It’s the second week of school. You gave the assessment, or you just watched your class try Lesson 1. Two students are already reading. Four don’t have all their letter sounds. Everyone else is somewhere in the middle, and your scope and sequence assumes none of that. So what do you do with Lesson 2?…
Your student reads chip, chat, and chin off the word list on Monday without hesitating. On Thursday you hand them a sentence with chip sitting in the middle of it, and they stop cold. Nothing went wrong between Monday and Thursday. You taught the sound and they learned it. They have been able to read…
Your UFLI manual is sitting on the counter. Maybe it came in a district box in June, maybe you ordered it yourself in July, and either way the plan is to open it properly on September 3. I want to talk you out of that plan. UFLI Foundations is a strong program. It is also…
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You followed your curriculum. You taught every lesson in the order it was laid out. And you still have students who can read CVC words one week and fall apart on them the next, or who breeze through a decodable on Monday and stumble over the same patterns on Friday. When that happens, most teachers…
A 2026 report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found that 82% of K-3 teachers say they’ve received science of reading training. But only 52% say their instruction actually reflects it. That gap exists because the system never set most teachers up to close it. Only 2% of teachers say preservice training is where they…
If you’ve been skipping plural nouns in your phonics block, you’re not alone. Most teachers file it under grammar and move on. But plural nouns aren’t just a language arts standard; they’re one of the first morphology lessons your students actually need. Here’s why that matters, and how to teach it explicitly. What Are Plural…
The last week of school is not the time to plan next year. You’re exhausted. Your students are restless. The classroom looks like a paper tornado hit it. The last thing anyone wants to do is sit down with a blank planning doc and think about fall. But there’s one thing worth doing before you…
You’ve spent the whole year building your students up as readers. The last thing you want is to watch those gains disappear over summer because parents didn’t know what to do at home. The problem isn’t that parents don’t care. Most of them do. The problem is the advice they’re working with: read for 20…