Science of Reading Blog

If you’ve taught an English learner in your class, you’re not alone. English learners (ELs) are a rapidly growing demographic in United States schools and teachers should expect to have ELs in their classrooms. In the last 20 years, 1.5 million English learners have been added to classrooms around the country, yet only 3% of teachers have the necessary qualification to teach these students (Rahman et al., 2017). Now more than ever, ALL teachers must possess the knowledge and skills to close the achievement gap and improve learning outcomes for all students in their classroom.

AIM is preparing to release a new online course to support teachers in their literacy work for all students. The Specialized Reading Knowledge Bundle: English Learners course is filled with practical teaching tips for unlocking reading proficiency among English learners. Learn more and pre-register today.

You’ve heard the term before: Summer Learning Loss. In a recent study published in the American Education Research Journal, Atteberry and McEachin (2021) reported that over half of students in grades one through six of students lost an average of 39% of their total school year reading gains during the summer months. While summer is a time of significant variation for students and families, further research is needed to determine the direct effects on educational disparities. Nevertheless, these consecutive setbacks accumulate to a substantial decline in academic achievement, emphasizing the importance of ensuring summer learning beyond the school walls. Read some of AIM's recommendations to support student reading.

On June 6th, AIM hosted a webinar with two remarkable researchers, Dr. Linnea Ehri and Dr. Katie Pace Miles. In addition to the literacy development questions that were answered live, these two questions stood out to the AIM Institute team.

1. How can teachers support upper elementary or middle school students who are in the early phases of reading development and still struggle with foundational reading skills?

2. How can teachers develop culturally and linguistically diverse learners in each pillar of literacy?

Read the answers in today's Tuesday Teaching Tips blog.

What comes to mind when you think about your vocabulary instruction for adolescents? Perhaps you provide a “student-friendly definition” or 4-square semantic map, like a Frayer Model, to help your students acquire an important word or concept.

While these components of explicit word learning experiences are helpful, building depth of word knowledge is much more complex. Deep word knowledge includes understanding a word’s nuanced use in a sentence follow these three tips to support adolescent word knowledge: morphological variations, semantic variations, and grammatical construction.

Today, many students experience reading difficulties, which can take the joy out of literacy. As we quickly approach National Poetry Month in April, let’s see how poetry can be used to develop foundational skills, comprehension, and background knowledge! 

We conclude our Black History Month blog series by highlighting effective classroom practices that validate speakers of African American English (AAE). We want to emphasize that no matter the students’ SES, race, learning difference or language ability, all children can learn to read through systematic and explicit instruction (Foorman et al., 2016). In addition, the evidence is clear that utilizing culturally appropriate teaching strategies can improve outcomes for dialectal speakers. Learn recommendations in full post.

Assessment is a necessary part of daily classroom practice because it helps educators to better understand the needs of their students. When administering reading probes, we often use accuracy as a strong metric to guide further diagnostics and skill groupings. However, students who speak African American English require careful analysis to yield accurate conclusions.

As we continue to honor Black History Month, this week’s Tuesday Teaching Tip examines the relationship between dialect and learning to read. Key take away for teachers: there is no ‘right’ way to speak. 

To honor and celebrate Black History Month, our February Tuesday Teaching Tips posts will be dedicated to deepening our understanding African American English (AAE). African American English is a dialect with a rich history and deliberate origin. Like all dialects, AAE is a valid language system that is rule-governed with many linguistic properties functioning together. All students should be taught the legitimacy and history of their language. Do you know the history of AAE?

It might be overwhelming to consider overhauling everything to create a good structured literacy classroom at once. Instead consider these two tenants: 

1. You can’t change EVERYTHING, but you also can’t make excuses to change NOTHING.
2. Act small, plan big!

Take some time to prioritize what you can change within the next few days, next unit, and next year using a few examples found here.

Data should always be the starting point for diagnostic, prescriptive instruction. Opportunities for students to demonstrate their learning appear daily. Learn about three formative assessment opportunities that can be incorporated into your classroom right away!

