Free Word Study Upgrades
The free word study warm-ups are getting major upgrades!Before next school year, the free word study warm-ups will all be completely new based on your feedback.The Original Word Study Warm-UpsWhen we first released the free word study warm-ups, we really weren’t certain how they would be received. Now, thousands of classrooms later and with amazing […]
Continue readingDecoding Fluency 1 (Updates!)
The new decoding fluency warm-ups are newly revised and available to all of our free Word Study Members and our Awesome Members! These are 20 days of spiral review focused on building fluency with the most essential decoding skills for late 2nd-grade and 3rd-grade. They also are tailored for reteaching or intervention in grades 3-6. […]
Continue reading4 New Weeks of Decoding Fluency
We just released four more weeks of free research-based word study warm-ups! These warm-ups are available to all of our Spiral WarmUps members including the free word study membership. The new warm-ups are based on feedback from two years of testing and trails. They feature a newly designed navigation menu that brings all of the […]
Continue readingBest Main Idea (Animated Reading Comprehension)
When we say animated reading comprehension, we’re not talking about cartoons or watching YouTube. We are talking about an animated text that: drives fluency, builds schema, sets a purpose for reading, and scaffolds reading comprehension. The activity Best Main Idea is an example of animated reading comprehension, and in this post, you’ll find a few tips […]
Continue readingThe Only 9 Reading Comprehension Strategies Your Students Will Ever Need!
9 Reading Comprehension StrategiesThese are the only 9 reading comprehension strategies you’ll ever need to teach! Seriously. All reading comprehension comes from these reading strategies. Three of the reading comprehension strategies require thinking beyond the text, and six of the strategies involve thinking with the text. In this post you’ll discover:The 9 Reading Comprehension StrategiesWhy Reading Comprehension […]
Continue readingNew Inferring Main Idea Warm-Ups!
We just revised spiral review 21-25: Inferring Main Ideas! The Inferring Main Idea Spiral Reviews 21-25 focus on biographies with multiple-choice and open-ended main idea questions. Students will read about Mrs. Baird’s bread business and American hero Hector P. Garcia. There are five days of warm-ups with two task card projectables each day. Multiple Choice The first card each […]
Continue readingGuided Reading, Plus Phoneme-Grapheme Mapping
Guided reading is a powerful and well-researched approach to boosting reading comprehension, reading skills, and reading levels. Phoneme-Grapheme mapping is a lesser-known activity but is equally powerful to help students in their reading skills. What happens when reading teachers combine these two? When combined, these two instructional methods can create amazing reading gains! This is […]
Continue readingLiteracy Block Schedules
to Fit It All In!There are so many demands on your time as a reading/writing teacher. Especially if you’re in a tested grade level or if any significant portion of your students come to you a little below grade level. So let’s look at literacy block scheduling that fits the priorities and gets results. WARNING: If […]
Continue readingFluency Pilot Continues
Please take a moment to complete the three question survey below. Loading… During the month of April, we had our initial pilots of the new reading fluency warm-ups – there were so many kinks to work out! However, we used student and teacher feedback to tune up the fluency warm-ups, and now we’re ready for […]
Continue readingScaffolding Students During Open-Ended Questions
This is the second post for scaffolding students during open-ended questions. And you can read part 1 here: 3 Ways to Use Open-Ended Questions. You know very well that scaffolding is not about giving students answers. But what is it? How can it be done in ways that promote thinking and comprehension? Scaffolding is coaching […]
Continue readingTrouble-Shooting Video Problems
At some point, you might find problems with video streaming. Video playback problems are often due to internet bandwidth, filters, firewalls, or browsers. While there may be bandwidth issues, usually, the problem lies in the filtering and firewalls from school districts. Here are a few quick fixes that work on most systems: Restart the computer […]
Continue readingOpen-Ended Questions: 3 Ways to Get Results
Open-Ended Questions: 3 Ways to Get Results is part 1 in a three-part series on Open-Ended Questions. You can read part 2 here: Scaffolding Students in Open-Ended Questions. In the reading comprehension warm-ups, you’ll find a variety of tasks, and one of the most beneficial tasks for learning is open-ended questions. In this post, I’ll […]
Continue reading[FAQ 4] Where Should I Start?
With so many warm-ups and skills, it’s easy to feel like a maze or a bowl of spaghetti. Let’s unjumble the pasta, and talk about where to start with your Word Study and Reading Comprehension Warm-Ups. Wherever you choose to start, remember that consistency is more important than where you start (I recommend this research […]
Continue reading[FAQ 3] What Comprehension Skills Are There?
Comprehension skills must be directly taught, understood, and mastered with fluency and automaticity. And that’s what the reading comprehension warm-ups help you achieve. What reading skills do the reading comprehension warm-ups focus on? Will there be more skills? These are two great questions we get all the time, so let’s answer them! What Comprehension Skills? […]
Continue reading[FAQ 2] Are They Test-Formatted?
This is the second most frequently asked question, and rightfully so. Reading comprehension tests often drive the nature of instruction, but as more tests are turning to assessing reading strategy, the test is actually starting to looking different than instruction. The question still stands, are they test-formatted? Yes. No. Read on to see […]
Continue reading[FAQ 1] How Do I Use the Warm-Ups?
This is the most frequently asked question, so let’s start here. Everyone believes that no-prep warm-ups for word study and reading comprehension are great, but how do you use them? How do You Use the Spiral Warm-Ups? After giving students brief direction on what to expect in today’s warm-up activities (i.e. turn and talk, needing […]
Continue reading[NEWS] Expanding the Comprehension Warm-Ups
We’re overwhelmed by the outstanding response to the launch of reading comprehension warm-ups and can’t wait to hear of the stories of stronger readers and writers! There are only 5 days left in the Early Adopter special where we’re essentially giving the reading comprehension warm-ups away for less than a burger on the value […]
Continue readingSpiral Review, Long-Term Retention
How will spiral review impact long-term retention for your students’ learning? Spiral review can have a major impact on long-term retention. Cognitive scientist Jerome Bruner wrote decades ago (1960), “Even the most complex material, if properly structured and presented, can be understood.” You can take a basic skill such as spelling the long A […]
Continue readingWord Builder Spelling Activity [Free]
Word Builder is the free spelling activity that helps students visualize word morphology in spelling. I know, that’s technical talk, so here’s how it helps you: Students will see a word broken into word parts. Students hear the word. Students will combine the word parts to form the correct spelling. Students get instant feedback on their […]
Continue readingWord Sorts to Build Automaticity [Research Base]
In this research brief, you will discover how word sorts can build automaticity in reading fluency and writing. I’ll present four research studies and quickly highlight how the findings inform research-based word sorts in a word study curriculum. Research-Based Word Sorts Word sorts are word learning activities that require students to use a variety of […]
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