The news on iready isn’t surprising to teachers. We hate iready, the kids hate iready, the parents hate iready. Why do we assign it then? Because a bunch of moron admins who taught for 3 years and are now our “leaders” require us to. As a teacher I still very rarely have my

You can overcome anything. The past 7 years of my life have been riddled with struggle. Major neck injury that was rare and wasn’t diagnosed for years, so I suffered and was even completely bedbound for months. Had 20 different severe symptoms, some “incurable.” Yet, I

Parents, you can give your children an advantage in life by reading with them every night for 20 minutes. Choose classic books you both enjoy. Share the reading, you read a page, they read a page. Making your children fluent, expert readers will automatically guarantee they are

Iready (among other useless Ed platforms) is a huge problem. Parents, do you know how many minutes your child spends on “iready”? Also, are you aware how long the diagnostic tests take? I am “required” to give these 3x year and they take 2-4 hours for some kids to finish.

My fourth grade curriculum in my Florida district has ZERO novels. Not one. We have benchmark which has “magazines” with 3 page “excerpts” from novels. It’s slop. Everyone hates it. I still insist on teaching novels and the wild thing is Florida DOE has EXCEPTIONAL book lists

You can build an exceptional educational experience with four curriculum materials: 1. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 lessons. Start this book when your child is young. Preferably 4/5. Earlier if they show high aptitude. 2. FLDOE recommended book lists by grade. Read,

Increasing actual reading time improved reading. Shocking right?! Yes, students should be reading, whole novels, in class, A LOT!!!

Let’s talk about how MUCH we are testing elementary students. Here’s how many required state or district tests my fourth graders take and how long they take: -3 ELA FAST tests (1.5-5 hours) -3 Math FAST Tests (1.5-5 hours) -3 iReady ELA diagnostic tests (2-4 hours) -3 Writing

The MOST important foundational skill to teach in school is READING. Without it nothing else matters. How many administrators can articulate how the brain learns to read? In my experience, very, very few. This is a HUGE reason why literacy rates keep falling. Leaders MUST

In 2002 more than 30 experts criticized Reading Recovery. They laid out why the program didn’t work and how it was harming kids. That didn’t stop school districts from continuing to purchase the program and implement it well after 2002. My own child was taught Reading Recovery

Yes, READING is THE foundational skill. My hot take is that K-2 should be totally focused on building fluent readers. Don’t teach anything else until that has happened.

Mark Seidenberg’s book “Language at the Speed of Sight” gave me the knowledge I needed to help rewire my son’s brain to learn to read. Every educator must read it. In my humble opinion he’s the godfather of science of reading. His article here makes an excellent point about

My third grade son is in a gifted class but still finishes early every week. Now, when he finishes he goes on Mart Academy and he’s halfway done with 4th grade math in around two weeks. If your child is at public school you can still absolutely ask that the teacher have them

This just illustrates the point that if kids leave elementary school not being fluent readers, they never ever learn to read. These 28 high schoolers have 1:1 ratio of teachers. Still 0% reading proficiency. We’ve got to get teaching of reading correct in K-2.

I say this to my students on repeat. The complex part of this puzzle is that for each kid the number of repetitions to memorize will vary. This also why grade level classes make no sense. There is zero reason to summarily move a child to the next “level” if they have not mastered

This will be controversial, but the parents of students with IEPs and 504s need to be relentlessly pursuing solutions for their child’s medical needs. All the accommodations in the world do not solve the underlying medical issues your child is experiencing. Be obsessive about