Digging Deeper
What do you do when your children or students spell a word incorrectly or ask you how to spell a word? Do you: Tell them how to spell the word? Write the word correctly for them? Tell them to look … Continued
Reading to Children Does NOT Teach Them to Read
There have been many claims over the years that by reading to children they will learn to read with minimal assistance. Similarly, teachers will often recommend to parents that if their child is struggling to learn to read, then they … Continued
Understanding Written Language
This post provides an overview of Rastle’s (2019) article, Writing Systems, Reading and Language, in which she argues that written language has diverged from spoken language, communicating different information. Understanding this divergence is arguably key to effective reading and spelling … Continued
Pre-reading Blending and Segmenting Activities
Blending Once students have decoded a word according to its phonemes, then they need to be able to blend those individual phonemes together into a coherent word. Thus the ability to blend underpins decoding. Consequently, it is important that students … Continued
Teaching Nouns
A noun is a ‘naming word’. If refers to things that you can see, touch, hear, taste, smell, think about or experience. If it is something you can perceive using your senses (book, noise, odour, sourness), it is a concrete … Continued