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Sarah's Teaching Snippets

K-2 Science of Reading Educational Resources

Great Back to School Read Alouds

Happy Wednesday everyone! I hope your week is going well so far. I'm trying to enjoy my last couple weeks of freedom before it's time to set that alarm clock again. Once August hits, I get into "back to school" mode where my mind just starts going. One of my favorite ways to get back into school mode is a trip to my favorite book stores. Doesn't every teacher just love to sit in the children's ... Read More about Great Back to School Read Alouds

Phonics Stories

As a new school year begins, we have some new students who are all mostly eager to learn to read. My son is at this point right now. He's got the foundational skills and he's ready to take off. They have a solid phonics foundation and are quickly learning new sight words and other decoding strategies. Parents and teachers are also excited to get to that point where the reading finally clicks. But ... Read More about Phonics Stories

Establishing Your Morning Routine

Hi everyone! It's that time of year again. Summer is winding down and we are all starting to think about going back to school. Some of you are already there! Today I'm going to talk about setting up your morning routine so your kids know exactly what to do when they walk in the room.  Photo by Dollar Photo Club My first couple years, I really struggled with this. Most kids learned ... Read More about Establishing Your Morning Routine

Phonics and Fluency for First Grade

I'm so excited about this! I made my first Spin a Sentence with my Guided Reading packs. They were seasonally-themed though. My newest set is totally phonetic! This first set is all short vowels. This is such  great way to strengthen phonics skills while working to improve fluency.  If you want to add a visualizing component, I included four different student ... Read More about Phonics and Fluency for First Grade

Tutoring Toolkit

It's done! What I thought would take a couple hours to spruce up ended up taking me days! I just kept changing things and adding things, but finally I have a product I'm happy with. Introducing the Tutoring Toolkit:  In a previous post, I blogged about some tutoring tips and showed you inside my tutoring binder. Here, I've spruced it up a bit for you! The binder is divided into sections, ... Read More about Tutoring Toolkit

Tutoring Tips and Tools

Hello again! It's been a busy blogging summer so far. I'm on a roll this week! Since most of us are not teaching in classrooms right now, I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about tutoring. Before I had kids, I was tutoring like crazy during the summer! I would literally tutor from 8am to 4pm four days a week. It was before the days of blogging, TPT, and kids so I had the entire summer ... Read More about Tutoring Tips and Tools

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  • Successive Blending: A Decoding Strategy
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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

2 years ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
I listened to two great episodes from @literacypodcast with Richard Gentry. I’ve read two of his books, which I highly recommend! (Swipe to see.) I loved listening to him talk about spelling and dyslexia. There are so many great take-always from the conversation, but this stood out to me. I believe this so much! Analyzing a child’s spelling shows you what they truly have a grasp on. For example, if they are spelling “helped” as “helpt” then you know they don’t have an understanding of base words and suffixes. If they spell “take” as “tak “ then they likely don’t have a handle on the silent e (VCe) syllable type and the generalization with that pattern. If they spell “ship” as “chip”, then they need to work on that sound symbol correspondence. If they spell “step” as “sep” then they are not hearing all of the sounds and you’ll need to work on phonemic segmenting with consonant blends. If they spell “back” as “bak” then they don’t know the ck/k generalization. If they spell “set” as “sat”, they may need to work on short vowels more (and look into if they are having trouble hearing the difference or remembering the sound-symbol match ups). Teaching spelling is so important, but not in the old school way that we were all taught. It’s not effective to memorize 10-20 words for a spelling test at the end of the week. Dr. Gentry goes into this a bit on the podcast, explaining that it often goes into short term memory (long enough to pass the test) but not long term memory. Instead, study sound-symbol relationships and spelling patterns. Give plenty of practice with a variety of words related in some way. Both episodes are definitely worth a listen! .....#iteachfirst #iteachreading #iteachphonics #iteach #iteachtoo #teachersofinstagram #teachersfollowteachers #explicitphonicsinstruction #teacherideas #readingspecialist #readingcoach #phonicsfun #teacherstuff #ortongillingham #firstgradeteacher #elementaryteacher #structuredliteracy #learntoread #iteach1st #readingintervention #scienceofreading #iteachsecond #iteach2nd #readingtutor #iteach3rd #spelling ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

