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teaching tips and free game downloads

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Free Resources to Teach Your Child to Read

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entire book is online on youtube about boy who spends too much time online
What was Tek doing in the story?
How can we technology to help us learn?
What are the positives and negatives of technology?
Is it important to do more than play on your ipad or portable device?

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youtube video

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youtube video

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see Padlet "My Book Shelf" for chidlren's books on digital literacy

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website, lessons, Canadian

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Welcome to the "fundamentals" section of our website, where we bring together the various concepts and competencies that define what it is to be literate in today's complex media culture. Here we explore digital literacy and media literacy and their underlying aspects and principles.

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will have volunteers come to school to do presentation, online tools

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Stay in the loop as your child explores on their Android device

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American site, but broader scope

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Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years

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POPEY | Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years

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The Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years (POPEY) is a British Columbia Ministry of Education Provincial Resource Program with an outreach focus. POPEY's mandate is to increase K-3 educators' capacity to support all primary English literacy learners, particularly diverse and struggling students in the classroom.

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Sightwords.com is a comprehensive sequence of teaching activities, techniques, and materials for one of the building blocks of early child literacy. This collection of resources is designed to help teachers, parents, and caregivers teach a child how to read. We combine the latest literacy research with decades of teaching experience to bring you the best methods of instruction to make teaching easier, more effective, and more fun.

Sight words build speed and fluency when reading. Accuracy, speed, and fluency in reading increase reading comprehension. The sight words are a collection of words that a child should learn to recognize without sounding out the letters. The sight words are both common, frequently used words and foundational words that a child can use to build a vocabulary. Combining sight words with phonics instruction increases a child's speed and fluency in reading.

This website includes a detailed curriculum outline to give you an overview of how the individual lessons fit together. It provides detailed instructions and techniques to show you how to teach the material and how to help a child overcome common roadblocks. It also includes free teaching aids, games, and other materials that you can download and use with your lessons.

Many of the teaching techniques and games include variations for making the lesson more challenging for advanced students, easier for new or struggling students, and just different for a bit of variety. There are also plenty of opportunities, built into the lessons and games, to observe and assess the child's retention of the sight words. We encourage you to use these opportunities to check up on the progress of your student and identify weaknesses before they become real problems.

Help us help you. We want this to be a resource that is constantly improving. So please provide us with your feedback, both the good and the bad. We want to know which lessons worked for your child, and which fell short. We encourage you to contribute your own ideas that have worked well in the home or classroom. You can communicate with us through email or simply post a response in the comments section of the relevant page.

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Sightwords.com is a comprehensive sequence of teaching activities, techniques, and materials for one of the building blocks of early child literacy. This collection of resources is designed to help teachers, parents, and caregivers teach a child how to read.

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What is the most common vowel sound in the English language? If you said long or short /e/, you are wrong. The most common vowel letter is 'e' but the most common vowel sound is the sound /uh/ (like the sound someone makes when trying to think of a word). It sounds like the short /u/ sound, but is softer and weaker. It is the only speech sound with its own special name: schwa. It can be a cause of confusion and frustration in spelling and reading for a student so, in this blog, I'll give you a simple way to explain it and some tips for helping students to decode and encode words containing a schwa.

It's All About Rhythm

The English language is stress-timed. In an English sentence, the words that communicate the most important parts of a message (the nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs) are stressed. e.g.

Function words (auxiliary verbs, pronouns, articles, conjunctions and prepositions) are not usually stressed, in order to maintain a regular rhythm in the language. For the same reason, words of more than one syllable have both stressed (strong) and unstressed (weak) syllables. For example, in the word:

the second syllable is stressed and, consequently, louder. We record this with a stress mark (ˊ) after/pointing to the stressed syllable.

Unstressed Vowels

Unstressed words and syllables are usually said faster and at a lower volume than stressed words or syllables. As a result, the vowel sound in an unstressed word or syllable can lose its purity. In Level 1 of Phonics Hero (access free resources with Teacher Account here), students learn the tricky word 'th e', and in Level 2 they learn ' a '. These words are articles, so they are unaccented, and the unaccented vowel in each of these words sounds like /uh/. We don't hear the expected 'long e' or 'long a' sound. Schwa is the most common vowel sound in the English language because most unstressed vowels are pronounced as a schwa.

The Lazy Sound

The word 'schwa' comes from Hebrew and children usually enjoy saying it. Schwa is related to the short vowel sounds because it can be spelled by any of them, including the semi-vowel 'y'. I like to refer to it as the 'lazy' vowel cousin. You hardly open your mouth to create this vowel sound. The tongue, the lips and the jaw are relaxed. The schwa sound is represented by a /Ə/ in the Phonetic Alphabet (like an upside down 'e' or an 'e' too lazy to sit up!) It takes very little time to say in a word - so little that we, on occasion, lazily skip right over it when saying a word (e.g. the second 'o' in 'chocolate' or the first 'e' in 'different') or don't even represent it when spelling (e.g. the vowel sound between '-th-' and '-m' in 'rhythm').

Dialect

A schwa can replace an r-controlled vowel like /er/ when it makes up an unstressed syllable, e.g. 'letter'. Australians are renowned for making this replacement. Listen to an Australian say:

You are unlikely to hear the /r/ at the end of the three red words. Australian English does not use /r/ before a pause or another consonant so be particularly aware of this when teaching Phonics Hero, Part 3, Level 20 (ir, er, ear, ur, or). Schwa usage varies greatly between dialects. Australian English speakers often put schwas in places where British and American speakers do not.

When to Introduce Schwa?

I believe it is particularly important to explicitly teach EALD students, and students struggling with learning difficulties in reading and spelling, the schwa feature of the English language. Introduce it once they are reading and writing two-syllable words. These are included in Part 2 of Phonics Hero, The Advanced Code, and, of course, there are many in Part 3. You may have to explain it earlier if students struggle with tricky words containing schwa in Part 1 such as 'the', 'a', 'today', 'of', 'away'.

Suggested Sequence for Teaching Schwa

1) Teach the concept of 'stress' at sentence level first

Have students say a sentence, tapping their leg as they say stressed words. Have them mark the stressed words in written sentences with a stress mark (ˊ). Awareness of this will become very useful in poetry study in later years. Talk about the types of words that are stressed and the types of words that are not stressed.

2) Make the link between schwa and unstressed vowels at word level

Have students write the schwa symbol over the vowel in the unstressed words they identified.

3) Teach the sound of schwa

Courtney Bartlett ( swimmingintosecond.com) has written a schwa song to the tune of 'The wheels on the bus go round and round'. This is my adaptation for young students:

Substitute other two-syllable words for 'away' and 'again' for other verses.

4) Teach the concept of schwa at syllable level

Have students sing polysyllabic words, tapping syllable(s) on their leg. The stressed syllable(s) should be tapped with greater strength. Have them mark the stressed syllables in written words with a stress mark (ˊ). Have them write the schwa symbol above the vowel in the unstressed syllables. They should be made aware of words which have identical spelling but different stress such:

5) Teach students to try schwa for a vowel sound in reading

Teach students to try the schwa sound when a long or short vowel doesn't sound right in a word being read. e.g., 'I'm having a sal-ad'. After decoding the word with a 'robot' voice (each syllable evenly stressed), have the student place stress on one syllable (sal') then pronounce the other with a schwa for the vowel (Əd). If this does not sound right, stress should be shifted to the next syllable.

6) Teach strategies for representing a schwa in spelling

(a) When learning the spelling of words with a schwa, encourage students to use their 'spelling voice'. They should pronounce the unstressed vowel/syllable the way it would be pronounced if the vowel sound was stressed, with a pure sound (e.g., A, th E, SUP port).

(b) Teach students to associate base words containing a schwa with their derivatives especially when the derivative has an accented syllable in which the pure vowel sound is clearly heard e.g., president-preside, human-humanity, definition-define.

(c) Teach students to use memory joggers for words that don't have derivatives e.g., 'cott on on to an idea'.

7) Teach words with a common schwa representation together

Activities to Promote Awareness of Representations of Schwa

The chances are that, like me, you managed to learn to read and spell without being explicitly taught about schwa. Schwa remains, however, an important part of the English code and all of us will have students who need to understand it in order to fully 'crack' that code and make maximum progress in reading and writing.

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Schwa Explained! Plus, How to Teach it Systematically

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What is the most common vowel sound in the English language? If you said long or short /e/, you are wrong. The most common vowel letter is 'e' but the most common vowel sound is the sound /uh/ (like the sound someone makes when trying to think of a word).

