Reaching Struggling Learners

Send a text Last week, I was talking to a friend of mine who teaches high school and she is one of the most caring teachers I have ever met. The amount of time that this woman spends worrying about her students and finding ways to meet them where they are is, well it’s almost obsessive. She is an extrovert like I have never known before and she really is one of those teachers that somehow always f...

Send a text Special education teachers know that managing a caseload is a lot more than just tracking dates. It includes writing and teaching goals. Then, don’t forget to collect data on those goals! Special education teachers need to progress monitor the goals weekly. They also need to report the results to school personnel and parents. Side note-graphs make it easier to report, but that is often...

Send a text They say that special education teachers are a “different breed” and maybe they are right, whoever “they” is. The fact is that special education teachers juggle so much every day…every hour in reality, that it is an absolute miracle that any of them make it through a week, let alone a school year. Between planning and teaching highly individualized lessons, preparing all of the materia...

Send a text So, you have MTSS in your school, and there are several students in your class who are struggling in reading, and they are receiving the interventions that they need to make progress. But you have noticed that several of your students are also struggling in math. Yes, you know that you should provide support in math, but the thought of progress monitoring math seems daunting….even thou...

Send a text The last few weeks, we’ve been talking about phonological awareness, and how important it is to drill down to the most basic skill deficit to make real progress in reading for our struggling students.  Welcome to the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast. Today we are going to talk about how to incorporate phonics skills throughout the school day and how to improve your phonics small gr...

Send a text Last week we talked about the difference between phonological awareness and phonics.  This week, we are going to extend that conversation into talking about how to set up and manage phonological awareness small groups. You may be thinking that those skills are such baby skills, why would anyone dedicate an entire small group time to them? That’s a good question, which we definitely wil...

Send a text We all know that if we don't start the year with it, we aren't going to do it.  So this year, let's start with progress monitoring so that we can be confident in what we do all year long. Getting our progress monitoring under control early on is important, because we know that progress monitoring closes achievement gaps . Our students have a lot of gaps in their learning...

Send a text Phonological awareness and phonics are two different things, but many teachers get confused between the 2. While the terms are not interchangeable, they do have some similarities. Today on the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast, we are going to talk about phonological awareness and phonics. Let’s clear up any confusion there may be, so that we can figure out the most basic skills our...

Send a text I don’t know about you, but every time I’ve sat in PD about SMART goals, they spend a lot of time talking about the making of goals and sharing the information afterward, but not so much about actually collecting that data….which is why we talked about that in episode 59 last week. Make sure you check out that episode, if you’ve haven’t already.  This week, let’s extend that discussion...

Send a text The last few episodes, we’ve been talking SMART goals….but not like what we hear in our professional development sessions.  In pd, we hear all about how SMART goals are the key to school improvement. Administrators and gurus focus on how this tool can be used to raise school grades, standardized test scores, and eventually improve student learning.  While all that sounds great, I respe...

Send a text There has been a lot of hype over the last several years, especially before Covid, about SMART goals.  I’ve sat in hours of professional development about how to create SMART goals for myself and my students. All the gurus have been pushing these things for years, but are they worth the effort? Are SMART goals worth all the hype?  Let’s talk about whether putting effort into creating S...

Send a text It is almost 2022, and I really cannot believe it.  In full transparency, I have been SUPER MIA from the podcast and blog recently because, well…. As some of you know, my husband is in the military and in true military fashion, we got moved at THE most inconvenient time….aka the week before Christmas.  We found out a few months before, but all of that completely through me for a loop....

Send a text Last week we talked about how we can use universal screeners to do more than stress ourselves out on how much work we need to do to get our students where they need to be. We talked about how that information can actually be used to help our students make real progress toward being on grade level. This week, let’s talk about how we can set goals based on that data and get a move on mee...

Send a text The first few weeks of school are a wonderful, stressful time of the year. We get to know our new students, we get procedures and things all set up. Also, we test the students a whole lot. Wait...what? Yup, we know it’s coming...the first set of assessments for the school year. Those tests are used in our evaluations, and also help us figure out how to group our students and make plans...

Send a text Standardized assessments are practically curse words in the teacher community, and for good reason. They are truly the bane of so many teachers' existences, but as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t think they are going away anytime soon. So, how about we make a little bit more sense out of the chaos and find some ways to use these tests to our students’ advantage! Subscribe &amp...

Send a text In education we talk a lot about achievement or learning gaps, but what is this really? And is it really that important for teachers to understand? Today we are going to talk about achievement gaps, and how we get information about them. Subscribe & Review in iTunes Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don’t want you to miss a...

Send a text Hi! Welcome back! I’ve taken a few weeks off to just get caught up on things and try to enjoy a bit of summer before I jump back into helping my friends set up classrooms and behavior management systems and oh gosh all the laminating! So, for this first episode back, I wanted to talk about achievement gaps and how progress monitoring helps students. I have been very passionate about th...

Send a text Welcome to our final episode in our phonological awareness series….Onset-Rime! We have been talking about phonological awareness and phonemic awareness for a while now, and I hope that you’ve gained some insight into how important these skill sets are. This final installment will bring a little closure to the series, but also, I hope encourage you to really jump on the phonological awa...

Send a text Teaching students to identify rhyming words is a piece of what goes on in lower elementary grades, but do any of us really know why that is an important skill to learn? Today, let’s talk about that, as well as why we bother teaching alliteration….both are skills I questioned teaching myself as a teacher...but I am glad that I did!  Subscribe & Review in iTunes Are you subscribed to...

Send a text This year has been harsh...and I need a break. If you need a break, take a listen while I tell a story about my favorite restaurant and an unfortunate Publix trip.... Warning...this episode includes discussion of food poisoning and I didn't figure out how to bleep out the one curse word....   But, I hope you listen and take a break from the weight of this year for a while! Subscri...

Send a text When students read in class, do they struggle with pronouncing words correctly? I don’t mean articulation errors….as in the students have a really hard time saying s specific sound….I mean when they read words, do you know what word they mean, but they are putting too much or too little emphasis on certain pieces of the words? This can really mess with the fluidity of reading, and make...

Send a text How many times have you read a student’s writing and wondered where all the other words were? As in, connecting words were missing, or things like that. What about when looking at their writing and all the words are smooshed together with no spaces between words. Yes, part of these things could be due to other issues, such as a language impairment or poor handwriting. But another issue...

Send a text Many students who are struggling in school have weak phonological awareness skills. Phonological awareness is a big concept that includes many skills that kids need before they get into phonics and reading. In this first episode of the phonological awareness series, we talk about what exactly is phonological awareness, and why teachers should teach it, even in upper grades to see some...

Send a text Kindergarten and first grade teachers know the pain with this skill set. If you aren’t a lower grades teacher, just know that one of the skills that these teachers have to teach is asking students to take a word and change a particular sound in the word to make a different word. The processing that this takes is huge...and struggling learners can really struggle with this skill! Today,...

Send a text Ok, so disclaimer...we aren’t just going to be talking about beginning sounds...but so many of us just focus on that skill, that I figured I’d use it to grab your attention. The fact is, being able to identify the beginning, middle, and ending sound in words is super important when building phonemic and eventually phonics skills….even if we sometimes don’t want to admit it. That is exa...