Part One: Reading Meetings with Mark and Molly

  As summer vacation draws to a close and thoughts turn to the coming school year, you may be interested in a unique (and free) opportunity for professional development. Reading researcher Mark Seidenberg, author of Language at the Speed of Sight, and Molly Farry-Thorn, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have been…

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Consonant blends and consonant teams—what’s the difference?

Many of the terms in phonics are quite confusing.  Consonant blends and consonant teams are such terms.  So, what is the difference between the two? A consonant blend is a term used for two adjacent consonants in a word that represent two separate sounds.  Take the word, ‘blog’: the letters ‘b’ and ‘l’ spell two…

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Why ‘structured’ reading instruction is not enough

diagram-of-what-cumulative-reading-instruction-should-look-like

Why we need to teach ‘structured and cumulative’ reading instruction In the bad old days before I learned how to teach kids to read, I taught kids to read in a structured way. That is, what I thought was structure: Week 1: letters a, b, c, d Week 2: letters e, f, g, h Week…

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