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Campbell Creates Readers Book 1

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🛑Last year, I stopped teaching syllable divisio

🛑Last year, I stopped teaching syllable division rules (tiger, camel, rabbit, turtle.)

📗 I'm not saying you should stop, and I'm not going to try to convince you either. But, just hear me out on why I chose to move away from it.

📘When I was Orton-Gillingham trained, I learned about the syllable division rules. They are basically rules to help children to decode unfamiliar words, and all of the rules are animal names.

🐯🐫Tiger and camel teach children about open and closed syllables in two-syllable words. Rabbit helps with closed syllables, and turtle is the consonant + le syllable.

📙What I found last year was that when I taught the syllable division rules, I also had to teach the syllable types. So I thought, why not just teach the syllable types this year?

📖Instead of teaching about tiger and camel, I just taught about open and closed syllables. If an open syllable doesn't work, try closing it up. For me and my instruction, it felt more simplified.

📘I am NOT telling you to stop teaching syllable division rules. We don't have the research to tell us either way. So this is where you and your teaching decisions come into play. THERE IS NO CORRECT ANSWER FOR THIS.

📖If teaching the syllable division rules has helped your instruction and resulted in gains for your students, then by all means continue it. But if you found yourself feeling like it was one more thing, it's okay to let it go, too.

❤️This is an example of where there are no hard answers or truths. Instead, there is just the well-informed teacher (that's you!), making decisions based on what you know about best practices AND what you know about your students.

👇What are your thoughts? Tell me below!

#syllabledivisions #ortongillingham #teachingreading

🤩When I started writing this blog post, it was

🤩When I started writing this blog post, it was like the floodgates opened. I just couldn't stop writing. I didn't realize how important I felt this topic was, and how much I needed to say

✍️Dictation is simply asking a student to spell a word, phrase, or sentence that you have chosen for them. The goal is to give students practice with the orthographic features you have taught them.

💻In this week's blog post, I'm sharing all things dictation. I discuss:

📍what dictation is
📍basic dictation
📍dictation with sound boxes
📍dictating sentences
📍multisyllabic dictation
📍engagement ideas for dictation

❓Ready to read about this powerful, no-fluff, activity you can start the minute you're done reading the article? Comment "spell" below and I'll DM the 🔗to read!

#dictation #spelling #spellingpractice

❓What should we say when kids are reading? We d

❓What should we say when kids are reading? We don't just want to say "good job" and move on to the next kiddo.

❤️ Instead, we should always be specific with our feedback. When we tell our kiddos the action they took that was successful, they’re more likely to do that same thing again in the future.

👍Today I’m sharing some things I say when kiddos get a word right. These are prompts that offer SPECIFIC praise.

❓Which resonated with you? What would you add to the list?

#feedback #teacherfeedback #readingteacher

❓Have you ever had someone question you why earl

❓Have you ever had someone question you why early intervention is so key?

📚In a world where standardized tests scores can determine funding and so much more, many schools and district will prioritize intervention for upper grades over primary grades in an attempt to ensure success in testing. I get it, it is understandable and all children deserve a chance at success.

📚But the truth is that early intervention could prevent many of these problems, and it is much, much, much easier to remediate children when they are in the primary grades over the upper elementary grades.

📚1 out of every 6 children who are not reading on grade level by the end of third grade won't graduate from high school on time. I'm not willing to sacrifice that amount of children to illiteracy.

❓❓So what's the solution? We make sure children are receiving the best core instruction possible, and we intervene as early as we can. It is only with strong core AND strong intervention that we can circumvent these statistics. It's not one or the other. For our most struggling readers, it has to be both.

❤️Please note, all children can learn and grow at any age. It is just EASIER on everyone--teacher, child, and families--if we can get it right earlier. But difficult does not mean impossible, not matter how old children get.

❤️Like and share if you, too, aren't willing to just live with this statistic. Let's work on changing it so that ALL kids can live their best possible lives.

