What was supposed to have been a routine Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS®) training session ended up being anything but typical when a terrible ice storm hit the south, leaving me stranded at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport for an entire day.

Wherever learning takes place, having a plan for explicit intervention instruction makes a difference.

Results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are in, and the picture is not pretty when it comes to fourth grade reading scores.

Studies that emphasize both classroom instruction and supplemental intervention programs have found that all but two percent to five percent of students can learn basic reading skills in first grade, even in populations where the incidence of poor reading is very high.

The Structured Literacy approach has been found to be particularly effective with learners with dyslexia because it focuses on decoding skills, which are critical components of finding success in reading. By emphasizing spelling patterns (instead of specific words), I can lead my students toward using decoding as a strategy, rather than them trying to memorize words by their appearance. It’s true—“Memorization is Not Understanding.”

Assessment can sometimes feel like that pile of puzzle pieces—which ones fit together? How do data fit together to create a comprehensive picture of a school, classroom, or individual student? Much is now known regarding which skills are highly predictive of later reading outcomes, and several excellent tools are available for this purpose. In kindergarten and first grade, timed tasks including letter naming, basic phonemic awareness, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) provide insight into who is at risk and to a certain extent; why.