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Research has shown that multi-sensory learning helps brains make connections more quickly. It's kind of like turning the power on in MULTIPLE parts of the brain instead of just one. 💡

And the great news is that it can be *really* quick and simple to add into your phonics lesson plans! Case in point:

When it comes to teaching students digraphs (two letters that make just one sound), these simple, multi-sensory chants have a HUGE impact.

👉 Be sure to save this so you can quickly find the chants the next time you're teaching digraphs!

#phonicsfun #phonicsforkids #phonics

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I know, I know... You’re just wrapping up THIS school year, and I’m popping into your feed to talk about NEXT year. 😲

Before you plug your ears and run the other way, hear me out - I promise there’s a method to my madness!

Every spring, I make an editable lesson planner to help you stay organized all year long.

And since many of you have been asking for the annual update, I moved it to the top of our to do list.

That’s where this post comes in…

Today’s the big day! Your 2023-24 planner is hot off the press and ready to grab.

👉 Just comment PLANNER below and our friendly Plato-Bot will send you the link!

#teachertreats #teachergram #elementaryteacher #prekteacher #kindergartenteacher #firstgradeteacher

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This is surprising! 🤯 When we think of the sound S makes, /s/ usually comes to mind. But 60% of the time it actually says /z/! Here’s why…

S says /s/ at the start of a word and after an unvoiced sound.

But most of the time it actually says /z/ instead because it’s following a voiced sound including m, n, ng, l, b, d, g, v, voiced th, and r.

It helps to remember it this way…

The difference between saying /s/ and /z/ is simply turning on your voice box. If your voice box is already working for the sound that comes right before it, your voice box might as well stay on to pronounce the S too!

For instance, listen for the /z/ sound in these words:

Beds
Logs
His
As
Is

The S follows a voiced sound in every example so the S is also voiced and sounds like /z/. 💡

👉 Be sure to save this, so you remember how to teach it to students later.

👉 And tag a teacher friend who would love it too!

#phonicsfun #scienceofreading #iteachprek #iteachk #iteachfirst

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What’s the difference between phonological and phonemic awareness?🤔

Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that includes five different skills:

1️⃣ Sentence segmenting
2️⃣ Syllable segmenting
3️⃣ Rhyming
4️⃣ Alliteration
5️⃣ Phonemic awareness

The last skill on that list, phonemic awareness, is the superstar in the bunch because it includes SIX skills all on its own!

Research has also shown that it’s the most important for students’ reading success because it focuses on individual sounds in words.

Phonemic awareness includes:

1️⃣ Blending individual sounds called phonemes
2️⃣ Isolating phonemes
3️⃣ Segmenting phonemes
4️⃣ Adding phonemes
5️⃣ Deleting phonemes
6️⃣ Substituting phonemes

👉 Comment WARM UPS below if you’d like a sample of the no prep warm ups that make it quick and easy to practice everything on this list!

👉 And save this post so you can refer back to it later.

#phonemicawareness #scienceofreadinginaction
#kindergartenteacher #prekteacher #elementaryteacher #instateacher #phonologicalawareness #scienceofreading

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Learning to read is a lot like building a house – if students’ foundation is shaky, there’s no way their walls and roof can be steady and strong.

And when it comes to reading, the foundation kids need to build is filled with phonological and phonemic awareness skills! They’re the key to unlocking students’ reading because they help kids hear and move around the SOUNDS in words.

(Being able to HEAR the sounds makes it *so much* easier for students to connect those sounds to the letters used to read and spell them later.)

Phonological awareness includes 5 different skills:

1️⃣ Sentence segmenting
2️⃣ Syllable segmenting
3️⃣ Rhyming
4️⃣ Alliteration
5️⃣ Phonemic awareness

And the last skill on that list, phonemic awareness, includes SIX different skills all on its own!🤯

Research has shown it’s the most important for students’ reading success because it focuses on individual sounds. (Cat has three: C-A-T and frog has four: F-R-O-G.)

