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Articles

Explore a collection of practical articles that showcase innovative strategies for teaching reading—fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. From inspiring personal and classroom stories to proven instructional methods, these articles provide actionable insights for educators seeking to engage students and boost literacy outcomes across all grade levels and settings.

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Fluency

The Power of Fluency Development Lessons at Ana Grace Middle School

Recognizing that strong literacy skills are the foundation of academic success, Principal Bo Ryan and Literacy Coach Sarah Henry sought innovative solutions to support their students…
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Fluency Development Lesson: Closing the Reading Gap

Reading specialist Julia Armstrong shares how the Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) turned her fifth graders into confident, fluent readers...
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The Fluency Development Lesson: Where Albert & Pablo Hang Out

How can teachers help students convert words to memory so they can decode fluently and comprehend? Short answer: explicit fluency instruction and lots of practice. Read how using the The Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) closed reading gaps and accelerated learning for Lynne Kulich' students...
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Reading Fluency and the Science of Reading

Fluency instruction is one of the 5 pillars of literacy instruction and should be included as part of any literacy program. Reading fluency refers to the ability to read quickly, accurately, and with prosody . Learn how instruction improves these skills...
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Game Day Fluency

A challenge for reading teachers is finding material that engages all learners and fulfills multiple facets of reading work. Learn about an effective strategy that engages reluctant readers and writers that also enhances the skills of high achievers...
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Scientific and Artful Reading Intervention in 7th Grade

Read this email from 7th grade teacher Kelly Beggs and learn how she used phonics and fluency instruction with her struggling readers to increase Lexile scores in just one school year...
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Using Rapid Recognition Charts

Learn how reading specialist Kari Perman usedRapid Recognition Charts (RRCs) —tools that can be used during the fluency portion of a lesson—to improve intervention students' oral reading fluency and words read correctly in their decodable texts...
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A Proven Fluency Intervention: Read Two Impress

Read Two Impress is a synergistic reading intervention that combines the Neurological Impress Method (NIM), Repeated Readings, and Echo Reading. Essentially, read chunks of text with a student using NIM and stop frequently and have the student read each section aloud. See the steps in more detail...
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A Reading Fluency Intervention In the UK

This study evaluated a 12-week intervention delivered by regular teaching staff as a whole class, to assess whether it could make a difference for 8-9 year old children. The study included 103 students from two Local Authority schools and five teaching staff...
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Impact of Adapted Whole Class Fluency Development Lessons in Upper Elementary Grades

This project presents results of whole class Fluency Development Lessons (FDL) in four upper elementary classrooms on fluency and reading comprehension including insight into the ways in which the various components of FDL can be effectively and flexibly integrated into whole class instruction...
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Choral Reading for Prosody in the Secondary Classroom

Discover how choral reading builds prosody and fluency in secondary students. This research-based approach engages all learners, boosts comprehension, and makes reading aloud a collaborative, confidence-building experience...
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Poems, Performance & Song

Teaching Fluency with Poetry: A weekly Routine

Author Laura Stam presents a straightforward, research-based poetry routine designed to assist young readers…
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Because It’s Poetry

Poetry is essential for young minds. Missouri’s Poet Laureate, David L. Harrison, explores the power of verse, emphasizing how structured language—through rhyme and meter—helps children remember, enjoy, and even write poems, supporting early literacy and creative expression…
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Using Poetry & Repeated Readings to Promote Fluency

Learn how first-grade teacher Cheri Rourke used poetry in a literacy approach guided by Dr. Tim Rasinski's insights on fluency. Read her 5-day plan and see how she used poetry, repeated readings and performance to instill confidence and a love of reading in her students...
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BEATBOXING as a Tool for Literacy

Beatboxing isn’t just music—it’s a powerful tool for literacy! This blog explores how beatboxing can help young learners develop phonics skills and much more…
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Reader’s Theater for Older Students

Read how Kaia Cunningham, a high school English teacher specializing in students with language-based learning disabilities, used Reader’s Theater fluency strategy to help students get a deeper understanding of The Odyssey. Bonus benefits were fluency practice and helping students cross the bridge into deep comprehension...
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Watch the Words Dance Out: Music and Reading Fluency Practice

An elementary music teacher describes a process for teaching songs that is a unique approach to song instruction and that it can be used for strengthening fluent reading in students...
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Singing and Reading in a Preschool Classroom

Abbey Galeza conducted an action research project on the role of repeated singing/reading in her class of preschoolers. In addition to singing/reading being an enjoyable and community building experience, the children learned concepts of print, important for early literacy development...
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A Kindergarten Teacher’s Reflections on the Power of Song in Teaching Early Reading

The kindergarten classroom is a natural place for fluency work. Songs and poems are a key component of this author’s reading instruction, who starts every day with a “morning dance party”...
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Rock n Read by Ann Kay

Singing and music-making is essential for brain development. Neuroscientific research has found that early music-making is highly correlated with reading achievement...
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The Power of Poetry by David Harrison

David L. Harrison writes poems for young readers and partners with authorities on early language and literacy development to create books to support classroom teachers. In this article he offers six reasons why poetry is a powerful teaching tool...
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Poetry Packs a Punch by Lois Letchford

In this article written by his mother, discover how poetry transformed a struggling reader into a confident learner—showing that laughter, creativity, and rhymes can unlock reading success...
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Word Study

Word Ladders for the Win!