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A third bit of evidence in the complex text issue has to do with the strength of evidence on the other side of the ledger. In my two previous posts, I have indicated why the common core is embracing the idea of teaching reading with much more complex texts. But what about the evidence that counters this approach?

Many years ago, when I was a primary grade teacher, I was struggling to teach reading. I knew I was supposed to have groups for different levels of kids, but in those days information about how to make those grouping decisions was not imparted to mere undergraduates. I knew I was supposed to figure out which books would provide the optimal learning experience, but I had no technology to do this.

So, I enrolled in a master's degree program and started studying to be a reading specialist. During that training I learned how to administer informal reading inventories (IRI) and cloze tests and what the criteria were for independent, instructional, and frustration levels. Consequently, I tested all my students, and matched books to IRI levels using the publisher's readability levels. I had no doubt that it improved my teaching and students' learning.

I maintained my interest in this issue when I went off for my doctorate. I worked with Jack Pikulski. Jack had written about informal reading inventories (he'd studied with Johnson and Kress), and as a clinical psychologist he was interested in the validity of these measures. He even sent a bunch of grad students to an elementary school to test a bunch of kids, but nothing ever came of that study. Nevertheless, I learned a lot from Jack about that issue.

He had (has) a great clinical sense and he was skeptical of my faith in the value of those instructional level results. He recognized that informal reading inventories were far from perfect instruments and that at best they had general accuracy. They might be able to specify a wide range of materials for a student (say from grade 2 to 4), but that they couldn't do better than that. (Further complicating things were the readability estimates. These had about the same level of accuracy.)

For Jack, the combination of two such rough guestimates was very iffy stuff. I liked the certainty of it though and clung to that for a while (until my own clinical sense grew more sophisticated).

Early in my scholarly career, I tracked down the source of the idea of independent, instructional, and frustration levels. It came from Emmett Betts' textbook. He attributed the scheme to a study conducted by one of his doctoral students. I tracked down that dissertation and to my dismay it was evident that they had just made up those designations without any empirical evidence, something I wrote about 30 years ago!

Since then, readability measures have improved quite a bit, but our technologies for setting reading levels have not. Studies by William Powell in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s showed that the data that we were using did not result in an identification of optimum levels of student learning. He suggested more liberal placement criteria, particularly for younger students. More liberal criteria would mean that instead of accepting 95% word reading accuracy as Betts had suggested, Powell identified 85% as the better predictor of learning-which would mean putting kids in relatively more difficult books.

Consequently, I have sought studies that would support the original contention that we could facilitate student learning by placing kids in the right levels of text. Of course, guided reading and leveled books are so widely used it would make sense that there would be lots of evidence as to their efficacy.

Except that there is not. I keep looking and I keep finding studies that suggest that kids can learn from text written at very different levels (like the studies cited below by Morgan and O'Connor).

How can that be? Well, basically we have put way too much confidence in an unproven theory. The model of learning underlying that theory is too simplistic. Learning to read is an interaction between a learner, a text, and a teacher. Instructional level theory posits that the text difficulty level relative to the student reading level is the important factor in learning. But that ignores the guidance, support, and scaffolding provided by the teacher.

If the teacher is doing little to support the students' transactions with text then I suspect more learning will accrue with somewhat easier texts. However, if reasonable levels of instructional support are available then students are likely to thrive when working with harder texts.

The problem with guided reading and similar schemes is that they are focused on helping kids to learn with minimal amounts of teaching (something Pinnell and Fountas have stated explicitly in at least some editions of their textbooks). But that switches the criterion. Instead of trying to get kids to optimum levels, that is the levels that would allow them to learn most, they have striven to get kids to levels where they will likely learn best with minimal teacher support.

The common core standards push back against the notion that students learn best when they receive the least teaching. The standards people want to know what it takes for kids to learn most, even if the teacher has to be deeply involved. For them, challenging text is the right ground to maximize learning... but the only way that will work is if kids are getting substantial teaching support in the context of that hard text.

P.S. Although Lexiles have greatly improved readability assessment (shrinking standard errors of measurement and improving the amount of comprehension variance that can be explained by text difficulty), and yet we are in no better shape than before since there are no studies indicating that if you teach students at particular Lexile levels more learning will accrue. (I suspect that if future studies go down this road, they will still find that the answer to that issue is variable; it will depend on the amount and quality of instructional support).
References
Betts, E. A. (1946). Foundations of reading instruction. New York: American Book Company.

Morgan, A., Wilcox, B. R., & Eldredge, J. L. (2000). Effect of difficulty levels on second-grade delayed readers using dyad reading. Journal of Educational Research, 94, 113-119.

O'Connor, R. E., Swanson, H. L., & Geraghty, C. (2010). Improvement in reading rate under independent and difficult text levels: Influences on word and comprehension skills. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 1-19.

Pinnell, G. S., & Fountas, I. C. (1996). Guided reading: Good first teaching for all children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Powell, W. R. (1968). Reappraising the criteria for interpreting informal inventories. Washington, DC: ERIC 5194164.

Shanahan, T. (1983). The informal reading inventory and the instructional level: The study that never took place. In L. Gentile, M. L. Kamil, & J. Blanchard (Eds.), Reading research revisited, (pp. 577-580). Columbus, OH: Merrill.

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A third bit of evidence in the complex text issue has to do with the strength of evidence on the other side of the ledger. In my two previous posts, I have indicated why the common core is embracing the idea of teaching reading with much more complex texts.

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What Is Spelling Dictation?

Dictation is a great tool for teaching spelling because it allows children to use their spelling skills in a "real world" application. Simply put, you say a phrase or sentence containing their spelling words, and students repeat it and write it down.

Because it is such a beneficial tool, spelling dictation is included in every lesson of All About Spelling.

How Can Dictation Improve Your Child's Spelling?

One of the main problems with typical spelling instruction is that kids learn the words on a list but often forget how to spell the words the next week-and that's discouraging. But one of the best ways to help new knowledge "stick" is to use it in a meaningful way, such as by writing sentences.

But when you're first learning how to spell, writing decent original sentences can be hard! For kids who haven't reached automaticity yet, it's almost impossible to focus on all aspects of writing a sentence-spelling, mechanics, creativity, word choice, and grammar-at one time.

By dictating a sentence to your child, you're separating the creative process from the spelling process, creating a stepping stone between "writing words on a list" and "writing original sentences."

Five Simple Steps for Dictation

1. Step 1: Dictate a sentence.

Depending on your child's level, you'll dictate two to five phrases or sentences each day, using only words that your child has already learned to spell. (If you are using the All About Spelling program, dictation sentences are provided in your teacher's manual.) Let your student know that he needs to focus his attention since you will only be saying the sentence once.

2. Step 2: Your child repeats the sentence.

Repeating the sentence will help your child retain it in short term memory long enough to write it down. (If your child has a hard time repeating the sentence, see Troubleshooting section below.)

3. Step 3: Your child writes the sentence.

Don't correct your child as he writes out the sentence, even if you see him start to make a spelling mistake. In fact, it's best to look away while he's writing! This will allow him to concentrate on what he's doing without feeling like he's being monitored or judged, and it allows him to "own" the process of spelling. There will be time for correcting spelling after the next step.

4. Step 4: Your child proofreads the sentence she just wrote.

In this step, your child reads her writing aloud or to herself. This is a good time for your student to practice self-correction. She should check herself by asking these questions: Am I satisfied that I spelled everything correctly? Did I use capital letters and punctuation properly?

5. Step 5: Finally, check the sentence before dictating the next one.

If you identify a misspelled word, swing into action with the steps listed in this article on how to correct spelling mistakes. This is important teaching time! Is there a specific rule or generalization that you need to review now or in tomorrow's lesson?

Dictation is a wonderful tool to use for spelling, but you might have some questions at first. Check out the solutions to some common problems in the troubleshooting section below.

Troubleshooting for Spelling Dictation

"I've noticed that you change some of the words in the sentences that I dictate. Today I want you to write the sentence without changing any of the words. In fact, let's make it a challenge. If you can write TWO sentences correctly today, the dictation section will be over. Sound good?"

To determine the number of sentences my son writes each day, I let him roll a die. He delights in the hope that he'll roll a "1" but doesn't fuss if he has the bad luck to roll a higher number! This has completely settled the issue of "how many sentences do I have to write?" to the satisfaction of both mom and son. - Laurie H.

It's Okay If Your Child Isn't Perfect at This

The goal is to keep improving. Remind your child that he's doing something that can be difficult at first, reassure him that you know he'll get it, and reiterate that some things just take work. Your goal isn't perfection; it's simply to help your child expand what he can do, bit by bit and step by step.