Phonemic awareness includes:

1️⃣ Blending individual sounds called phonemes
2️⃣ Isolating phonemes
3️⃣ Segmenting phonemes
4️⃣ Adding phonemes
5️⃣ Deleting phonemes
6️⃣ Substituting phonemes

Whew! That’s a lot of skills in one foundation. But the great news is that there are lots of simple, fun ways to build them.

👉 Comment WARM UPS below if you’d like a sample of our no prep warm ups.

👉 And save this so you have a go-to list of foundational reading skills to practice.

#kindergartenteacher #prekteacher #elementaryteacher #instateacher #phonologicalawareness #scienceofreading

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It’s important to know the best order for teaching phonics skills so you don’t accidentally skip 3 steps ahead…

Plus, knowing the step-by-step sequence makes it *so much* easier to help kids because you can quickly pinpoint where they are and jump right into teaching them the next skill on the list. 💪

NOTE: Researchers are still debating about the ideal order so sometimes you might see digraphs listed before blends and other times you’ll see blends before digraphs, for example…

That said, this is the recommended sequence I rely on:

1 Letter sounds
2 CVC short vowel word families
3 Digraphs
4 Blends
5 Magic E
6 Vowel teams
7 Diphthongs
8 R-influenced vowels
9 Word endings
10 Contractions
11 Homophones

My team and I wanted to make it *really easy* for you to teach all of these skills so we created a batch of print-and-go phonics lessons that walk you through the whole sequence from start to finish. When you want to teach the TH digraph, you’ll flip to that page. When it’s time to work on the FR blend, you’ll open up that one pager… It takes the guesswork out of the entire process!😅

And that’s just ONE of the teaching tools you’ll get inside The Plato Pack membership. (You'll get unlimited access to thousands of other sanity saving printables too!)

But we only open up enrollment twice a year and you have to be on the waitlist to get an invite so, if you love teaching shortcuts...

👉 Comment SHORTCUT below and I’ll send over an invite!

#phonicsfun #phonics #spelling #scienceofreading #scienceofreadinginaction #kinderteacher #prekteacher #firstgradeteacher

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Let’s be real….

It’s a whole lot easier to just keep teaching the same way we’ve always been teaching.

In fact, when it comes to teaching reading, there are lots of reasons NOT to make the switch to brain-friendly, research-based teaching strategies and tools...

1️⃣ Learning new things can feel hard…

2️⃣ Discovering that some of our favorite teaching strategies are actually ineffective for kids feels icky…

3️⃣ Hunting down trustworthy, research-based lesson plans and activities takes time…

The list goes on and on. But here’s the thing:

The longer we wait, the more kids will slip through the cracks. And that’s just unacceptable.

So I created a shortcut that makes it easy for you to go all-in on the science of reading in your Pre-K, Kinder, or 1st Grade classroom right away. (You can literally cross off tons of the things on the “hard stuff” list!)

👉 Comment ROADMAP below and I’ll have our friendly Plato-Bot send you the info.

#kinderchat #earlylearning #kindergartenteacher #prekteacher #firstgradeteacher

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This only happens twice a year and it’s officially GO TIME!

👉 Comment ROADMAP below to request your invite.

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Your kids are going to LOVE these C+Le flip books!👏 And the best part is they’re quick and easy to prep.

1️⃣ Staple a stack of post-its to the left side of a strip of paper.

2️⃣ Write a C + LE syllable on the paper.

3️⃣ Write the beginning letters of a word on each post-it.

4️⃣ Then flip and read!

You could use this for any C+ Le words (and they work great with other phonics rules too!) but, to help you get started, here are the ones I used:

—> BLE
Cable
Able
Table
Humble
Thimble
Ramble

—> DLE
Idle
Ladle
Cuddle
Paddle
Needle
Riddle

—> GLE
Goggle
Bugle
Angle
Eagle

👉 What other C+Le words would you add to my list? Share below so we can make a giant list of options.

👉 Save this & tag a friend who would love it too!

#phonicsfun #playfullearning #scienceofreading #readingteacher #iteachphonics

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I haven’t stopped thinking about this since I listened to @themeasuredmom’s newest podcast episode! 🤯

For years, teachers have been encouraged to move through phonological awareness skills in a particular order, starting with the biggest word units - like counting words in a sentence or breaking words into syllables – and eventually leading students to focus on those individual sounds called phonemes.

