• Charting,  Fluency,  Precision Teaching,  Reading Instruction

    Hearing and Charting Reading Fluency

    There are increasingly wonderful pieces now on the web about reading instruction. Each of them possess strong and thoughtful ideas about how to teach reading down to the tiny elements that make it work. This is an enormous improvement over the previous “mysterious and magical” way that teachers thought children learned to read. “Give the child an authentic text and she/he will automatically LEARN” was a dangerous and widely believed poison that harmed almost half of our children. Now we know about all these elements that function as the critical pieces of learning to read. But most of the materials out there, while frequently citing the importance of fluency, do…

  • Fluency,  Learning Disabilities,  Phonics,  Precision Teaching,  Reading Instruction

    Forget Sourdough Bread – My Pandemic Project is Precision Teaching!

    Some learned to bake sourdough bread. Some took on home improvement projects. However, when it came time for me to choose a pandemic project, I decided to be a precision teacher. Unfortunately, it is not Instagram friendly, so I will simply write about it. Let me introduce myself. I am a seasoned teacher with thirteen years in the NYC public school system with licenses in French and ESL. In fact, according to the NYC ratings system devised by the infamous Charlotte Danielson, I am even considered a highly effective teacher. I have also had skin in the game long enough to watch the DOE follow many fads, particularly the fad of big data.…