For more great tips on teaching spelling, download my free " Six Ways We Make Spelling Easy " e-book.

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How to Do Spelling Dictation (+ Troubleshooting Guide)

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Dictation is a great tool for teaching spelling because it allows children to use their spelling skills in a "real world" application. Simply put, you say a phrase or sentence containing their spelling words, and students repeat it and write it down.

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check out - not sure if useful

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You don't need an Audible subscription to get deals on their high quality audio books. For more on how that works, read my Audible Q&A.

Be the first to hear about Audible deals

Would you like to be notified by email about Sarah's favorite Audible deals?

This page contains over 100 Audible books that are currently a great deal, listed in no particular order.
Would you rather view our recommendations by age? All links are affiliate links. More details on that here. At this time, deals are usually available to US residents, only- I'm sorry about that!
Audio book deals:

Be the first to hear about Audible deals

Would you like to be notified by email about Sarah's favorite Audible deals?

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Current Audio Book Deals - Read-Aloud Revival with Sarah Mackenzie

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You don't need an Audible subscription to get deals on their high quality audio books. For more on how that works, read my Audible Q&A. Would you like to be notified by email about Sarah's favorite Audible deals? This page contains over 100 Audible books that are currently a great deal, listed in no particular order.

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Free Online Pronouncing "ed" Endings Lessons and Exercises

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Free Online Lessons and Exercises on how to pronounce ed word endings. In these online English exercises students learn to differentiate between the three different possible pronunciations of ed endings. This will improve their reading and writing skills, and overall understanding of the English language. Come learn English online with English Maven!

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Free Phonics Bingo Board Maker, phonics bingo board generator with images, customizable bingo boards to print

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Make personalized worksheets to practice reading or spelling using these phonics worksheet makers. Add your choice or text or pictures to the activities and print for free.

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Fun Reading Activities For School and Home

FREE Reading Games! Jenna Rayburn from SpeechRoomNews.blogspot.com , has a real talent for creating fun reading games and wanted to share them with our readers. Our students really enjoy them so check them out below. Thanks for sharing Jenna!

Cars Puzzles (Basic Code Sentences)
Students pick one Cars character (they love Cars!). Place the appropriate puzzle strips in a pile face down. Students take turns picking one sentence strip. Students read the sentence. If the puzzle piece matches their Cars character they cover their puzzle. If the student has drawn a puzzle piece belonging to another student they must pass it to them!

Cars Uno (Advanced Code)
Two great things come together in this game: Cars and Uno. I mean, who doesn't love Cars and Uno? No one, that's who! The word lists in this game offer an effective way for kids to practice long vowel sound spelling patterns too. A win/win for everyone!

Going to the Movies (Basic Code Sentences)
Get your popcorn ready! This game combines both reading and math skills. Directions included. A very good reading activity for teaching the basic code.

Flower Long Vowel Game (Advanced Code)
This reading activity offers a perfect way to practice high frequency words organized by vowel sound and spelling patterns. Very creative and fun! Directions included in the PDF.

Flip It Down (Advanced Code)
Another great reading activity for practicing reading decoding skills.

Build A Fence Long Vowel Game (Advanced Code)
Directions included. Use the enclosed word lists (organized by vowel sound, of course) to create this game. The popsicle sticks are used much like our reading fluency flash cards. A favorite of our 1st and 2nd grade students.

Hockey Game (Advanced Code)
Students challenge each other by starting at opposite ends of the ice and taking turns reading pucks and drawing game cards. A fun way to practice reading decoding and high frequency words.

Flip It Down (Basic Code)
This game is great for centers. Kids roll dice and read the words that correspond to the numbers. First one to flip down all their words wins! We recommend laminating the game and using Velcro strips to hold the tabs down. Flip It Down provides a fun multisensory way to practice reading basic code words. Perfect for kindergarten, first and struggling second grade readers.

Painting Sentences
Practice reading in a fun way with these decodable sentences. First person to cover all of their paint colors wins!

Pirate Attack
This reading game provides a fun twist to our popular Reading Fluency Flash Cards found on our Download Central page!

Going to the Movies
Our students love this reading game! Popcorn Sentences is a fun way to practice reading decoding and reading fluency. You can also work some math practice in as well!

Falling Leaves (Long Vowel)
This activity provides students the opportunity to practice that all so tricky advanced code! Remember, learning the advanced alphabetic code is a key to reading decoding and reading fluency. To learn more about the advanced code visit our Reading Activities II Page!

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FREE Reading Games! Jenna Rayburn from SpeechRoomNews.blogspot.com , has a real talent for creating fun reading games and wanted to share them with our readers. Our students really enjoy them so check them out below. Thanks for sharing Jenna! Cars Puzzles (Basic Code Sentences) Students pick one Cars character (they love Cars!).

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We would love your TESTIMONIAL!
Has your child or student benefited from the Reading Bear program?
We would love to hear from you!
As our way of saying "Thank You" for taking the time to send us a testimonial,

we would like to send you our collection of PDF printable exercises linked to each of the 50 Reading Bear modules (two per module).

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We would love your TESTIMONIAL! Has your child or student benefited from the Reading Bear program? We would love to hear from you! As our way of saying "Thank You" for taking the time to send us a testimonial, we would like to send you our collection of PDF printable exercises linked to each of the 50 Reading Bear modules (two per module).

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app

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app

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Help children learn to read with our free, award-winning reading and phonics game.

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article for me to read

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For generations, reading experts have told teachers that they had to teach students to read at their instructional levels. Teachers were admonished that if they taught children with books that were too easy, there would be nothing for the kids to learn. If they taught with books that were too hard, then the reading instruction would frustrate rather than improve.

In general, that kind of advice makes sense. Spend all the time you want teaching me my ABCs and it won't likely improve my reading ability at my advanced level of performance.

And, the idea of teaching someone something that they find to be inordinately frustrating couldn't possibly work either.

Beyond that, things get a bit fuzzy.

Reading authorities have told teachers that these levels - independent, instructional, and frustration - are the product of two factors: how well kids can read, and how hard the books are. They have also come up with formulas for determining how to match kids and books to avoid frustration. Historically, the scheme usually called for kids to be taught from books that they could read the words of with 95-98% accuracy, and about which they could answer 75-90% of the questions. A bit of challenge - but not too much, was the idea.

Unfortunately, this insightful plan (that many of us have used in our classrooms) was just made up. In today's parlance, the instructional level is "fake news." No one bothered to do studies to determine whether that kind of book matching was beneficial to kids or not!

That started to change in the 1960s, when various tests of this scheme were undertaken. Again and again, the instructional level came up short. Studies were finding no correlation between how well matched to texts the kids were and they were often identifying kids who made great learning gains despite being placed in books at frustration levels.

But it wasn't until 2000 when anyone even bothered to examine the value of the instructional level using a randomized control trial. Then things got really interesting, since those studies found either that it made no difference - in terms of reading achievement - whether kids were matched to texts at their so-called instructional level, or the frustration level kids far outperformed the instructional level ones. In other words, it was either a waste of time to match kids to books or it was hurting kids!

I've written about that issue frequently here and between those writings and the educational standards in many states that require kids be taught to read books at their grade levels there has been some effect. For example, I've noticed that several of my colleagues, when prescribing instructional level texts, now suggest 90% accuracy (instead of 95%) as the true identifier of the books kids can learn best from. Of course, they don't have data to support these new criteria - the new numbers are as made up of whole cloth as the criteria they are replacing - but it is probably enough of a smokescreen to convince some educators that what they are being sold is consistent with research and standards (though in neither case is this true).

Why am I bringing this all up again? Because this week a new study appeared, this one published in the estimable Journal of Educational Research, and conducted by Lisa Trottier Brown and her colleagues. This study pursues this issue with third-graders. "Results indicate that weaker readers, using texts at two, three, and four grade levels above their instructional levels with the assistance of lead readers [other, better reading, third graders], outscored both proficient and less proficient students in the control group across multiple measures of reading achievement."

As in past studies, the results suggest not that we just have the wrong criteria for the true instructional level (there was no best book match here), but that it is unlikely there is such a thing as an instructional level; at least in terms of matching kids with books.

The key, of course, is that while inordinate amounts of frustration should be avoided in instruction, that can easily be accomplished with grade level books and supportive teaching (like the paired reading that took place in this study). The instructional level is not a student-text match. Placing kids in easier, below grade level books reduces their opportunities to learn, but learning will only take place with accommodative and supportive instruction.

