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Sarah's Teaching Snippets

K-2 Science of Reading Educational Resources

How Do We Learn New Words? Orthographic Mapping

Have you ever wondered how students go from slowly sounding out words like s-a-t to instantly recognizing them? It’s not by memorizing words as whole pictures, but through a process called orthographic mapping, which makes words permanent and automatic. What is Orthographic Mapping? So what exactly is orthographic mapping? Orthographic mapping is the mental process our brains use to ... Read More about How Do We Learn New Words? Orthographic Mapping

Syllable Division Rules

When I first wrote this post, I explained syllable division rules as if there were steps to go through every time you came upon a multi-syllabic word. Since then, my own learning has expanded. I now know that those “rules” aren’t backed by research and can lead to some cognitive overload for both teachers and students! That’s why I’ve updated this post. Today, I teach decoding of multi-syllable ... Read More about Syllable Division Rules

Syllable Types

Hi friends! It's been a while, but I'm excited to say that I have several posts coming soon. I have most of them half done. LOL! I know, I know, focus Sarah! I have had a lot of questions recently about syllable types and syllable division rules, so here we are! What are Syllable Types? There are 6 written syllable types used in English spelling (7 if you separate vowel digraphs and ... Read More about Syllable Types

What is the Schwa?

Good morning! Today I'm excited to write about the most common vowel sound that I never knew even existed. That's right, I got through high school, college, grad school, and several years of teaching and I had never heard of the schwa! I figured I'm probably not alone, so I wanted to take some time to blog about this. *Disclaimer* I am not a linguist, although I wish I was! I am not ... Read More about What is the Schwa?

Structured Literacy

This blog post goes into my interpretation of Structured Literacy and how I have applied it to my classroom and tutoring. I do not consider myself an expert, just sharing what I've learned/what I'm still learning. Update: I've had some requests for these slides, so I am sharing the PDF and slides here. What is Structured Literacy? Structured Literacy is an instructional ... Read More about Structured Literacy

Phonics Assessments

Hello! This post is all about interpreting your phonics assessments to best meet the needs of your students. We can learn so much from these! When to Use Phonics Assessments There are two different instances where I use a phonics assessment: Types of Phonics Assessments There are two ways that I assess phonics skills: A word assessment and a sentence reading assessment. The ... Read More about Phonics Assessments

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

2 weeks ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
Happy Earth Day! 🌎 ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

4 weeks ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
Spring has sprung… not springed 🌷Ever wonder why? English actually uses two main ways to show past tense:🌸 Add -ed (regular/“weak” verbs): walk → walked🌸 Change the vowel (often called irregular or “strong” verbs): run → ran These vowel-changing verbs go all the way back to Old English and many of them still follow patterns.In our teaching, we call these “power verbs” 💪 because they change from the inside instead of just adding -ed.We ntroduce Power Verbs right away with cvc words: run → ran, sit → satThen we revisit with -ng / -nk words:sing → sang → sungAfter that, reinforce as new phonics skills are introducedYou can even keep a running list or poster so students can see the pattern. If you want this done for you, we include explicit lessons + posters inside our K–2 curriculum.Comment POWER and I’ll send details!#logosliteracyacademy ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

4 weeks ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
Happy Schwa Day! Thanks to Yvette Manns for making this a day to celebrate. The schwa sound is one of the biggest challenges for our developing readers. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t give them tools to make it easier for them! Swipe to see some ideas. The biggest take away? We need our student to be aware of the schwa and then teach them to be flexible with those vowels sounds. Want to go deeper into how to teach this (with examples and routines you can use right away)? Obviously, today isn’t the only day to teach the schwa. It’s impossible to avoid the schwa so we want to teach it early and often! Comment “SCHWA” to get links to a blog post and some other resources. And visit then official website of National Schwa Day to snag some FREE resources created by Yvette Manns 🙌🏼 ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

1 month ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
BREAKING: English spelling is being completely simplified next year…Everything will finally match how it sounds. No more tricky patterns. No more confusing spellings.April Fools 😉 It seems like that would make things easier, BUT English was never designed to be purely phonetic. It carries meaning across words, even when pronunciation shifts.English isn’t broken… it’s built from meaningful parts and has a rich history. When we look beyond sound and start noticing structure, spelling starts to make sense. We want to guide you in seeing that structure, so you can help your students make sense of spelling in a deeper, more lasting way.Comment “learn” if you’re interested in joining our community to learn with us! ... See MoreSee Less

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Sarah's First Grade Snippets

1 month ago

Sarah's First Grade Snippets
There is more to spelling than how a word sounds.We must train our students to always use meaning as an anchor. Because meaning can lead us to structure which can help with spelling. There are endless examples of this, but this one is an obvious one. Think about the word blocks. It sounds like “blox”. I remember years ago this realization set in when my whole small group of students spelled “rocks” like “rox” during dictation. We had been working on <ck> and they were nailing it… until I added in suffixes. One of my students made a great point, saying, “But it’s just like ‘box’!” I remember that I almost just gave them the answer, “But this has a suffix -s.” But instead we turned to meaning. Let’s go back to our example here. We need to make sure we use the word in a sentence so they can activate the meaning. When we say “blocks”, what do you picture? What are blocks? “More than one block”, right? Now we know what we’re trying to spell.That leads to:✔ the base: block✔ the structure: short vowel + /k/ → ck✔ the correct spelling: blocksSo here’s what you want to take away from this:Meaning leads to structure.Structure supports accurate spelling.Comment MEANING if you want to learn more about how to incorporate morphology into your curriculum. #logosliteracyacademy #scienceofreading #structuredliteracy ... See MoreSee Less

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