go. I keep these lists in a binder right by my lessons because I can pull them out at any point, choose a skill, and practice the kind of phonemic awareness instruction that will move my students forward.

🙀If you need these lists too, comment "target" and I'll DM the link to purchase!

#phonemicawareness #phonemes #structuredliteracy #readingteacher

📗A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in

📗A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. For example, -ed is a morpheme that denotes past tense. Struct is a morpheme that means “to build.” A word can be a single morpheme (like Virginia), or have multiple morphemes (like construction).

📙Morphology is the study of those morphemes.

❓But what is morphological awareness?

🤩Morphological awareness is “the ability to reflect on, analyze, and manipulate the morphemic elements in words”(Carlisle et. al., 2010, p.266).

🗣️For me, the easiest way to understand this was to think of phonemic awareness. Morphological awareness is like phonemic awareness, except we are looking at tasks at the morpheme level instead of the phoneme level.

📌When a child can recognize “structure” has something to do with building because they had learned “struct,” that is morphological awareness.

📌When a kindergartner says “I goed to school,” that is an example of morphological awareness (even if it is wrong) because they are understanding they can manipulate words to indicate tense.

📌When a child can pull off prefixes and suffixes to get to the root of a word, that’s morphological awareness.

❓Was this helpful? Make sure you save this reel for when you need it next! (And you know I would love a share!)

#morphology #morpheme #morphemicawareness

📚Last year, I sat on my district's textbook ado

📚Last year, I sat on my district's textbook adoption committee.

🗣️And let me tell you, those salespeople are GOOD. They promise you the world on a silver platter, and there's so much materials and information that you can't possibly read through and evaluate ALL of it.

🙀So I'm curious: what has been your experience with adoption a textbook? Have they overpromised and underdelivered? Let me know in the comments!

#teacherfunny #itdbefunnierifitwasnttrue

🖨️In the past, I've talked about my favorite

🖨️In the past, I've talked about my favorite decodables, from the best printed ones to the best for word/sentence level.

📅Over the past few years, however, there has been a huge surge in the number of decodables out there. Before, the resources were limited: now it seems like there are too many to even make a choice.

💻So in this week's blog post, I'm sharing my favorite printed decodables. I share:

📖Aligning to your scope and sequence
📖Charge Into Reading decodables from @chargemommybooks
📖Decodables from @justrightreader
📖Decodable books and a NEW decodable product from @syllasense
📖 Decodables for older readers from @phonicbooks
📖Questions to ask when considering a decodable text.

🛍️ I've intentionally chosen decodables from mostly small businesses, mainly from women. Why? Well, besides the obvious of supporting smaller businesses, it tends to be these publishers that get it right.

💵While mega-million dollar corporations are adding on decodables to be trendy, these individuals and small business have made it their life's mission to get it right. Why WOULDN'T I promote them over anyone else?

❓Ready to find your next favorite decodables? Comment "decode" below and I'll DM the 🔗to the blog post!

#decodablereaders #decodablebooks #decodable #decoablestories

🔡Teaching the foundational skills of letter sou

🔡Teaching the foundational skills of letter sounds, phonemic awareness, and phonics is not easy, but IT IS straightforward.

🔤I can go through a specified sequence to teach skills, ensuring mastery of a particular skill and moving through the next.

🧠But comprehension isn't so straightforward. And, like a house of cards, it can collapse at any moment.

📚There are so many factors that go into comprehension, like background knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, literacy knowledge, syntax, etc.

📚To make it even trickier, comprehension can fall apart at any point, from the very first card you lay down (the word level), through to the entire house of cards (the text level).

📚As teachers, we have to anticipate those challenges and design our instruction carefully, looking at each text and thinking through before, during, and after reading activities.

🙅‍♀️It is NOT easy, but there are some ways we can perhaps be more thoughtful about the way we design our comprehension instruction.

❓Want to learn more? Comment "cards" and I'll DM the link to my free webinar on Improving Comprehension (Even if you have to follow a basal!)

#readingcomprehension #teachingreading #readingteacher #readingintervention #comprehension

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