Past studies have suggested that the traditional instructional level would be a great goal to have for books at the end of the lesson rather than at the beginning. Instead of trying to avoid exposing kids to things they don't know, we need to make sure that they learn what we expose them to.

I know some colleagues, Dick Allington, for example, is not impressed that after 70 years there still isn't any research supporting the idea of matching kids to books (beyond grade 1), and believes that the studies that have been done are flawed because they don't just vary the book levels, but the instructional approaches themselves. No one, however, is claiming that just placing kids in harder books leads to greater learning - clearly harder books require instructional adjustments by teachers that are an important part of the equation.

Exposing kids to grade level text will not automatically raise student learning. It just provides an opportunity for greater learning. Instructional techniques - like the dyadic reading in this study - are an example of that kind of instructional adjustment. Additional guidance with vocabulary, grammar, cohesion, structure and other aspects of text complexity should have their place too.

So now we have even greater evidence that teaching kids with what they refer to as "the stupid books" (the ones below grade level) doesn't benefit kids. I wonder if teachers and reading supervisors will listen this time?

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New Evidence on Teaching Reading at Frustration Levels

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For generations, reading experts have told teachers that they had to teach students to read at their instructional levels. Teachers were admonished that if they taught children with books that were too easy, there would be nothing for the kids to learn.

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article for me to read

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Among opponents of the Common Core, one of the more popular targets of vitriol is the standards' focus on improving literacy by introducing higher levels of textual complexity into the instructional mix. The move to challenge students with more knotty, grade-level reading material represents a shift away from decades of general adherence to so-called "instructional level theory," which encourages children to read texts pitched at or slightly above the student's individual reading level. New York public school principal Carol Burris, an outspoken standards critic and defender of leveled reading, recently published an anti-Common Core missive on the Washington Post's Answer Sheet blog that was fairly typical of the form. Where, she wondered, "is the research to support: close reading, increased Lexile levels, the use of informational texts, and other questionable practices in the primary grades?"

The blog post, which has already been intelligently critiqued by Ann Whalen at Education Post, expanded on remarks delivered by Burris earlier this month at an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate with Fordham president Michael Petrilli and former assistant secretary of education Carmel Martin. There, too, she demanded evidence of literacy improvements arising from the use of complex texts.

A fair request and one that warrants a thorough response. But first, for the benefit of readers who are neither teachers nor literacy specialists, a quick explainer on how these two theories of reading work: In leveled reading, a teacher listens as her student reads a piece of text at a given reading level. If the child makes two-to-five mistakes per one hundred words, that is considered her "instructional" level. Zero or one mistakes means the book is too easy; six or more mistakes and that level is deemed her "frustration" level. Children are then offered lots of books at their "just right" level on the theory that if they read extensively and independently, language growth and reading proficiency will follow, setting the child on a slow and steady climb through higher reading levels. It sounds logical, and, as we will see, there are definite benefits to getting kids to read a lot independently.

By marked contrast, Common Core asks teachers to think carefully about what children read and choose grade-level texts that use sophisticated language or make significant knowledge demands of the reader (teachers should also be prepared, of course, to offer students support as they grapple with challenging books). Instead of asking, "Can the child read this?" the question might be, "Is this worth reading?"

Leveled reading is intuitive and smartly packaged (who wants kids to read "frustration level" books?), but its evidence base is remarkably thin. There is much stronger research support for teaching reading with complex texts.

What's the source of the blind faith that Burris and others have in leveled reading instruction? "In the decades before Common Core, an enormous amount of the instruction in American elementary and middle schools has been with leveled text," says David Liben, a veteran teacher and Senior Content Specialist at Student Achievement Partners. "The generally poor performance of our children on international comparisons speaks volumes about its effectiveness. To become proficient, students need to have the opportunity to read, with necessary support, rich complex text. But they also need to read-especially if they are behind-a huge volume and range of text types just as called for in the standards." Students could read many of these less complex texts independently. "Instruction with complex text at all times is not what is called for, even by Common Core advocates," Liben takes care to note.

Burris and others, however, offer a reflexive defense of leveled instruction. At the Intelligence Squared event, she claimed that "We know from years of developmental reading research that kids do best when they read independently with leveled readers." Such surety is belied by a surprising lack of rigorous evidence. Literacy blogger Timothy Shanahan, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, recently detailed his discovery of the inauspicious origins of instructional level theory as a young scholar.

Made famous in Emmett Betts's influential, now-little-remembered 1946 textbook Foundations of Reading Instruction, leveled reading theory actually emerged from a more obscure study conducted by one of Betts's doctoral students. "I tracked down that dissertation and to my dismay it was evident that they had just made up those designations without any empirical evidence," Shanahan wrote. When the study-which had in effect never been conducted-was "replicated," it yielded wildly different results. In other words, there was no study, and later research failed to show the benefits of leveling. "Basically we have put way too much confidence in an unproven theory," Shanahan concluded.

Experts have spent much of the last four decades unraveling elements of Betts's thesis, as Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey recently demonstrated in The Reading Teacher, a popular journal. The authors, who work closely with the International Reading Association (IRA), were longtime advocates of leveled reading. Reexamining the published research in light of the new standards, however, they found that the use of leveled text beyond the very first years of primary school yielded no achievement gains in students. The belief that young readers should only be taught from texts that they understood to a level of 95 percent or higher-a stringent notion of comprehension first envisioned by Betts-has been found to be erroneous. Researchers William R. Powell and C.G. Dunkeld, as early as 1971, said that the 95 percent-cutoff was too high; and, more recently, academic Juliet Halladay condemned it as "somewhat arbitrary."

Even more striking to Fisher and Frey was the abundance of support for the use of more difficult reading material: "Surprisingly, we did find studies suggesting that students learn more when taught with texts that were above their instructional level." One such prominent study, though unheralded in their review, was that of the Science IDEAS model put forward by researchers Michael Vitale and Nancy Romance. The program, which replaces eight weeks of English Language Arts lessons with a regimen of complex science instruction for a group of third- to fifth-graders, was shown to not only enhance scientific aptitude among the group, but also accelerate reading comprehension through the use of complex science texts.

Another trial, organized by specialists at Brigham Young University, divided a swath of struggling students into three groups of "paired readers," each furnished with texts of a set difficulty level. Paired reading, a method by which two pupils read aloud together, has proven broadly successful in generating literacy gains among children; indeed, all three groups improved through the use of the paired system. But the greatest advance was made by the group using text that was two years above its instructional level. Burris has dismissed paired reading and the study as "idiosyncratic"; her meaning here is obscure, but she might have more simply described it as a proven, effective, and inexpensive way of helping children learn to read.

In addition to these studies, Shanahan, in the IRA journal Reading Today Online, lists twenty studies showing the efficacy of instruction with more complex text. Thus we have a significant and growing body of research providing support for this initiative.

To be emphatically clear, none of this is data should be taken to advocate for a total phasing-out of texts students can read independently, many of which would be at lower levels of complexity. "Nowhere in the Common Core standards," Liben concurs, "or in the work of these experts is it recommended that we abandon this practice. This is why the Core standards call for all students to read 'widely and deeply.' Not doing so would make it impossible to grow the vocabulary and knowledge essential to success."

Russ Walsh, a teacher and curriculum director, making the case for leveled instruction in another Answer Sheet post, finally concedes that the best approach "is to balance our instruction between independent level, on-level, and frustration level texts." On this we agree. But before Common Core, such balance was far less likely, too often denying our most needy students the opportunity to read, enjoy, and benefit from a full range of rich texts. As Alfred Tatum noted in the Fisher article cited above, "Leveled texts lead to leveled lives."

- Robert Pondiscio and Kevin Mahnken

This first appeared on the Fordham Institute's Common Core Watch blog.

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Leveled Reading: The Making of a Literacy Myth

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Opponents of the Common Core question the idea of improving literacy by introducing higher levels of textual complexity into the instructional mix.

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One Syllable Words Sorted by Vowel Sound | OnTrack Reading

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One syllable word lists based on 19 vowel sounds, sorted by the spellings of the vowel sound, e.g., the ow, ou, and ough spellings of the /ow/ sound.

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What is the most common vowel sound in the English language? If you said long or short /e/, you are wrong. The most common vowel letter is 'e' but the most common vowel sound is the sound /uh/ (like the sound someone makes when trying to think of a word). It sounds like the short /u/ sound, but is softer and weaker. It is the only speech sound with its own special name: schwa. It can be a cause of confusion and frustration in spelling and reading for a student so, in this blog, I'll give you a simple way to explain it and some tips for helping students to decode and encode words containing a schwa.

