Add some movement (master list of activities!) into singing time this week with this fun The Still Small Voice Movement Words idea! Choose key words in the

At one point or another, we’ve all worked with struggling readers. Sometimes we can tell, on the very first day of school, which students are going to have difficulty. Other times we see students fall a bit behind throughout the course of the year. But why do certain students fall behind their same-age peers? And what steps can we take to help them catch up? Throughout the month of January, I’m going to be exploring these topics with you through a series of blog posts. I’ll be digging in deep, sharing with you what I already know, as well as information that I’m learning as I do more professional reading. I will also be sharing free resources that I’ve created to help support you in your work with your students. Of course, a series of 6 posts couldn’t possible include everything you need to know about helping struggling readers succeed! So I’ve decided to focus the posts on decoding difficulties in primary readers. In reality, when we’re talking about reading difficulties, it’s nearly impossible to extract just one aspect or skill. For example: a child may struggle with decoding as a result of underlying comprehension issues (if a child isn’t making sense of what he reads, he’s not going to be able to self-correct errors using meaning). Or a student may have poor fluency that is both caused by decoding problems, as well as a result of decoding problems. Throughout this series, keep in mind that although I’m focusing on decoding for brevity’s sake, it’s only just one piece of the reading puzzle. Furthermore, we have to remember to “keep our eyes on the prize.” The prize, of course, is comprehension – the ultimate goal of reading. It’s very easy to say to ourselves, “Well, I’ll just get him decoding and then I’ll focus on comprehension.” I am definitely guilty of this myself! But while we may focus on decoding interventions for a certain period of time, we also have to be intentional about teaching comprehension. Because decoding without comprehension isn’t very useful at all! One other thing I want to quickly mention is that the majority of posts in this series will apply to all K-2 teachers, whether you teach in English or Spanish. However, since I currently teach in Spanish (like some of my readers), I will also be doing a mini-series on supporting bilingual students. Those posts will come in February, following the conclusion of this series. I’m so excited to get started on this series! I hope that you’ll get a lot of value from it, as well as some free resources you can try out in your own classroom. As always, I love it when you share your own thoughts and experiences in the comments and/or on my Facebook page. Let’s dive in and get started!! Photo from Shutterstock, Lyubov Kobyakova What is a Decoding Difficulty? Before we start digging into how to help struggling decoders, we need to define what a decoding difficulty is. For the purpose of this series, I’m defining a decoding difficulty as being present when: A child can only decode texts with greater than 90% accuracy when the texts are significantly below grade level (by 3+ months) The reader’s comprehension is negatively impacted by decoding struggles The student’s motivation, engagement, and/or overall school performance is negatively impacted by decoding problems Of course, your team or school may have different criteria to help you decide when to provide reading / decoding interventions. The above definition is just my own working definition for purposes of clarity. The interventions I’ll discuss are helpful for any students who need decoding support. Sometimes, I’ve found that decoding difficulties can be temporary roadblocks (a child struggles with blending sounds for a short period of time, for example). Other times, a decoding issue may last for months or even years. My goal is to make every decoding difficulty a temporary difficulty. And I think that this is a realistic goal to set for the majority of students. In fact, Richard Allington asserts that it’s possible for nearly every child to learn to read by the end of first grade. Clearly, early intervention is a must in order to get our kids on the right track! What Causes Decoding Difficulties? It would be most convenient if all decoding difficulties had one root cause, or even a few possible root causes. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Different students struggle with decoding for different reasons. Below is a list of possible causes for decoding difficulties. This list is by no means comprehensive, but I hope that it’ll at least give you a starting point in thinking about why a child may struggle with decoding: Vision or hearing problems – At our school, vision and hearing testing are some of the very first steps we take when “problem solving” for a student. If a child is not perceiving spoken or written words accurately, this can result in decoding difficulties. Ask your school nurse about how to have your struggling decoders screened! Limited access to literacy/language experiences in the home and/or lack of preschool – Some children struggle with decoding (and reading in general) simply due to a lack of prior language and literacy experiences. Betty Hart and Todd Risley’s research indicated that 3 year olds living in poverty have been exposed to 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers. Thirty million words! This absolutely impacts children’s literacy development, as does a lack of “lap reading” and preschool. Educational gaps – Gaps in students’ educational experiences can also contribute to reading and decoding difficulties. If a child moves one or more times during his early years in school, he may miss out on certain instructional opportunities. If a child misses school due to illness or neglect, this can also lead to decoding difficulties. Or, if there are certain curricular gaps in literacy instruction during a child’s previous school experiences – especially in phonological awareness or phonics – this can also result in decoding difficulties. Phonological processing problems – In my work as a reading specialist, I’ve found that many of the students I work with have underlying phonological awareness problems. Phonological awareness is the ability to hear

This free verb game is great for introducing action verbs to kids in first grade and second grade. They simply move around the board and name the action. A creative recording sheet adds interest to the game. #verbs #firstgrade #secondgra

Past tense is used when we talk about actions that took place in the past. In this article, we will learn about past tense and its states.

Simple Future Tense is a verb form that refers to actions or states that will take place in the future. In many cases, it expresses actions that are expected

A simple worksheet on common action words. It can be used to review the action vocabulary of the students and if they understood the lesson. I use it for my elementary students. - ESL worksheets

Choose between the present simple and the present continuous for the verbs in brackets depending on whether they are stative or active. - ESL worksheets

A future tense is a verb form that we use to talk about things that do not happen yet. It tells us that an action or state will happen in the future.

Basic vocabulary, like knowing prepositions, is necessary for beginning readers. Teach prepositions with this simple game.