2 years ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
Tonight I got to celebrate with one of my favorite people, Barbara Steinberg. We were celebrating the 12 year anniversary of @pdxreadingspecialist . 👏🎉🙌🏼 Barbara also happens to be my literacy/ #scienceofreading hero. She’s basically my same age, yet I still say, “I want to be Barbara when I grow up.” 😄 Way back when I first started my SoR journey, when I just wanted to understand my students who were struggling with reading, she was the person who provided the training that was almost impossible to find at the time. She is the best professional development you will ever get! Now she has virtual training so she can reach more educators. You’ll want to follow her and check out the training that she has to offer. It’s so worth it! We all have those educators that inspire us. Sometimes we need to take a moment to tell that person! Love you, Barbara! #iteach #iteachtoo #iteachk #iteachfirst #iteachreading #ortongillingham #saydyslexia #iteachsecond ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

2 years ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
Check my story for a longer explanation. Short story- in a consonant blend, each letter represents its own sound. In a digraph, the letters together represent one sound. When we read, the goal is automatic recognition so we train them to read /st/ instead of /s/ /t/ but it’s important to recognize they are still two distinct sounds. This is especially important with spelling. They need to be able to pull apart each sound to spell the word correctly. It’s also true that the sounds in a consonant blend do smoosh together when we pronounce them. Sometimes it’s hard for kids to hear both consonant sounds in a consonant blend. We don’t exactly enunciate every sound in a word so it’s hard to hear all sounds.Some blends like dr and tr literally sound like different sounds when combined in words. Think about <dr> in drill. It sounds /jr/ and <tr> in trip sounds like /chr/. When I teach blends, I explicitly teach these and point out how this happens. This is one example of coarticulation. Basically, a sound can affect another sound that it’s next to. I hope all this information is helpful!.....#iteachfirst #iteachreading #iteachphonics #iteach #iteachtoo #teachersofinstagram #teachersfollowteachers #explicitphonicsinstruction #teacherideas #readingspecialist #readingcoach #phonicsfun #teacherstuff #ortongillingham #firstgradeteacher #elementaryteacher #structuredliteracy #learntoread #iteach1st #readingintervention #scienceofreading #iteachsecond #iteach2nd #readingtutor #iteach3rd #SoRsnippet #phonicssnippet ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

2 years ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
As an interventionist, I put a lot of focus on ways to help and support students with dyslexia. Although well intentioned, this tends to put the majority of the focus on the academic weaknesses that may result from having dyslexia. In the traditional school setting, students with dyslexia often struggle and don’t get the opportunity to showcase their strengths. The book The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain by Brock and Fernette Eide talks about dyslexia-associated strength patterns found to be common in dyslexic people. “These strengths are not exclusive to individuals with dyslexia, but they are common among individuals with dyslexia and linked to specific cognitive and structural patterns.” (From the Dyslexic Advantage website)@pdxreadingspecialist just posted that 40% of entrepreneurs have dyslexia! That’s a big percentage! One of the common strengths is “out of the box” thinking among individuals with dyslexia. Another good book is The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan by Ben Foss. This book also talks about strengths. ..... #iteachreading #iteachtoo #iteachkindergarten #iteachk #teachersofinstagram #teachersfollowteachers #teacherideas #readingspecialist #readingcoach #teacherstuff #ortongillingham #structuredliteracy #dyslexia #learntoread #iteachfirst #iteach1st #earlyliteracy #saydyslexia ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

2 years ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
Swipe to see common indicators of dyslexia at different ages. It’s helpful to know the signs. As teachers, we can’t diagnose but can use screeners like Acadience or DIBELS to identify at-risk students and we can recommend further testing if we think a student may have dyslexia. I know that many districts don’t recognize dyslexia specifically (which is completely unacceptable to me but that’s where we’re at unfortunately). This makes things extra challenging for teachers. In a better educational world, every school would have a dyslexia specialist who could do this testing, guide teachers, and provide support for students. I can say from personal experience, having answers can feel very empowering.Connecting with your local Decoding Dyslexia group may be helpful. I think every state has one now. (Decoding dyslexia is a parent led grassroots movement that has created some incredible change in many states. They provide resources and support for families.). Another place to look is the International Dyslexia Association @dyslexiaida. I am not an expert- I’m just someone trying to spread the word. Follow @pdxreadingspecialist @thedrlauren @thedyslexiaclassroom @theliteracynest @shinelearningservices @dyslexiatraininginstitute for people who actually are experts. 🙏💕Even if you feel like your hands are tied because of how your districts handles things, I think it can still be meaningful and impactful to be an educator who is knowledgeable about dyslexia. 💕🫶💡#saydyslexia #dyslexiaawareness #dyslexia #iteach #iteachtoo #iteachreading #ortongillingham #structuredliteracy ... See MoreSee Less

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