It's All About Rhythm

The English language is stress-timed. In an English sentence, the words that communicate the most important parts of a message (the nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs) are stressed. e.g.

Function words (auxiliary verbs, pronouns, articles, conjunctions and prepositions) are not usually stressed, in order to maintain a regular rhythm in the language. For the same reason, words of more than one syllable have both stressed (strong) and unstressed (weak) syllables. For example, in the word:

the second syllable is stressed and, consequently, louder. We record this with a stress mark (ˊ) after/pointing to the stressed syllable.

Unstressed Vowels

Unstressed words and syllables are usually said faster and at a lower volume than stressed words or syllables. As a result, the vowel sound in an unstressed word or syllable can lose its purity. In Level 1 of Phonics Hero (access free resources with Teacher Account here), students learn the tricky word 'th e', and in Level 2 they learn ' a '. These words are articles, so they are unaccented, and the unaccented vowel in each of these words sounds like /uh/. We don't hear the expected 'long e' or 'long a' sound. Schwa is the most common vowel sound in the English language because most unstressed vowels are pronounced as a schwa.

The Lazy Sound

The word 'schwa' comes from Hebrew and children usually enjoy saying it. Schwa is related to the short vowel sounds because it can be spelled by any of them, including the semi-vowel 'y'. I like to refer to it as the 'lazy' vowel cousin. You hardly open your mouth to create this vowel sound. The tongue, the lips and the jaw are relaxed. The schwa sound is represented by a /Ə/ in the Phonetic Alphabet (like an upside down 'e' or an 'e' too lazy to sit up!) It takes very little time to say in a word - so little that we, on occasion, lazily skip right over it when saying a word (e.g. the second 'o' in 'chocolate' or the first 'e' in 'different') or don't even represent it when spelling (e.g. the vowel sound between '-th-' and '-m' in 'rhythm').

Dialect

A schwa can replace an r-controlled vowel like /er/ when it makes up an unstressed syllable, e.g. 'letter'. Australians are renowned for making this replacement. Listen to an Australian say:

You are unlikely to hear the /r/ at the end of the three red words. Australian English does not use /r/ before a pause or another consonant so be particularly aware of this when teaching Phonics Hero, Part 3, Level 20 (ir, er, ear, ur, or). Schwa usage varies greatly between dialects. Australian English speakers often put schwas in places where British and American speakers do not.

When to Introduce Schwa?

I believe it is particularly important to explicitly teach EALD students, and students struggling with learning difficulties in reading and spelling, the schwa feature of the English language. Introduce it once they are reading and writing two-syllable words. These are included in Part 2 of Phonics Hero, The Advanced Code, and, of course, there are many in Part 3. You may have to explain it earlier if students struggle with tricky words containing schwa in Part 1 such as 'the', 'a', 'today', 'of', 'away'.

Suggested Sequence for Teaching Schwa

1) Teach the concept of 'stress' at sentence level first

Have students say a sentence, tapping their leg as they say stressed words. Have them mark the stressed words in written sentences with a stress mark (ˊ). Awareness of this will become very useful in poetry study in later years. Talk about the types of words that are stressed and the types of words that are not stressed.

2) Make the link between schwa and unstressed vowels at word level

Have students write the schwa symbol over the vowel in the unstressed words they identified.

3) Teach the sound of schwa

Courtney Bartlett ( swimmingintosecond.com) has written a schwa song to the tune of 'The wheels on the bus go round and round'. This is my adaptation for young students:

Substitute other two-syllable words for 'away' and 'again' for other verses.

4) Teach the concept of schwa at syllable level

Have students sing polysyllabic words, tapping syllable(s) on their leg. The stressed syllable(s) should be tapped with greater strength. Have them mark the stressed syllables in written words with a stress mark (ˊ). Have them write the schwa symbol above the vowel in the unstressed syllables. They should be made aware of words which have identical spelling but different stress such:

5) Teach students to try schwa for a vowel sound in reading

Teach students to try the schwa sound when a long or short vowel doesn't sound right in a word being read. e.g., 'I'm having a sal-ad'. After decoding the word with a 'robot' voice (each syllable evenly stressed), have the student place stress on one syllable (sal') then pronounce the other with a schwa for the vowel (Əd). If this does not sound right, stress should be shifted to the next syllable.

6) Teach strategies for representing a schwa in spelling

(a) When learning the spelling of words with a schwa, encourage students to use their 'spelling voice'. They should pronounce the unstressed vowel/syllable the way it would be pronounced if the vowel sound was stressed, with a pure sound (e.g., A, th E, SUP port).

(b) Teach students to associate base words containing a schwa with their derivatives especially when the derivative has an accented syllable in which the pure vowel sound is clearly heard e.g., president-preside, human-humanity, definition-define.

(c) Teach students to use memory joggers for words that don't have derivatives e.g., 'cott on on to an idea'.

7) Teach words with a common schwa representation together

Activities to Promote Awareness of Representations of Schwa

The chances are that, like me, you managed to learn to read and spell without being explicitly taught about schwa. Schwa remains, however, an important part of the English code and all of us will have students who need to understand it in order to fully 'crack' that code and make maximum progress in reading and writing.

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Schwa Explained! Plus, How to Teach it Systematically

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What is the most common vowel sound in the English language? If you said long or short /e/, you are wrong. The most common vowel letter is 'e' but the most common vowel sound is the sound /uh/ (like the sound someone makes when trying to think of a word).

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organized by sound type

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Multisyllabic Word Lists Organized by Vowel Sound

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Each multisyllabic word list has all common spellings of one of the 19 vowel sounds. For example, the /ow/ list has “ow,” “ou,” and “ough” spellings.

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Many English words are formed by taking basic words and adding combinations of prefixes and suffixes to them. A basic word to which affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are added is called a root word because it forms the basis of a new word. The root word is also a word in its own right. For example, the word lovely consists of the word love and the suffix -ly.

In contrast, a root is the basis of a new word, but it does not typically form a stand-alone word on its own. For example, the word reject is made up of the prefix re- and the Latin root ject, which is not a stand-alone word.

Common Latin and Greek roots

Download a copy of the Common Latin Roots chart shown below.

Download a copy of the Common Greek Roots chart shown below.

Affixes

One method of understanding the meanings of new words is to analyze the different parts of the word and the meanings of those parts. Many new words are formed by adding an affix to the beginning or end of a Latin or Greek root or root word. When affixes are added to the beginning of roots or root words, they are called prefixes For example, the most common prefix is un-, which meant not or opposite of. If you add un- to the word happy, the new word becomes unhappy, which means not happy. When affixes are added to the end of roots or root words, they are called suffixes. The most common suffixes are -s and -es, which mean more than one (or the plural) of the word. Adding -es to wish, changes the meaning o the word to more than one wish.

Download a copy of the Common Prefixes chart shown below.

Download a copy of the Common Suffixes chart shown below.

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Many English words are formed by taking basic words and adding combinations of prefixes and suffixes to them. A basic word to which affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are added is called a root word because it forms the basis of a new word. The root word is also a word in its own right.

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student account, as you play rice is donated to students in need

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Freerice.com | Not Your Average Online Trivia Game

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Play online, learn online and feed the hungry | Freerice.com

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For every correct answer you choose, 10 grains of rice are raised to help end world hunger through the World Food Programme.

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teacher account to set up student accounts

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Each student must have a unique username, but you can use the same email address and password for all the accounts, but you will need to register them as under the age of 14 even if they are older. This will provide them with a limited profile, to protect their identity.

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app

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about Sound Literacy. Download Sound Literacy and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about ReadySetRead. Download ReadySetRead and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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Inspire learning with our magical games for kids.

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Pronounce the Sounds

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This page will help teachers and parents to pronounce the sounds accurately. It will guide you through the correct pronunciation for each of the 44 sounds. For example:

Representation

See it in Action

Blend Together

Say the Word

c
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c - a - t

Click below to get the sounds for each level. Following Letters and Sounds? Click here.

Part 1

Part 2

No new sounds are taught here, instead we focus on words which use the sounds from the first 6 levels but are in a more complicated pattern: VCC (Vowel, Consonant, Consonant), CCVC and CVCC words.

Part 3

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Pronounce the Sounds with Phonics Hero - Videos and Audio

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This page will help teachers and parents to pronounce the sounds accurately. It will guide you through the correct pronunciation for each of the 44 sounds. For example: Representation See it in Action Blend Together Say the Word c Your browser does not support the video tag.

