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  • Supporting Reading Struggles

Understanding Students with Reading Struggles

May 5, 2026|

All teachers, not only reading teachers, can benefit from understanding how students may struggle in reading, in order to better support them in the classroom. While the reading teacher is the primary educator focused on teaching students to read, all teachers across all content areas must be mindful of students’ reading difficulties. Reading is essential to comprehension, and all teachers have a responsibility to ensure that students learn to the fullest extent in the classroom. However, some students struggle significantly more with reading than others. This article will provide you with an overview of what to consider as you encounter students in your class who may exhibit reading struggles, either due to a specific disability or due to other reading difficulties.

  • Big Five Science of Reading

The “Big Five” Within the Science of Reading

March 17, 2025|

The science of reading is a collection of the currently available reading research that explains positive results in reading performance. It is a compilation of studies published by peer-reviewed researchers; in other words, the research is conducted in a controlled setting and then reviewed by experts in the field for validity and accuracy before acceptance into a major research publication. It attempts to distinguish in the research literature between correlative (data simply showing a correlation that may or may not show effectiveness in a strategy) and causation (data showing that one specific strategy causes something to happen- in this case, improved reading performance by some metric determined by the researchers).

  • Cooperative Writing Blog

Cooperative Writing-An Engaging Paired Writing Strategy

June 20, 2022|

Cooperative Writing is a paired activity where two students complete a writing task together. Cooperative Writing can be an excellent support strategy for struggling students, students with special needs, or English Language Learners (ELLs), because it can be an opportunity for stronger writers to help their peers who might struggle with writing. For example, ELLs can learn new vocabulary from native English speakers and improve their speaking skills as they communicate together about the given topic. Or, advanced students can coach each other on ideas for providing additional detail within their sentences. Students can share ideas and collaborate verbally on the writing before drafting, which takes some pressure off the more struggling writer. It can also help to build the confidence of both students, encourage the growth of social skills, and help to improve the sense of classroom community. It's a simple, fun activity for students that maintain engagement throughout your lesson.

  • Frayer Model

How to Use the Frayer Model in Your Classroom

May 10, 2022|

The Frayer Model was designed as a graphic organizer to help students learn the meaning of new vocabulary words. The vocabulary word is placed in the center of the page, and the definition, a picture or characteristic, example, and non-example surround the word in separate boxes. This structure allows for a visual representation of the vocabulary word that students are attempting to learn.

  • Student Response System

The Student Response System as an Effective Verbal Strategy to Check for Student Understanding

April 12, 2022|

A simple verbal strategy to check for student understanding throughout your lesson is the Student Response System and is the focus of this article. This strategy presents questioning prompts in multiple-choice or true-false format for students to answer in real-time. Students will respond to the prompts using pre-made cards with A, B, C, D, True, False, or other information to indicate their selection of an answer choice displayed on the board. The student response system can be prepared easily by cutting out printed cards, laminating them, and making them available to each student in your classroom. If you have it available at your school, there are also electronic versions of this student response system, commonly known as Clickers. Physical devices may be available for use at your school, or you may have an app or website that you can access to employ an online student response system.

  • Simultaneous Oral Spelling Blog Post

Simultaneous Oral Spelling (SOS): A Simple Method to Support and Improve Spelling

April 6, 2022|

Multi-sensory structured teaching involves the use of visual (language we see), auditory (language we hear), and kinesthetic-tactile (language we feel) tools that can enhance student learning of language. When students struggle with a language-based skill, for example, children with dyslexia that may struggle with reading, teaching in multi-sensory ways can help improve a child’s skillset in certain areas. For students who struggle with spelling due to dyslexia, ADHD, an auditory or visual processing disability, or other unknown issues, multi-sensory approaches to teaching the phonological skills underlying spelling work can help improve student outcomes. This blog article will teach one method to help students improve their spelling, regardless of the cause of the spelling issue.

  • ELL Writing Prompts

Building ELL-Friendly Writing Prompts

February 14, 2022|

The writing process can be challenging for any student, but English Language Learners tend to need increased support and careful lesson planning by their teachers for the best success in class. English grammar differs greatly from grammar constructs of other languages, and some of our common writing structures, such as a topic sentence followed by supporting details for an organized paragraph, may be unfamiliar to them. ELL students also typically have a limited English vocabulary, making it challenging to write their thoughts. Children need to comprehend many components of the writing process, including the written prompt, the piece they are responding to, or other tasks and instructions. These challenges can lead to great frustration for some students, which can even manifest as a lack of motivation. This blog article will present some considerations for designing ELL-friendly writing prompts to help set your students up for success throughout the writing process.

  • ELL Vocabulary Strategies

Using Word Banks as a Simple Tool to Support ELL Vocabulary Understanding

October 13, 2021|

This article provides you with one of many simple methods you can implement to help support ELL Vocabulary Understanding. By providing students with prompts and a word bank, you can help reinforce important vocabulary words within your content lesson to ensure you have multiple layers of support for your ELL students. This short article is an excerpt from our Simple ELL Vocabulary Strategies quick course, which provides additional ideas for vocabulary support.

  • storyboarding

Get the Most Out of Your Class’s Literature Studies: Movie Preview Projects-It’s All in the Storyboards

January 30, 2020|

Lights! Camera! Dying to inject tech into literature while getting the comprehension Action! you crave for your students? Just as in any film making process, when using movie preview projects to engage your class of readers, you have to keep your own audience in mind. In this article, we’ll review a must for ensuring you get the product quality you demand, and your (student) film crew gets the experience and understanding that makes any literature study project worthwhile.

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