Spelling instruction has been researched over the last several decades, but unfortunately, researchers have determined that best practices have not generally transferred to classroom practice. The authors explored how quality word study professional development rooted in nonnegotiable tenets provided a framework for teacher and student…

Recent research on scaffolding has examined both the sources of information used and neglected during students' word-solving attempts and the amount of information provided in teachers' word-solving prompts. In this teaching tip, the authors expand the application of such research from one-to-one student-teacher interactions to a guided reading…

This teaching tip identifies ways to "WIN" at vocabulary learning. Specifically, the approach conveys three morphological strategies in the mnemonic "WIN." These three strategies remind students to find smaller units of meaning within bigger words, look for those units in other words that they know, and notice the context. Each…

For many teachers, the term "scaffolding" has come to mean providing just the right amount of help when a student encounters difficulty. However, there is another facet of scaffolding that has been largely ignored, and that is making decisions about what to focus on to help the student. In this article, new research findings are shared…

Patterns of reading difficulty provide an educationally useful way to think about different kinds of reading problems, whether those problems are mainly experiential in nature (e.g., those common among English learners) or associated with disabilities (e.g., those typical of children with dyslexia). This article reviews research on three common…

The teaching approach described in this article was originally designed for kindergarten students who are at risk for reading disorders. In a 30-minute session, students practiced attending to and identifying the spelling patterns, pronunciations, and meanings of common morphological suffixes through listening activities, interactive book reading,…