• Contact
Breaking The Code

  • About Us
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Videos
  • Products
    • Shop
    • Free Printables
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • Lila’s Story
  • Resources
  • Workshops
  • Cart
  • About Us
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Videos
  • Products
    • Shop
    • Free Printables
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • Lila’s Story
  • Resources
  • Workshops
  • Cart

Recent Posts

  • Jan 22, 2022 Hearing and Charting Reading Fluency
  • May 21, 2021 On “Word Callers” and Vowel Sounds
  • Apr 06, 2021 Teaching Reading Isn’t Rocket Science
  • Nov 03, 2020 The Special Education Bubble
  • Sep 20, 2020 How Love Became a Weapon in the Reading Wars

Categories

Archives

  • January 2022
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • November 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • February 2019
  • Decoding,  Fluency,  Phonemic Awareness,  Reading Instruction,  Vowels

    On “Word Callers” and Vowel Sounds

    May 21, 2021 /

    One of Richard McManus’s favorite stories about a student involves a young girl who was brought to the Fluency Factory to prepare for a private-school admissions exam. She was clearly very bright, and when she was asked to read aloud, she did so quite fluently. Richard assumed that she’d ace the test with little trouble. When he told this to her mother, however, the woman’s response was that her daughter sounded fine but in fact understood almost nothing of what she read.  Richard was baffled. Luckily, though his friend Jean Tucker—a speech-language pathologist, reading specialist, and creator of the Spell of Language program—happened to be visiting that day and overheard…

    Read More
    Erica Meltzer
  • Balanced Literacy,  Decoding,  Dyslexia,  Ed School,  Fluency,  Learning Disabilities,  NAEP,  Phonemic Awareness,  Phonics,  Precision Teaching,  Reading Instruction,  Reading Wars,  Science of Reading,  Teacher Training,  Whole Language

    The Special Education Bubble

    November 3, 2020 /

    The reading world was recently rocked by an article from esteemed reporter, Emily Hanford. The longtime maven of whole language, Lucy Calkins, admitted she needed to change her Units of Study after decades of context clues, guessing at words, picture walks, and dismissing the science of reading. Of course, Calkins promptly responded with a statement that essentially tried to take credit for always being a phonics-minded practitioner (despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary). When you look at the latest NAEP data, the influence of decades of whole language-oriented instruction being the dominant pedagogy in the United States is readily apparent. According to this new data, roughly 63%…

    Read More
    Ben Tobin
  • Balanced Literacy,  Decoding,  Ed School,  Lucy Calkins,  Phonics,  Reading Instruction,  Three Cueing System

    Why Running Records and Leveled Readers Don’t Mix with Phonics

    September 8, 2020 /

    Last winter, Lucy Calkins (via the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, or TCRWP) issued a rebuttal to the Achieve, Inc.-sponsored report asserting that her Units of Study fails to provide the sort of instruction that would result in all children learning to read—particularly those who do not already arrive in school with strong language skills. Entitled “A Defense of Balanced Literacy” it is, in keeping with Calkins’s previous major statement regarding phonics, a veritable masterpiece of half-truths, evasions, contradictions, misunderstandings, and distortions.  I don’t want to get pulled down into the weeds trying to offer a point-by-point analysis, but there is one major idea that I think is worth…

    Read More
    Erica Meltzer
  • Decoding,  Dyslexia,  Fluency

    Orton-Gillingham Thoughts

    July 17, 2020 /

    This column has been working itself out through my brain for months now. It starts here. Some years back I assessed a 5th-grade student, Jessica, and was very impressed with her skills. She could read seemingly effortlessly to the 12th grade level, and her math skills for all basics were at a high school level as well. She was going to prepare to take a test to enter a very competitive private school. When her mom returned to talk about the assessment told her how impressed I was with Jessica’s skills. But she shocked me by saying, “Yes, she can read to the 12th grade level, but her reading comprehension is at…

    Read More
    Richard McManus
  • Decoding,  Dyslexia,  Fluency,  Learning Disabilities,  Lucy Calkins,  Phonemic Awareness,  Phonics,  Precision Teaching,  Reading Instruction,  Reading Workshop,  Science of Reading,  Teacher Training,  Three Cueing System,  Whole Language

    A Child is Not a Mollusk

    July 14, 2020 /

    In some sense, without evidence-based instruction, a child could be more like a mollusk in that they will withdraw from the learning process and build a shell to protect themselves from the emotional anguish of feeling less-than in the classroom.