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may not be able to do something YET but working to be able to do it later

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POPEY | Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years

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The Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years (POPEY) is a British Columbia Ministry of Education Provincial Resource Program with an outreach focus. POPEY's mandate is to increase K-3 educators' capacity to support all primary English literacy learners, particularly diverse and struggling students in the classroom.

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microsoft 365
reading portflio

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app

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Tes provides a range of primary and secondary school teaching resources including lesson plans, worksheets and student activities for all curriculum subjects.

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ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard on the App Store

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard. Download ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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‎Explain Everything Whiteboard on the App Store

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‎Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about Explain Everything Whiteboard. Download Explain Everything Whiteboard and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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Educreations is a community where anyone can teach what they know and learn what they don't. Our software turns any iPad or web browser into a recordable, interactive whiteboard, making it easy for teachers and experts to create engaging video lessons and share them on the web.

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Doceri - The Interactive Whiteboard for iPad.

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Doceri is a scalable suite of products that allows a teacher or presenter to control a computer's desktop, to control audiovisual technology, and to annotate any presentation in real time with the Apple™ iPad™. Doceri is an intuitive interface that can replace interactive whiteboards and expensive AV touch panels.

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ThingLink: Create unique experiences with interactive images, videos & 360° media

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Easily create interactive and immersive visual experiences for online communication and learning. Start a free trial!

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Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about SonicPics. Download SonicPics and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

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iPad Screenshots

Doodle Buddy is the most fun you can have with your finger! It's for everyone--from the serious artist to someone just starting out.

* Draw on your pics or dozens of included backgrounds.
* Over 1200 stamps :-) to decorate your drawings and pics.
* Smudge works just like your finger on chalk, but your fingers don't get dirty!
* Stencils make it easy to draw perfect circles, squares, triangles or even intricate snowflakes.

If you think you suck at drawing, try Doodle Buddy. You'll be surprised at the amazing stuff you can make. If you're already into drawing, you'll have fun with Doodle Buddy too. It's a simple, artistic medium that's not quite like anything else. Stretch yourself within its constraints, and see what you can make.

Doodle Buddy is where art meets fun.

* Searching for stamps now works on smaller screens
* Fixed a couple of freezes. Sorry about that folks.

The scientists at Doodle Buddy Labs cooked up a good one.
* Stamps now in SUPER HI RES!*
* Use two fingers to size stamps bigger than the screen!
* Zoom in on every detail--check out the squirrel.
* Smaller app size--takes up less space on your device.
Higher res stamps + smaller app size = Doodle Buddy Magic

Tell friends!

*best on iOS 10 or higher

2.1.0
* NEW STAMPS!!!!!! Over 1200 of 'em.
* Crop, rotate, and size photos for backgrounds.

VERSION 2.0.2
* Make stamps ANY size! Use two fingers to size, move and rotate.
* 24 new color backgrounds--beautiful solid color options.
* Fixed bug when hitting undo too many times erased your drawing.
* Many other bugs fixed too.

VERSION 2.0
It's been six years since we updated Doodle Buddy, so we packed in a ton of love for 2.0.

NEW FEATURES
* All new easier to use interface that's easy on the eyes too
* Chalkier Chalk, glitterier Glitter and smoother Smudge - -we improved all the brushes
* Use two fingers to move, size and rotate stencils and text--much easier
* Better organized stamps, stencils and backgrounds, plus a few more of each
* Support for Retina displays
* Improved line stencil for perfect lines
* Share function now works with Messages, Mail, Airpdrop, Instagram and more
* Redo in case you go too crazy on the Undo

BUGS FIXED
* No more accidental erase! You get to confirm before erasing in all cases.
* Photos come in as backgrounds oriented as expected now

ALL NEW DOODLE BUDDY 2.0 IS HERE

It's been six years since we updated Doodle Buddy, so we packed in a ton of love for 2.0.

NEW FEATURES
* All new easier to use interface that's easy on the eyes too
* Chalkier Chalk, glitterier Glitter and smoother Smudge - -we improved all the brushes
* Use two fingers to move, size and rotate stencils and text--much easier
* Better organized stamps, stencils and backgrounds, plus a few more of each
* Support for Retina displays
* Improved line stencil for perfect lines
* Share function now works with Messages, Mail, Airpdrop, Instagram and more
* Redo in case you go too crazy on the Undo

BUGS FIXED
* No more accidental erase! You get to confirm before erasing in all cases.
* Photos come in as backgrounds oriented as expected now.

Need way to disable "shake-to-erase"!

I am an elementary school technology teacher. I've been using this app for years with my PreK and Kindergraten classes. The app is fantastic except for one HORRIBLE feature. When you shake the iPad, the entire drawing disappears! Poof! Gone! And there is no way to turn this feature off!

I can't tell you how many times little children have lost their work because they accidentally shook their iPad. Sometimes they'll be sitting on the carpet, and the iPad will slide off their lap onto the floor, causing their work to vanish. And if they've been working hard on a drawing, or labeling a detailed diagram, they'll sometimes start to cry when they see all their work disappear in an instant.

I am writing a book about educational technology. I want to recommed this app in my book. However, if this app is likely to make children cry, I may not include it. Please, please, please create a way to turn off this feature!

Please update to the latest version. We've fixed this problem and many others.

Great all around. One annoying feature

I love this app. It's great when I'm bored and don't feel like doing some thing grand. The most annoying thing is when you shake the device, your doodle ends up being completely erased. A way to disable that feature would be helpful.

To be honest, I mostly wrote this review because I would like to see where the developers of this wonderful app are now since it has been near two years. Hopefully I get a response soon. Thanks!

Your wish is our command, Splodgey. We fixed the shake to erase problem you encountered and added a whole bunch of new stuff including 1200 new stamps. Check out the latest release, and please update your review after you've taken a look.

Thanks!

Great app but sudden ads!

Fantastic app, but the latest update slid ads in under the radar with no mention in the patch notes, which is super scummy. That said, I'm more than happy to drop a dollar on the app to hide them, but this mythical in app purchase option is nowhere to be seen! I get the feeling this is done on purpose and my cash-grab alarm bells are ringing. Why is it so hard to find apps for kids that don't prey on their naivite?

Thanks for the compliment. We are working on putting the hide ads option back in. Please hold tight till we solve this one.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
‎Doodle Buddy is the most fun you can have with your finger! It's for everyone--from the serious artist to someone just starting out. * Draw on your pics or dozens of included backgrounds. * Over 1200 stamps :-) to decorate your drawings and pics. * Smudge works just like your finger on chalk, but...

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Over 1 million people use iAnnotate, to read, mark up and share PDF, DOC, PPT and image files on the go.

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ITunes App

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‎Welcome to Notability: powerful, yet wonderfully simple note-taking and PDF annotation. Apple Editors' Choice on iPad, iPhone, and Mac! Top selling paid app on iPad App Store, regularly ranked #1. Students, teachers, and business professionals use Notability daily to enrich their lives. It is uni...

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Clever | Connect every student to a world of learning

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Clever is the platform powering digital learning for K12 schools--one single place for identity, access, security, and classroom engagement

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How the Body Works

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The human body is an amazing machine. Learn more about it through movies, quizzes, articles, and more.

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"The clean design makes it easy for the eye to know where to go next. There is a wealth of content to choose from."

British Columbia librarian

"The wide range of content available makes this resource ideal for teachers and the various subject matters taught within our school. Curio.ca will not only aid in student learning, but also promote the use of electronic resources in the classroom."

Alberta teacher-librarian

"The work [that CBC/Radio-Canada] developers are carrying out to ensure that Curio is available using responsive web design principles is as admirable as the results are elegant. The technical support team at CBC has always been quick to address our concerns and always provides solutions in a timely fashion. The video quality from Curio is consistently strong... CBC's Curio platform seems to be striving to set the gold standard for streaming video platforms."

Ontario District School Board

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"The clean design makes it easy for the eye to know where to go next. There is a wealth of content to choose from." British Columbia librarian "The wide range of content available makes this resource ideal for teachers and the various subject matters taught within our school.

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videos, quizzes, activities on different topics. Paid membership but few free videos

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videos, quizzes, activities on different topics. Paid membership but few free videos

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These two sites have combined. One consists of spelling games and the other has writing templates and examples of different styles of writing.

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share and respond platform

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Future Ready Librarians™ - Future Ready Schools

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An essential component to becoming Future Ready, is making a digital learning plan before purchasing technology. The Interactive Planning Dashboard offers districts a five-step collaborative planning process. Upon completion, districts have a complete digital learning implementation plan, full of research-based strategies, including stakeholder input, local context, and district team leadership responsibilities.