#readingteacher #readingintervention #structuredliteracy

😍He called it cheating, I call it the entire po

😍He called it cheating, I call it the entire point of teaching morphology. 😍

📗Teaching morphology isn't just about learning a prefix to pass some test on Friday. Instead, it's about understanding word part meanings so that we can then understand MORE word part meanings later when we stumble across unknown words.

❓Did you know I have a 3 page freebie that gives you the definitions for Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Greek prefixes, suffixes, roots, and combining forms? I keep them printed and near my lesson plans so that I don't have to remember every single definition.

👇Comment "list" below and I'll DM the 🔗to download!

📚My weekends used to be spent Googling things l

📚My weekends used to be spent Googling things like "picture books for teaching main idea" and "inferencing task cards."

🎒I had a skill I needed to teach for that week, and I would go and find books to fit that comprehension skill. Well-intended, but I've realized this isn't the most powerful way I can deliver content.

📚Now, instead of having an isolated skill that I find texts for, I choose my texts first, but around a topic or a them . Then, I decide which skills are needed to fully comprehend that text.

🌍When I'm choosing texts, I stick with a topic or a theme. This way, my kiddos can dig deeper into a topic, gaining the background knowledge and vocabulary associated with that topic. Which, as we know, is key to understanding a text. When I was still working as an interventionist in a school, I would look at the science and social studies teachers' lesson plans and choose texts that would help supplement their instruction.

🌍If you have a curriculum that you must use, it can be frustrating to follow along with someone else's plan. One way you can make this kind of shift in comprehension instruction is by starting to include topic/theme-based texts in your small group instruction.

❓Have you made this shift in your comprehension instruction? Or are your texts already dictated to you? I'd love to know in the comments below!

#readingcomprehension #teachingreading #readingteacher #comprehension

🫠Ok, that first slide was kind of click-baity.

🫠Ok, that first slide was kind of click-baity. Just because I'm a reading specialist, doesn't mean I'm going to walk into a classroom and start acting like I own the place.

🤩This is my first year subbing after 13 years in the classroom, and here's some of the things I do:

🎒Follow the lesson plan. This is YOUR classroom, not mine. I'm here to do the work that you have left for me, not start creating my own curriculum. I may not deliver every line exactly as you would, but if you leave me assignments for the kids, we're doing them.

🎒Build Relationships. After being in the same school for 13 years, its been weird going into different schools. But one thing I've realized is how quickly the kids get to know you and look forward to seeing you. So even if the relationship I build in 7 hours as a substitute is wildly inferior to the one the classroom teacher gets to build over the year, it's still something. And children take note of when you actually care, and when you're just trying to make it to the end of the day.

🎒Bring a bag of stuff. You do not want to know the panic in my soul the day I subbed and ran out of activities for kindergartners. So now, I bring a bag with things. The main items are books I love for when we have extra time or need a brain break (The Book with No Pictures has a permanent place). But, I also have some small fun items like those sticker faces kids can build and water bottle stickers. I may also bring some games or items from when I was teaching. But these items are not to replace the lessons, just supplement if I need it!

👩‍🏫Teachers, I want to know-what's something that the best subs do? What makes a really great substitute for you?

#substitute #substituteteaching #readingteacher #teachingreading

🤩Look, I pinky-promise English makes sense. It

🤩Look, I pinky-promise English makes sense. It's not some random amalgamation of nonsensical rules. Instead, English is a language that's evolved over centuries, preserving parts of each of the layers that have had a hand in what it is today.

⏺️ In this week's episode of Creating Readers, I'm making English make sense. I share:
📚how English is a morphophonemic language that preserves meaning through spelling
📚the different layers of English and how they've contributed to what our language is today, including Anglo-Saxon, French, Greek, and Latin
📚whether or not FISH can be spelled G-H-O-T-I.

🔊Ready to give it a listen? Comment FISH below and I'll DM the link!

#creatingreaders #readingteacher #teachingreading

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