    Read More
    Ben Tobin
  • Decoding,  Dyslexia,  Fluency,  Learning Disabilities,  Phonemic Awareness,  Phonics,  Precision Teaching,  Reading Instruction,  Science of Reading,  Teacher Training,  Uncategorized,  Whole Language

    Of Fluency and Fritters

    June 29, 2020 /

    t’s been clear for a long time that something is very wrong with the way reading is taught, but if we genuinely want things to change, we need to take a hard look at what actually works—and building fluency beyond a doubt does so. We owe it to students to get this right: their success in high school and beyond depends on it.

    Read More
    Ben Tobin
  • Decoding,  Dyslexia,  Fluency,  Phonemic Awareness,  Phonics,  Reading Instruction,  Sight Words,  Three Cueing System,  Whole Language

    Tipping The Scale on Fountas & Pinnell

    June 24, 2020 /

    Fountas and Pinnell, as well as other balanced literacy programs, places a great deal of emphasis on this guided approach to reading and group work because, fundamentally, they see reading as a social activity, rather than an individual’s ability to decode text, something that happens in the confines of the brain in the reading circuit.

    Read More
    Ben Tobin
  • Decoding,  Learning Disabilities,  Phonics,  Three Cueing System

    10 Signs of a Decoding Problem

    May 20, 2020 /

    Written English is a code in which letters and groups of letters are used to stand for sounds, and to be able to read, children must learn to break it—literally, to de-code it. Although skilled reading involves many factors, decoding ability is the foundation on which it rests; after all, it is impossible to pay attention to meaning unless one knows what the words say! The following list is intended to indicate some key warnings signs that may indicate a decoding problem. It is not, however, intended to be used a source for any particular diagnosis. Keep in mind that children learn to read at varying rates, and that some…

    Read More
    Erica Meltzer
  • Decoding,  Phonics,  Teacher Training,  Three Cueing System

    The Three-Cueing System and Its Misuses (or: The Biggest Problem in Reading Instruction You’ve Never Heard of)

    June 23, 2019 /

    A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference on the science of reading held by John Gabrieli’s lab at MIT. It was, if nothing else, an eye-opening experience—not always in good ways, but certainly in ways that laid bare the problems involved in implementing broad changes to how reading is taught in the United States. At the reception after the conference, I happened to be introduced to Nancy Duggan, one of the founders of the Massachusetts chapter of Decoding Dyslexia, an organization that advocates for screening and support for dyslexic students. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned one of the stranger reading problems I’d seen among my students—namely,…

    Read More
    Erica Meltzer

Sign Up to Receive New Posts

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Please follow & like us :)

RSS
Follow by Email
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest

Top Posts

Tipping the Scale on Fountas and Pinnell 

10 Reasons the Three-Cueing System Is Ineffective

The Science of Reading: 5 Key Concepts

Forget Sourdough Bread – My Pandemic Project Is Precision Teaching

10 Signs of a Decoding Problem

Recent Posts

  • Jan 22, 2022 Hearing and Charting Reading Fluency
  • May 21, 2021 On “Word Callers” and Vowel Sounds
  • Apr 06, 2021 Teaching Reading Isn’t Rocket Science
  • Nov 03, 2020 The Special Education Bubble
  • Sep 20, 2020 How Love Became a Weapon in the Reading Wars

Archive

  • January 2022
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • November 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • April 2019
  • February 2019

Links

A Brief Review of Research on Forms of Instruction

An Open Letter to Student Teachers

Basic Phonics Test

Children of the Code

The Critical Reader

Emily Hanford on Reading Instruction

The Fallacy of Balanced Literacy

Filling the Pail (Greg Ashman’s blog)

The Fluency Factory

How Do Kids Learn to Read?

How to Teach Reading

Importance of Background Knowledge

International Foundation for Effective Reading

Jon Gustafson’s Blog

Letter to the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education

LETRS 

Lifelong Literacy

Literary Performance of Ex-Reading Recovery Students

Louisa Moats

The Maloney Method 

Marilyn Adams on the Three Cueing System

Nancy Young: Reading, Writing, Spelling

Orthographic Mapping (Video)

Phonics Myths

Phonological Awareness Screening Test

Preventing Reading Failure: An Examination of the Myths of Reading Instruction 

Reading Matters (Mark Seidenberg)

Reading Rockets

Readsters (Learning Center) 

Right to Read Project 

Running Records

The Science of Reading: Evidence for a New Era of Reading Instruction

Spelfabet

Ten Phonics Research Findings

The Simple View of Reading

The Spell of Language (Jean Tucker)

Structured vs. Typical Literacy

The Three-Cueing Model: Down for the Count? 

Why Aren’t Kids Being Taught to Read?

Why Reading Is Not a Natural Process 

 

 

Follow Us

Savona Pro Theme by Optima Themes - 2023 ©