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November Learning ~ BLC ~ Education Conference 2019 - Education Keynote Speakers

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Discover our Building Learning Community Conference for educators! Learn about our professional development services that teach you to make global connections using powerful practices & edtech. Find an Education Keynote Speaker!

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Welcome to my resurrected blog! I've had my own domain since early 2003, and it has gone through many iterations and versions. My last wordpress got hacked, so lets hope this one keeps the spammers out.

I am a Teacher-Librarian at a High School near Sidney BC called Parkland Secondary It is a beautiful part of the world, and I love living there with my wife. We like to garden, cycle, travel and explore our local natural environment that surrounds this amazing penninsula.

I also teach part time online for the UBC Teacher-Librarian diploma program, a specialization for Educators to become Teacher-Librarians in our public schools. I teach L IBE 477 - New Media and New Technology in the School Library, as well as LIBE 467 - Information Services and Resources.

My professional interests are around School Libraries and transitions to Library Learning Commons models, as well as Inquiry Based Learning and International Baccalaureate learning as we just became an IB World School offering the IB Diploma Program for Sept 2018.

I have lived most of my life around the Salish Sea and appreciate all the beauty, splendor and wealth that it offers us. I am especially grateful for the many first nations and their contributions to our special part of the world.

AM July 2018

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EduProtocols are instructional templates that are designed to engage students in learning through critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity, in any subject or grade level. In this session you will see how engaging these can be for students by trying out several hands-on activities such as Sketch and Tell, Iron Chef, Tier List, Thin Slides, and more.

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Adrienne Gear has been a teacher in the Vancouver School district for over 18 years working as a classroom teacher, ESL teacher, teacher librarian and District Literacy Mentor. Adrienne developed Reading Power almost 10 years ago and has been presenting workshops, giving demonstration lessons and facilitating Reading Power leadership teams.

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"If you have a choice between being right and being kind, choose kind," spoken by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer in R. J. Palacio's seminal text, Wonder has not only resonated with many but has sparked the #choosekind challenge movement inspiring people to pledge " to create and spread more kindness in the world."

While there are those who need such an inspiration and motivation to be kind to others, I think kindness is an innate prerequisite for being a teacher as we put ourselves aside to meet the needs of the 30 little ones in our care, and teacher librarians must have a double dose as we interpret our role as one of service to not only a school of students, rather than just a class, but also the staff. Our days, and often our nights, are swallowed by trying to anticipate, interpret and meet the requests and needs of so many that in being kind to them we are often being unkind to ourselves.

We try to be all things to all people in our complex role that embraces both teacher and librarian with so many stops and tangents in between, perhaps afraid that if we are not, if we miss helping someone it will be the beginning of the end for the role in the school. We know that when budgets are under siege administrators look to the 'peripheral' staff to cut first and it's often the TL whose job is the first to be questioned. But while we are trying to be kind to others we neglect to be kind to ourselves, beginning a spiral that can end up with us being unable to be kind to anyone.

Back in 1996 as I first started the transition from a classroom teacher of 24 years to an apprentice TL , an astute principal introduced me to the works of Stephen Covey and, in particular, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

I read it from cover to cover and back again - the first of this sort of text I had ever read - and while all the habits resonated and taught me much, one became the guiding principle for my life... begin with the end in mind.

To quote Covey...

Habit 2 is based on imagination-the ability to envision in your mind what you cannot at present see with your eyes. It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation, and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint. If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default. It's about connecting again with your own uniqueness and then defining the personal, moral, and ethical guidelines within which you can most happily express and fulfill yourself.

Understanding and accepting this led to goal-setting so "the steps that I took were going in the right direction" - goals which led me through a successful transition at a traumatic time in my life when my very teaching career seemed in doubt; through discovering that teacher librarianship fitted me like the proverbial glove and studying and gaining three masters degrees; through the need to give back and mentor other 'apprentice' TLs; and through to the final goal of "being able to retire from school-based work satisfied and still intact at the end of 2016". However, when I realised that I would not meet the "intact" part of that goal if I continued the way I was, I brought the end date forward and finished at the end of 2015 with 'intact" intact - barely.

Even though in 2015 I was in a part-time position it was too easy to fall into a full-time mentality and a range of circumstances meant that I was not being kind to others in the way I should be, simply because I was not being kind to myself.

Because that is the key - if we are not kind to and take care of ourselves then we cannot be kind to and take care of others.

But if we are to be kind to ourselves we need to identify those issues that trigger unkindness so that they can be addressed.

While each of us is unique, it's fair to generalise that there are at least four that are common...

matching the ideality of university to the reality of school

wanting to be a jack-of-all-trades and master of all

time management

work-life balance

We know that learning is most effective when

We know from our university research and readings that the ideality of the teaching role of the TL is at its best when delivered within the context of classroom learning, planned and taught in collaboration with the classroom teacher so that the TL's specialist subject of information literacy -in its broadest context - is embedded into the everyday learning in the classroom, can be readily transferred to other situations and support and guidance is offered at the point of need.

But for a range of reasons, the reality is vastly different with such things as

If we are to be kind to ourselves we have to manipulate what we know to match what we have so that it is win-win for everyone ( Covey's Habit #4) The solution, and the pathway to it, will be unique to each of us but it is important that we work to achieve something that we can work with comfortably so we don't start the day frustrated and on edge. That's not to say we abandon the ideal, but if we can develop a plan that will move more towards it -'begin with the end in mind'- and accept that it might be a long journey to its achievement then we are more likely to accept the current lot, work with it and have some peace of mind.

The reason that this blog is called "500 Hats" is because that reflects the complexity of our role, and we tend to think that we must be across every aspect and like Bartholomew Cubbins, each time we take one hat off another one appears. In addition, each person perceives not only our role differently but also sees their needs as the priority. So often we are torn, if not shredded, and left wondering if we will ever get all the pieces together.

Rather than working harder we can learn to work smarter.

There always seems to be more work than time left at the end of the day and as one task tends to lead to another not previously considered, the to-do pile mounts up and up and up and the must-do task list gets longer and longer

It was scary how fast my part-time position became a full-time commitment as I effortlessly slipped back into the practice of taking stuff home just so I could stay ahead. In my previous position, my home work was confined to creating an award-winning, cutting edge school website alongside working through three masters degrees, but this time with the library management system online, easy access to SCIS, Scootle, and a zillion other resources, social media and so on, apart from the 150km commute, nothing seemed to separate my work life from my home life. And with a hubby who worked even more ridiculous hours than I did, it was easy to slip into old habits and watch that to-do list grow again.

Once again, my friend Stephen Covey came to my aid. I returned to his time management matrix to start identifying priorities and getting things back under control and practise Habit 3 - putting first things first.

While Covey explains its function and operation fully in his book, I learned to ask myself these questions whenever a new task popped up...

Does this need to be done now or can it wait?

Is it more important that what I am doing right now?

Is it more important that the other things I have planned for today?

Will doing this help me achieve what needs to be done in the short, medium and long-term?

Does it require my time and attention or can I delegate?

Setting work-based priorities has to be tied into your strategic plan so you are not suddenly confronted by something that has moved into Urgent and Important because it was swamped by other things. The big picture has to remain as clear as the daily detail so if, for example, you are required to write an annual report or contribute a page to the school yearbook, start on the first day of first term taking photos, jotting notes and so forth so that when it is due most of the work is done.

Because being a TL encompasses two distinct sides of our profession, even though the T side should be the predominant side we must also have time for the L side if we are not to end up in a series of crises. Workplace awards should delineate a certain percentage of at-work time that is set aside for administrative duties, a time that is independent of lesson preparation and planning. You need to know what your individual rights are and ensure that these are delivered by your administration. If you are forced into a corner and are not given sufficient time then enlist the help of the staff to help you determine your priorities by sending out an Information Needs Audit. Such a document not only educates your colleagues about the extent of what you do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, responses will help you establish priorities and also act as a defence if your time allocations are questioned.

Keeping all the balls in the air is a juggling act but by being pro-active with time management, even down to creating a daily timetable for your at-work time, you can be much kinder to yourself than you have been.

Anyone who is a teacher, is married to a teacher or even knows a teacher knows that the job is not "9 till 3" despite popular opinion. Those hours are our performance time, the other 18 hours in the day are for the preparation and evaluation of that performance (and the performance of others.) It is so easy to slip "stuff that can wait" - the important but non-urgent things - into a basket to lug home at the end of the day, often returning to school the next day still in the basket untouched.

