Clever Classroom Blog

7 Easy Reading Lessons Using Mentor Texts As a teacher, one of my favorite things to do is teach students how to read. There is nothing quite like that moment when you see the ‘lightbulb’ go on and know that they get it! Along with this, I want my students to become lifelong readers, and […]

I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for new sites for read-alouds. I know that children need to be read to by a variety of sources. This develops: comprehension fluency expression vocabulary receptive language skills book to world connections reading interest and motivation love of reading Other Read-Aloud Sources I always try to […]

Technology in the Classroom: beyond games A guest blog post by Heather Betsworth Teachers are a lot like spiders: 1) We’re always on the web; 2) We have eyes everywhere; and 3) We can create glorious things out of something we pulled from our rears just moments before. That’s not to say we never plan […]

  Reading Difficulties? Phonological, and phonemic awareness skills are the foundations for competent readers. If students are memorizing text, reading without fluency, reading words incorrectly, it might be a sign that they are missing some foundations. These reading gaps can be addressed through a thorough approach to developing phonological and phonemic awareness skills.   To […]

What is Phonics? Phonics development is next in the continuum after phonological and phonemic awareness. While phonemic awareness in it’s definition is the ability to hear and manipulate sound units, phonics is the ability to hear, and also read sounds represented as graphemes (letters). Both skills sets should be taught along side each other for […]