Teaching Homophone Triplets Without Tears
One of the most challenging things about the English language has got to be homophones! These are words that sound the same, but they are spelled differently, and they have different meanings. This can make reading and spelling a bit tricky and frustrating. Take the confusion with this fun and engaging activity!
How to Teach Digraphs
We’ve got two options when it comes to teaching a child to recognize SH, CH, TH, and WH. We can either point to SH and say, “This says Shhhh,” OR we can engage the entire child-- mind, emotions, and body-- in an activity that will make learning digraphs unforgettable.
How To Teach Complex Words
Go through all the SnapWords®, pointing out word chunks or sound spellings so that when they come to a more complicated word, you can show how the larger word has pieces that are similar to much smaller words they already know. The brain loves making connections!
How to Teach R-Controlled Sound Spellings
Rumors are flying around the web about Bossy R and how he came to have that name. Because everyone has a slightly different version of the story, I am here to set the record straight once and for all. Here you will find the truth about Bossy R.
Tips for Teaching Possessive Tense
Possessive tense can be very confusing for young children. My students had a terrible time distinguishing between possessive and the plural form of a word.
How to Support Teachers: Back-to-School 2022
Now more than ever, teachers need our help and support. Let’s make this school year great by finding ways to step in and help fill the gaps.
How to Help Your Child Recognize Sight Words in Books
A vast number of children have trouble just recognizing high-frequency words. The reason this is a problem is because sight words are a high percentage of the words children encounter in reading. The design of our SnapWords® emphasizes comprehension, correct usage, and word recognition.
How to Teach Spelling So Kids Will Remember
Many types of learners cannot memorize and retain facts that involve symbols. (This includes memorizing words or math facts, too!) They might be able to retain the letters and sequence of a word for a few minutes, but 30 minutes later, the information will have disappeared from their brains.
How to Teach Prepositions so Children will “Get it”
We received a comment from a teacher that her students were having a hard time grasping the concept of prepositions: what they are and how they are used. Sounds like a topic for which images and hands-on activities will help turn on those mental lights!
How To Teach Right-Brained Addition & Subtraction Vol. 2
Many students who struggle with adding and subtracting numbers larger than one digit have trouble because they are not familiar with their math facts, they get lost when trying to follow the steps to solve a problem, or they are unable to remember those steps to begin with.
How to Teach Letters and Sounds
All of us enjoy teaching the ABC Song to young children. We get excited when toddlers can sing the song all the way through! And it feels like the first solid step in the process of learning to read. And most children can learn the ABC Song! Most can also recite the ABCs from A to Z. But is that enough?
How to Teach Pinchy E (Final Silent E)
Tell the children that they are going to help you teach by doing a little skit about someone named Pinchy E.
How to Teach Prepositions of Time
The incredible challenge in teaching really boring material is that it is also boring to the teacher! Prepositions fall easily into this category of most boring content. So let’s make it fun! Use body movement, color, images, and hands-on activities, and make it such a riot that the children will never ever forget.
Using Prepositions for Reading Fluency
In order to become stellar readers, children need practice finding prepositional phrases in text. One reason for this is to help them read more fluently. Think about the phrasing fluent readers practice that make their reading fluid and easy to understand.
How to Teach Punctuation for Items in a Series
My own students in second grade really struggled with this idea. It took me by surprise because I assumed it was going to be one of those skills that I could show them, and then that they would all just nod and say, “Sure, got it!” But that is not what happened.
How to Teach Sight Words and Sound Spellings Using a Big Book Story
It works so well to pre-teach specific sight words and sound spellings using a big book. Rather than jumping right in and reading the story with them, pre-teach and give them the lay of the land ahead of time. Doing this will help the focus concepts jump off the page and reading the story will be more successful.
How to Teach Sight Words Using a Word Wall
For the sake of this post, I am using 12 words, but in my classroom, the walls were full of words. We had a word wall which was arranged in ABC order in columns and then we had a wall devoted to our big words grouped by part of speech: nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Tips for Teaching To, Too, and Two
To, too and two are another set of tricky words that are easy to mix up. Visual hooks are pretty powerful! Let's think of some visual hooks we could use to help our right-brained students remember the difference between to, too, and two.
How to Teach Vowel Sounds so Kids will Remember Infographic
A visual learner cannot rely on memory to recall the sound difference between E and I, or O and U. A visual with a related hand motion is critical. The child will see the symbol and their brain will draw on the image and motion.
Tips for Helping Children Visualize Math Word Problems
Math word problems can be a real bear, especially for children who struggle with reading comprehension or for those learning to speak English as a second language. The good news is that there are a few strategies for helping to take the drudgery out of word problems.
Tips for Teaching Your and You’re
I realize that “your” and “you’re” have over time become interchangeable. It seems to be very commonly accepted that “your” can be used both for possessive as well as when a person's trying to say “you are." So here are a couple of ideas on helping your students remember the difference between "your" and "you're."
How to Teach Vowel Sounds so Kids Will Remember
Short vowels and their sounds are often difficult for children. For students who are weak on vowel sound discrimination, spelling tests are torture. It follows that reading is hard for them as well.
Infographic: How to Effortlessly Teach Sight Words
Does it seem like your child just can’t learn sight words? Does he struggle with reading? You CAN help your child learn sight words. We will provide you with proven resources to help your child learn easily and in a way that makes sense for him - which means you will see results right away.
How to Teach Sight Words so They Will Stick
There are ways to let your children play this summer and still help boost their reading without paying for tutoring sessions or struggling with your children over spending time working on reading.
How to Teach Apostrophes
My students always had a really hard time understanding the use of apostrophes, both in making contractions and in possessive tense. I had to use little drawings and stories to drive the learning home in a way the children would remember.
My Secret to Teaching First Graders Over 600 Sight Words
Something about this process worked so well with these first graders that before very long, most of the class was on their SIXTH list of 100 words! By the end of the year, in the last week or so of the school year, I found myself making an EIGHTH list of 100 words for three of my kids.
Tips for Teaching There, They're, and Their
There are some words that are just hard to remember how to spell, and if they sound the same as each other, it simply compounds the problem. Here are a few of the tricks I used with my students when teaching these three words.
How to Teach the Water Cycle
Tips for Teaching Preschoolers High Frequency Words
I am a strong believer in several things when it comes to teaching the very young. One is that drill and memorization have no place with preschoolers. Another is that anything you can passively impart to preschoolers is going to be really potent in terms of their learning gains.
How to Memorably Teach the Days of the Week
It is our experience that using images and other memory hooks is more effective than anything when teaching new material to children since it allows them to remember and not struggle.