Each of us has a different way of trying to achieve that magical work-life balance -if we ever do - and we must know ourselves if we are to set up an effective and efficient routine. Some like to stay at school until the work is done and take nothing home; others are so tired at 3.00pm they prefer a break and to attend to what needs to be done at home, either early or late depending on our circumstances and body clock. But whichever method we choose it needs to work for us and our families. The consequences are too great if they don't.

Even if we think we are indispensable and "my students need me", the truth is that they don't need you as much as your family does. There are thousands of teachers but most kids only have one mum or one dad. A brutal but powerful way to put things in perspective is to imagine what would happen if you were involved in a major car accident or struck down with a serious disease. Whose lives are likely to be the most impacted?

If you find it hard to let go of school work and feel guilty if you take time out to go on a family outing because there are reports to write, assignments to mark, books to accession or whatever, go anyway even if you 'justify' the time by imagining how what you experience and learn can add to what you offer the students in the morning. Anything we do to enrich our own lives also enriches that of our students because it is something more we can bring to the table.

When I finally retired from school-based work in 2015 (having been practising retirement since July 2006) I still had stuff in my important-non-urgent pile on the floor of my study, but, amazingly the school continued without it being done and after tripping over it for a few months I finally sorted it, consigning most of it to the recycling bin. AND THE WORLD STILL TURNED.

At last I had learned how to #choosekind

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"If you have a choice between being right and being kind, choose kind," spoken by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer in R. J. Palacio's seminal text, Wonder has not only resonated with many but has sparked the #choosekind challenge movement inspiring people to pledge " to create and spread more kindness in the world."

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How many of you have planned a program, a lunch and learn, a book club, etc. and not had many patrons show up to participate? Online, we tend to share our successes but less so, our struggles or dilemmas. In the interest of being "real," I wanted to share a recent anecdote.

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Collaboration tools and group chat software - Microsoft Teams

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Microsoft Teams is the hub for team collaboration in Office 365 that integrates the people, content, and tools your team needs to be more engaged and effective.

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Structure writing

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Add measurements to map nodes to automatically calculate cost, completion and other important factors. Manage project progress easily with icons and priorities.

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Maps saved to MindMup Cloud support concurrent editing for teams and classrooms, enabling you to instantly see updates made to your map by other users.

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Add longer text, videos and spreadsheets to your maps. MindMup for Google Drive also allows you to link to other project documents on Google Drive easily.

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MindMup Cloud

Free users can create public maps up to 100 KB and save them up to six months. No account or registration needed.

Gold users can create private maps, share and edit concurrently.
Create a new map Open an existing map

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Free online mind mapping. The most productive online mind map canvas on the Web. Supports Freemind mindmap import/export. Easy mindmapping software.

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As children grow, they are exposed to endless opportunities. All About Me lets students explore visual paths that encourage the discovery of interests, abilities, passions, and goals. Plus, students are rewarded for their work with hundreds of badges to collect.

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design discussions
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replace text-only discussions
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Transforming media into collaborative spaces with video, voice, and text commenting.

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app download

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A programme that grows with your children

Our flagship programme, Jolly Phonics, teaches children to read and write using synthetic phonics, which is widely recognised as the most effective way to teach children to read and write in English. That was over 25 years ago. Since then our immense progress has been studied in numerous research projects, the results of which led to phonics becoming central to the UK curriculum. Today we are now used in over 100 countries worldwide. As the leading synthetic phonics publisher, and the most experienced, we offer a 7-year school programme that teaches not only phonics, but spelling, punctuation and grammar too.

Jolly Phonics validated by the DfE as a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme!
Trusted by teachers and loved by children, we're delighted to announce that Jolly Phonics has been validated by the Department for Education as a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme. This means that the programme meets the 16 essential core criteria required by the DfE.
Since its 30-year anniversary in 2017, Jolly Learning and its flagship, multi-sensory SSP programme, Jolly Phonics, has continued to cement its position as the leading programme in teaching children to read and write from an early age.
Emma Ince is the Deputy Head Teacher at Tudor Primary School in Suffolk, England. She has overseen the school's progression in literacy by using the Jolly Phonics programme over the last 8 years. In this short video, she discusses the ways they use the programme and the success they have had.
With its fresh and vibrant redesign, Jolly Phonics' complete range of new and improved SSP resources continue to evolve to meet the needs of pupils and teachers, whilst delivering exceptional results for all children, both in today's classroom and for the future.

How Jolly Phonics works

Jolly Phonics is a comprehensive programme, based on the proven, fun and muliti-sensory synthetic phonics method that gets children reading and writing from an early age. This means that we teach letter sounds as opposed to the alphabet. These 42 letter sounds are phonic building blocks that children, with the right tools, use to decode the English language. When reading a word, they recognise the letters and blend together the respective sounds; when writing a word they identify the sounds and write down the corresponding letters. These skills are called blending and segmenting. These are two of the five skills that children need to master phonics:
You can view videos for each of the five key skills by clicking on the buttons below.
Alongside these skills children are also introduced to the main alternative spelling of vowels. These five skills form the foundation that children build on with each year of grammar teaching.

Jolly Phonics works - proven results!
Rush Green Primary School in Essex, England, turned to Jolly Phonics to improve literacy levels across the school. After seeing great progress in their children's abilities, they have since extended their teaching with the Grammar programme through the years.
There has been much research all over the world on Jolly Phonics, which can be viewed here. The research shows that the progress made by children using Jolly Phonics far exceeds that of children not taught using a synthetic phonics approach. It is effective across the ability range, with boys doing just as well as girls, while those with English as their second language can do as well as children who have it as their first.

"Jolly Phonics is amazing for the children to learn letter sounds and help pronounce words to take them onto the next stage of their speech and language."

Jolly Phonics continues for the next 6 years

The programme continues throughout the school years, by extending the earlier phonics teaching with further spelling, grammar and punctuation concepts. Each year of teaching provides continuous revision and consolidation of topics taught in previous years. Children are also taught the core concepts of grammar and punctuation, starting with simple age-appropriate definitions, which are gradually built on with each year of teaching. The teaching continues to be multi-sensory with actions and colour coding (fitting with Montessori) for parts of speech to help children develop their understanding of how language works. The systematic programme means children are given the tools that they need to independently write what they want clearly and with expression.

With spelling, punctuation and grammar (or SPaG) now more prominent in curricula around the world we have been extending our literacy programme to go up to age 11 (Year 6/P7 in the UK). Our programme has been at the forefront of this teaching and meets the aims of both the UK National Curriculum and the US Common Core State Standards.

"The systematic teaching of spelling, grammar, punctuation and vocabulary is evident in the students daily writing. They are able to recognise and use parts of grammar in their reading and writing."
Click here to view all resources via the UK Shop Click here to view all resources via the US Shop
Programme progression

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Jolly Phonics and Grammar is a 7-year programme that takes children beyond phonics and integrates spelling, grammar and punctuation.

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Tuesday, November 10, 2020 1:13:00 PM

When looking for gifts for the children in your life, think about how they fit into their interests and curiosities. Today we're sharing our BOLT 3 collection, all of which foster creativity and inspire upper elementary through middle and high school ages.

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World Book | Award-Winning Encyclopedias, Children's Books, and Educational Materials

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World Book is a leading publisher of nonfiction and mixed-genre children's book series, reference materials, and digital learning platforms. Education is World Book's commitment and its editorial team is World Book's strength. Each team member is dedicated to producing accurate and unbiased information by utilizing contemporary technological tools and following traditional practices of editorial excellence.

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All logos, designs, and brand names for Renaissance's products and services are trademarks of Renaissance Learning, Inc., and its subsidiaries, registered, common law, or pending registration in the United States.

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myON reader personalizes reading for students by recommending books based on their interests, reading level, and ratings of books they've read . myON reader tracks book usage and reading growth over time and can project a student's future reading score based on their current reading activities within the system.

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Build your website, build your success

From tech hurdles big and small to business growth tips, help from our Customer Success team is just an email, chat, or phone call away. Begin with Weebly's free website builder and lean on us for help along the way.

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Weebly is the easiest way to create a website, store or blog

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From tech hurdles big and small to business growth tips, help from our Customer Success team is just an email, chat, or phone call away. Begin with Weebly's free website builder and lean on us for help along the way.

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Discover thousands of math skills covering junior kindergarten to grade 12, from counting to calculus, with infinite questions that adapt to each student’s level.

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imovie.com -&nbspThis website is for sale! -&nbspimovie Resources and Information.

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This website is for sale! imovie.com is your first and best source for information about imovie. Here you will also find topics relating to issues of general interest. We hope you find what you are looking for!