teaching reading

In today's Tuesday Tip, I discuss the importance of foundational skills.

Video Transcript

Hey there folks, it's Jocelyn and it's time for a Tuesday tip. Foundational skills are critical if children are going to engage deeply with reading and writing, but it can feel like a struggle to fit it all in, as well as all of that more robust deep learning. My tip today is about having a Absolute laser focus on building foundational skills for students, regardless of age.

If students need phonics,…

Subscribe to the Podcast

00:00:00
INTRODUCTION

Jocelyn: Hey Kirby, how are you going?

Kirby: Good. Thank you. How are you?

Jocelyn: I'm excellent now that you're here. It's so fantastic to have you here for our very first teacher talk episode of the podcast. Kirby, why don't you share with our listeners who you are, where you teach, what you do, how long you've been teaching for and all the things?

Kirby: Sure. So my name's Kirby. This will be my 12th year of teaching. I worked out earlier, wh…

Subscribe to the Podcast

Transcript

00:00:00
Introduction
Hi there, and welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast recorded here in Pataway Lutruwita or Burnie, Tasmania, the home of the Palawa people. I'm so lucky to live and work here in this beautiful place and also to bring you this week's podcast, which is the second episode in our current Research to the Classroom series about assisted reading. Our Research to the Classroom series is in three parts: part one, where we share a publ…

Subscribe to the Podcast

00:00:00
Introduction
Hi there. Welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. It's Jocelyn here, and I am so pleased to welcome you this week because we have a brand new series for you. One of the things I remember so vividly is being in school as a teacher and then leader, really wanting to keep up with readings and research and just not having the bandwidth to be able to do it. So we've started a brand new series for you called Research to the Classroom. It's a se…

Subscribe to the Podcast

00:00:00
Introduction
Hi there. Welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast. It's Jocelyn here bringing you this episode from Tasmania, the home of the Palawa people. If you are a teacher in Australia or New Zealand, it's the start of Semester 2, 2023, and it's time to have a think about what you are hoping to accomplish over the rest of the year. If you're listening from the Northern Hemisphere, you are heading towards a new school year, this post will be just as help…

We all came through our university training hearing about Vygotsky’s 1978 idea of ‘Zone of Proximal Development’. That zone between what the child can do on their own and what they can’t do.  It’s the spot where they can do something with help. The ‘sweet spot’ for learning, you could say.

These days we have the lens of Cognitive Load Theory to view this through.  Sweller’s theory outlines intrinsic load as the actual thing we want children to learn. We can optimise intrinsic load by comparing …

It is the school holidays and I know that it is very likely you have half of your brain occupied by what you’ll be doing next term to create great learning opportunities for your students.  You might have big plans that you are excited about, or you might have big wishes that you know you can’t implement because your school still follows a balanced literacy approach.  Whether you are in the first or second situation, I want you to know that while our goal is to have a fully evidence aligned cl…

We all know that phonics is one of the 6 essential components of reading instruction and, in and of itself, is not sufficient to help children become proficient readers.  It is, however, critical that we get the teaching of phonics, starting with phoneme grapheme correspondence, right so that children have a firm foundation on which to base their reading skill development.

The title of today’s post gives away where my head has been this past week! A slew of Facebook posts and shared links revea…

There has been a lot of talk lately about the very encouraging announcement that Arkansas in the United States has banned teach children the three cueing method in reading instruction.  This means that teachers will need to find an alternative to teaching children to do any of the following:

• Look at the first letter, look at the picture and think about what makes sense
• Skip the word, read on and then come back after you think about what makes sense
• Trying a word that makes sense
• Using …