What makes us most optimistic about learning these days? The fact that thousands of schools, school districts (US) and trusts (UK) have adopted explicit, systematic phonics curricula, and that teachers that have been using them have been more intentional about using the science to shape instructional decisions.  There is a lot of great progress to feel…

  I gave my littlest a copy of Brave New World for Christmas and while I thought there was a pretty good chance she’d read it, I didn’t think she’d read it OG style.   I found that out because I came home from a work trip on Friday evening and found her sleeping on the…

When I was teaching 5th grade, I knew that I needed to support my students’ fluency, but I had no idea how to do it. I had some students who came into my classroom reading beautifully, with ease and comfort. Other students were still struggling to decode, requiring prompting with each challenging word. However, the majority…