But research has shown it’s actually *not* necessary for students to master larger word chunks before they move on to phonemes. And that’s great news for us because it means that even at the beginning of a kindergarten year, you can dive straight into phonemic awareness activities…

And as soon as students are familiar with letters, you can attach the sounds they hear to the letters that are used to spell them <— a HUGE key to unlocking their reading and writing growth. 💥

You better believe I will be updating the phonological awareness module in The Reading Roadmap PD before it kicks off on May 1st! When we know better, we do better, right?

👉 Comment PHONEME below for the link to this fact sheet from @dyslexiaida!

#phonologicalawareness #scienceofreading #scienceofreadinginaction #phonemicawareness

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The 7 Jobs of Silent E! (This is a great post to share with your teaching besties.💪)

1. A silent final E makes the vowel before it say its long sound: make, bite, pole, cube.

2. English words cannot end in the letters V or U, so E may be added: have, give, blue, clue.

3. A silent final E makes a C say /s/ and the G say lj/: face, ice, huge, age.

4. Every syllable must have a written vowel, so E is added when a syllable has just an L: little, turtle, waffle, google.

5. A silent E keeps singular words that end in S from being mistaken as plural: moose, purse, goose, house.

6. A silent E makes TH say its voiced sound: bath versus bathe, cloth versus clothe.

7. E is added to help distinguish between similar words: by versus bye, or versus ore.

👉 When it comes to teaching reading, knowledge is power. If you’d like a fast pass to becoming a master reading teacher, comment BRAIN below and our friendly Plato-Bot will send you an invite to grab my new book, The Science of Reading in Action. It’s jam packed with game changing tips like this roundup!

#scienceofreadinginaction #structuredliteracy #phonics #kindergarten #firstgrade

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The Science of Reading in Action. 💛 We’re just DAYS away from shipping and I can’t wait for you to get your hands on it. 😆

👉 Comment BRAIN and our friendly Plato-Bot will send over your book invite! (There are TONS of pre-order bonuses.)

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Literacy is not just a teaching issue, it’s a social justice issue. United Nations' Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon describes it as "a foundation for human rights, gender equality, and sustainable societies. It is essential to all our efforts to end extreme poverty and promote wellbeing for all people."

Every child deserves the opportunity to learn how to read so it’s absolutely critical that students receive the instruction and support they need to stop the generational cycle of low literacy once and for all.

When we add up the effects associated with low literacy levels, it is incredibly costly, not only for that person but also for the global economy. The World Literacy Foundation calculates that it consumes more than $1.19 trillion annually.😳

But the great news is that it doesn’t have to be this way! Research shows that with the right tools and strategies, 95 percent of neurotypical students can learn to read by the end of first grade. That means you can be successful, your teaching partner can be successful, your school can be successful… we can all be successful because students CAN learn to read. We just need to use proven, brain-friendly strategies to create a teaching movement that empowers our learners for life.

And that is exactly why I wrote this book! Not only will you discover how brains learn to read in an easy to understand way, but you’ll also get the tools and strategies to immediately start implementing the changes right away…

No late night google searches or early morning lesson planning required.👏

The Science of Reading in Action comes out on April 1 but I’m so excited to get it in your hands that I pulled together some epic bonuses you can only get when you order early.

👉 Just comment BRAIN below and I’ll send you the pre-order invite!

📸 @smithco.photo

#scienceofreadinginaction #scienceofreading #iteachprek #iteachk #iteachfirst

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Playdough to Plato

1 day ago

Research has shown that multi-sensory learning helps brains make connections more quickly. It's kind of like turning the power on in MULTIPLE part of the brain instead of just one. 💡

And the great news is that it can be *really* quick and simple to add into your phonics lesson plans! Case in point:

When it comes to teaching students digraphs (two letters that make just one sound), these simple, multi-sensory chants have a HUGE impact.

👉 Be sure to save this so you can quickly find the chants the next time you're teaching digraphs!

#phonicsfun #phonicsforkids #phonics ... See MoreSee Less

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