Dr. Hollis Scarborough's Reading Rope clearly shows that skilled reading requires reading with increasing automaticity. But throwing students into texts that they’re not equipped to decode accurately does more harm than good. This blog explains the difference between decodable and leveled readers so that teachers make informed decisions that are best for their students.

To meet your goal of being more data-driven and responsive to students’ needs in 2023, consider a simple solution to remaining organized, a data binder, to guide your small group instruction. 

Ring in the New Year with Literacy Best Practices!

The beginning of a new year is always exciting and refreshing. It is truly the perfect time to self-reflect on best practices for a healthier you and making 2023 the best it can be! As an educator, self-reflecting on your classroom practices is worthy of your time, and re-establishing effective practices can be a powerful tool to revive your passion for teaching and maximize your students’ success. Learn three best practices to maximize students' literacy skills.

Have a sound wall, but not sure where to go from there? This week's Tuesday Teaching Tips post focus on ways to support learner with three principles to embed in your sound wall work. Embed these three structured literacy principles into your work to get the most out of your time!

We're sure you’ve heard of the importance of early literacy skills, like developing students’ phonological sensitivity and phonemic awareness abilities. But, accurate production of speech sounds is another indispensable foundational skill that is often overlooked. Today’s focus is on sound production and ways to teach our students this formidable underpinning. Engage in these three tips to start the literacy journey on the right track: Check Your Pronunciations, Clip Those Sounds and Build on What Students Know.

The Research Partnership for Professional Learning recently published a paper that found the most effective teacher training focuses on improving instructional practices in day-to-day practice. At AIM, we echo these sentiments and have developed courses that promote evidence-based best practices in comprehensive literacy instruction. If we strive to empower lives through literacy, we must carefully curate professional learning experiences with five key principles, shared in a recent Education Week article by Madeline Will, in mind. Read more about what works in professional teacher learning.

We’ve all been there before. A student can segment words with ease, but when it comes time to blend all letter-sounds to produce the whole word, students often guess or make a mistake. Today’s blog post will focus on continuous blending as a promising technique to support early decoding efforts.

AIM Institute team members joined educators and researchers from around the world at the International Dyslexia Association’s annual conference. Read some of their reflections in this week's #TeamTakeaways blog post.

Efficient decoding is dependent upon accuracy and automaticity in pairing letters to the sounds they represent. Take a moment to read about an effective approach that accelerates the acquisition of this foundational knowledge.

Early instruction activities to develop phonemic awareness can begin in preschool with formal instruction that typically spans through early first grade.

Emergent readers don’t need to sit down for long stretches of time to practice these skills, but rather, a few minutes of daily instruction is sufficient. Of the skills in the continuum, research directly supports three essential PA skills: Sounds isolation, Blending and Segmentation.

Young children, also known as pre-alphabetic readers according to Ehri’s Phases, are typically introduced to the world of literacy when stories are read at home or in their first school environment. To get the most out of these interactive reading experiences with young children, follow these four essential steps before, during, and after reading to develop early print awareness and some essential habits of good readers.

Achieving literacy for all students IS an attainable goal, and knowledge is the starting point! So, whether you are a parent, teacher, interventionist, or student with dyslexia, it is our job to seek out information to advocate for our students, children, or ourselves. Please don't delay, and jump in with us as we learn all about dyslexia through some of our top favorite books.

Learn the facts behind common myths about dyslexia including that people see letters and words backwards and that dyslexia can be outgrown.

Early identification of dyslexia and intervention are critical. AIM's Characteristics of Dyslexia Checklist was created to support educators as they identify characteristics of dyslexia. Although this checklist is not intended to make a diagnosis, it is a great tool to use for those concerned about a student's performance. Teachers and parents may use this checklist to consolidate multiple sources of information.  

October, a month dedicated to dyslexia and learning disabilities awareness, is the perfect time to launch AIM’s Science of Reading blog. Dyslexia Awareness Month was officially recognized by the US Congress in 2015 and is an important time focused on deepening the understanding of dyslexia, dispelling misconceptions, and advocating for improved teacher training opportunities for all educators.

Learn how everyone in your community can play a part in raising awareness of dyslexia.