When it comes to teaching children to read, the importance of a quality phonics program cannot be overstated. With so many options available, it can be challenging to determine which program will best suit the needs of your students.
Read more Many students need extra phonics support to build a solid foundation for reading success. Developing solid phonics skills can be a long journey, with students in the same groups or classes each requiring focus on different elements and needing varying levels of support. Teachers face the challenge of addressing each student’s unique needs within the same classroom, often with limited time built into their schedule to do so.
Read more Literacy researcher Dr. Jan Hasbrouck developed Quick Phonics Screener (QPS) because she needed a systematic and efficient way diagnose students’ strengths and instructional needs in phonics. QPS measures a student’s ability to recognize, decode, and pronounce all phonics elements from letter names through four-syllable words.
Read more Most parents of toddlers don’t understand how their children learn to read; when I sat and read to my children, I took for granted that they would someday magically be able to read on their own. It wasn’t until I began teaching struggling readers that I appreciated how complex and challenging learning to read is for many students. Many of my students got stuck reading individual words, and they became frustrated with reading. These students—and many students in our schools today—benefit from direct, explicit instruction in pairing letters and letter combinations with sounds, also known as phonics. Becoming automatic in reading individual words frees up the mental energy necessary for readers to make sense of texts. And, since 87% of English words are either completely decodable or have just one exception, teaching beginning readers to decode automatically gives them a large bank of known words.
Read more Read Live is highly customizable to meet each student’s individual needs. Our phonics offerings within this program are no exception. Read Live makes it easy for students who need phonics support to either progress sequentially through systematic phonics instruction, or to focus specifically on the phonics pattern(s) they need to master.
Read more To decide Read Live program(s) to assign, you need to determine the student's instructional needs via placement and assessment.
Read more Who needs phonics support? Allow our QPS diagnostic phonics assessment to answer this question for you quickly and effectively. Did you know the latest edition of this popular tool allows you to assess an entire group of students at once and then use this data to determine which students need a more in-depth, individual phonics assessment? Both the group assessment and the individual assessment are now included in QPS, making it easier than ever for you to identify which students need phonics support and which skills an intervention should target.
Read more Late last year, a teacher in need of a high-quality phonics program started using GATE+ with her students. She was so impressed with the quality and ease-of-use that she showed the program to her colleagues. They quickly realized they wanted GATE+ for their classrooms too. The teacher picked up the phone and ordered four more sets of GATE+! This is the kind of feedback we've been getting in the months since GATE+ started shipping. As soon as teachers realize how well this program works, they can't wait to spread the word.
Read more If you’ve ever had questions about how certain phonics sounds should be pronounced, our Audio Examples of Phonics Sounds page is your new best friend. This page includes an audio demo of the phonics sounds and patterns you and your students will come across in phonics instruction and assessment. It’s also a handy guide to interpreting those breves (˘), and macrons (−).
Read more It's now well past February, but the remnants of Valentine's Day still linger in my couch cushions. The handmade cards are always my favorite ones to find… especially the ones wishing a "Happy Valantine's Day." I asked my first grader if he knew what makes the word Valentine so hard to spell. He guessed, "Because it's a long word," which is half right. Long words are usually multisyllabic, and multisyllabic words usually have a schwa. The schwa sound—such as the one on the first "e" in Valentine—is notorious for making words difficult to read and spell.
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