Analyzing Student Progress in Reading Recovery: Guiding Questions and Next Steps

I have found that developing a system for looking across multiple running records, as well as lesson records, to be a vital process necessary for consistent progress that leads to acceleration. When I make time to look for patterns of behavior across lessons, rather than only looking day by day, I feel like I know …

Beyond Words: The Impact of Prosody on Comprehension

Most educators acknowledge the significance of fluency, yet it often fails to receive the attention it truly deserves. While fluency is widely recognized for its impact on student comprehension, its evaluation is frequently limited to reading speed alone. However, fluency encompasses numerous other vital aspects that necessitate closer examination. In this post, we will delve …

First Round Reflection: When Learning Letters is Difficult

I wanted to use this post as an opportunity to share about one of my most challenging rounds of Reading Recovery. All four of my students entered with mostly stanines of 1 for each task on the Observation Survey and very low raw scores. My students required various types of support to help with significant …

Working on Phrasing in Earlier Levels

A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to see Dr. James Schnug present at the Literacy for All Conference on the topic of phrasing. If you would like to read more about this topic, Schnug wrote about his research in an article called Paying More Attention to Phrasing in Fluent Reading in the Fall …

Research Based…Questions to Ask

As educators, we hear the term "research based" ad nauseam. "This strategy works. It's research based." "We want you to do it like this because that method is research based." "This new curriculum is research based so it's definitely effective." When we constantly hear the term "research based" being used, we become passive and we …

Teaching our Emergent Readers: Guidance From Carolyn Helmers & Susan Vincent

First, I will start out by saying that I had Intentional From the Start: Guiding Emergent Readers in Small Groups on my wish list for a while. After expressing my jealousy to a friend who received a copy from her employer, she generously bought me a copy for my birthday (Thanks, again, Gen!). I have …

The Best Way to Support Literacy Acquisition: Never Stop Learning

As I was perusing through some posts in a literacy Facebook group, I came across a particular post that caught my attention. A literacy teacher asked if a specific program was good to use for students who were struggling with learning how to read. What spurred me to write this post was not a teacher …

2nd Round Action Research: Accelerating the Learning Part 2

At the beginning of my 2nd round of Reading Recovery I wrote a post about participating in a LitCon session, The Quest for Accelerated Gains in Writing, presented by Mary Fried, reflecting on my own practices during the writing part of my Reading Recovery lessons, and my desire to do some action research centered around …

2nd Round Action Research: Accelerating the Learning

I thoroughly enjoyed participating in various sessions through the on-line LitCon 2022 Conference last January-February. One particular session entitled, The Quest for Accelerated Gains in Writing, provided by Mary Fried had me looking at and reflecting on my own practices during the writing part of my Reading Recovery lessons. Mary defined high-impact teachers and discussed …

Join Us at LitCon22!

We are very excited to be live featured speakers at this year’s all virtual LitCon: National K-8 Literacy Conference on Thursday, February 3rd, 2022 with a live Continued Engagement follow-up session on Saturday, February 5th, 2022. Our session, Shifting Our Language for Strategic Processing will focus on recognizing the strategic actions that are indicative of …