How are vocabulary and reading connected? To understand what you have read, you need to know the meaning of the words you are reading. Research tells us that vocabulary knowledge, including both oral and written vocabulary, is critically important for a child’s success in school (Kamil et al., 2008). That being said, each person has…
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How to Create a Daily Schedule for Kids (FREE Printable)
School’s out, and summer is here! Pool parties, backyard barbeques, days at the river… and summer learning loss! Hold up. Wait. Let’s put a stop to the summer learning loss, but let’s keep the good stuff. Kids often lose much of what they learned from the school year over the summer. This is because most…
Summer Learning Loss: How to Prevent the Summer Slide
4 Steps to Stop Summer Learning Loss Kids often lose much of what they learned from the school year over the summer. This is because most of the time, during the summer, we don’t spend much time stimulating the brain and keeping them active. It’s typical for kids to lose between two and four months…
6 Benefits of Summer Reading Programs
Table of Contents The struggle is real when it comes to keeping your K-8th graders entertained and educated during the summer months! After all, there’s only so much Minecraft, swimming, and fort building one can handle. But fear not, summer reading programs have been saving summers for decades, offering fantastic benefits for your little ones.…
What is Reading Fluency?
Reading Fluency Definition Reading fluency is the ability to read smoothly, easily, and quickly. Good readers can read words automatically without having to sound out each syllable (also known as decoding). In other words, you don’t have to spend a lot of effort and attention on the mechanics of reading. Reading becomes easy. Word recognition…
Brain-Body Connection: Movement and Learning
How does the brain-body connection affect overall learning skills? Most of us don’t think about learning skills in conjunction with the brain-body connection and movement. However, the brain-body connection and movement are very important to your ability to learn and master reading skills. The brain and body work together as a machine, one designed to…
Executive Function and Reading
“If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail.”– Benjamin Franklin Executive function is all about planning and organizing. It’s also your ability to strategize and pay attention to and remember details. Executive function also involves flexible thinking. This is used when you have an assignment, project, or problem that can be done in several…
Phonemic Awareness and Reading
What is Phonemic Awareness? Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds – phonemes – in spoken words. A phoneme is a unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another, for example, /b/, /k/, and /s/ in the words bat, cat, and sat. Phonemic awareness is critical to reading and…
Auditory Processing and Spelling
What is Auditory Processing? Have you ever heard a new word and tried to spell it? Doing this helps you to remember the new word. The process of reading new words is much easier than spelling new words. Reading is the process of decoding. Spelling is the process of encoding. These are two sides of…
Visual Discrimination and Reading
Visual Discrimination Visual discrimination is the ability to discern subtle similarities and differences visually. This is the process of seeing the details of what we are looking at. What is the same? What is different? Shapes, sizes, and colors are details to be looked at. In regard to reading, when you see the details and…
