CVC words are the first real decoding win for most students, and having a good list on hand makes planning much faster. The full list is below, sorted by short vowel, along with the activities I use to teach the pattern. CVC stands for consonant-vowel-consonant, like cat and mop. The vowel says its short sound…
Phoneme segmentation is a foundational skill for reading and writing. It’s important to start teaching phoneme segmentation skills early so children can develop this skill before it becomes more difficult to learn. Mastering phoneme segmentation helps readers break apart sounds in a word, blend them together, and read! Here are five activities you can do…
Ask any teacher what their students struggle with the most in reading, and all will say fluency, decoding, or comprehension. And those are the 3 key areas of reading instruction so they are important areas to work on every day. In this post, I’m explaining what reading fluency is and sharing the different ways you…
Since I have written about the science of reading, heart words, and explicit phonics instruction, so many of you have reached out and asked, “so how do I set up my literacy block and work with students in small groups?” I know it can be overwhelming learning that what you’ve been doing needs to change,…
If you’re looking for effective high frequency word instruction, then the Heart Word Method is exactly what you want. This method will transform your sight word instruction and your students will thank you for it. Read on to find out what heart words are, how to teach them, and why you should be teaching high…
The science of reading is a body of research from the last 40 years that has led to evidence-based reading instruction and recommendations for teaching reading. This research has shown that reading is not natural and needs to be explicitly taught in a systematic way for many students to become fluent readers. Read on to…
Most teachers have heard about the “summer slide”, or the reading regression that many students experience over the summer. Research has shown that children who don’t read over the summer lose about 20% of their school year gains in reading! Young kids and children from low-income families are disproportionately affected by the summer slide so…
The long u sound is really two sounds. Sometimes u says its name, as in music and cube. Sometimes it says /oo/, as in tube and food. That is what makes long u the most complex of the long vowels to teach. Last up in my long vowel series, here is each of the eight…
Long e words are quite tricky to teach because there are so many different ways to spell the long e sound and there aren’t any rules or generalizations. With long e spellings, students must practice and be exposed to the words until they have mastered them. I’m going to break down each of the eight…