Alaina Weatherford highlights the success of incorporating Dr. Rasinski's word ladder activities into her curriculum over three years with the same students...
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Word Ladders in My Second Grade Classroom: Ten Minutes of Engaging and Productive Word Study Every Day

Learn how a second grade teacher has enriched her class for years  with daily word ladders. Learn how this 8-10 minute routine profoundly impacted writing outcomes...
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Building Vocabulary in Summer School

Building students’ knowledge of word meanings is essential to their success in reading, writing, and content area learning. The Building Vocabulary series is a groundbreaking structured approach to developing your students’ general and academic vocabularies for the present and future...
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How is the Base of a Latin Verb Determined?

Learn how Latin verb bases, like ven and vent (“to come”), form the roots of dozens of English words. Rick M. Newton, Ph.D. shows how understanding these bases unlocks vocabulary, spelling, and meaning...
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Building Vocabulary with Word Roots Builds Reading Comprehension

Discover how teaching Greek and Latin roots transforms vocabulary instruction and boosts reading comprehension. In a two-part article, Alan Becker shows how a roots-based approach empowers students to decode, understand, and retain thousands of words across all content areas...
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Connecting the Dots Between Interactive Writing and Decodable Texts: Literacy Solutions/Lasting Impact

When phonics instruction is done with high-leverage instructional practices—using interactive writing, and decodable texts—the impact is palpable and leaves plenty of time for other types of reading and writing experiences, imaginative play, and knowledge-building across the curriculum...
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Struggling Readers

From Struggles to Solutions: How Dyslexia Fueled the Creation of Boon-dah Learning to Empower Young Minds

Praba Soundararajan struggled with dyslexia as a child. Learn how he created Boon-dah Learning to boost fluency and comprehension for students with language-based learning differences…
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Scientific and Artful Reading Intervention in 7th Grade

Read this email from 7th grade teacher Kelly Beggs and learn how she used phonics and fluency instruction with her struggling readers to increase Lexile scores in just one school year...
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A Stroke of Ill-Fate: From Literacy Expert to Struggling Student

Learn how  Dr. Terry Kindervater, who spent her life teaching little ones to read and write with a clear focus on the struggler, had to begin her own reading journey again after a devastating stroke. to deepening her passion for and understanding of the process with teachers...
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Lessons Learned From My Granddaughter by Laura Robb

Learn how the author’s granddaughter’s  rare syndrome has taught her valuable lessons about how tutorial elements can be transferred to a classroom to support more readers...
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Stories

How I Learned to Read

Learn how,  to a great kindergarten teacher, Tim Rasinski’s daughter, like her parents, learned how to read before starting first grade. Her journey illustrates that the path literacy is not always straight and narrow, children can come into literacy in a variety of different ways....
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Becoming My Dad

Because of the kindness and support his dad inspired, middle-school English teacher Joseph Pizzo gained the confidence to invest in others while creating a synergy of positive goodness in students and colleagues.
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A Kindergarten Teacher’s Reflections on the Power of Song in Teaching Early Reading

The kindergarten classroom is a natural place for fluency work. Songs and poems are a key component of this author’s reading instruction, who starts every day with a “morning dance party”...
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Watch the Words Dance Out: Music and Reading Fluency Practice

An elementary music teacher describes a process for teaching songs that is a unique approach to song instruction and that it can be used for strengthening fluent reading in students...
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Lessons Learned From My Granddaughter by Laura Robb

Learn how the author’s granddaughter’s  rare syndrome has taught her valuable lessons about how tutorial elements can be transferred to a classroom to support more readers...
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Freedom and Independence Through Literacy

Freedom and independence are never free. They are won by those willing to stand up and work for these bedrock human values. Twice in the 20th century the people of the United States rose up to defend their freedom and independence...
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Professional Learning

How Misunderstandings of Text Complexity May Have Widened the Achievement Gap

Are we making reading harder than it needs to be? Learn how flawed assumptions about K-12 reading levels led to more difficult texts—widening the achievement gap instead of closing it...
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On the Latest Obsession with Phonics

The “reading wars” have been around for longer than you might think. In the last century and now again, we have gone in and out of debates about the best way to teach reading. This Washington Post article post looks at the debate on phonics in a different way than is most often voiced these days...
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Reading Fluency and the Science of Reading

Fluency instruction is one of the 5 pillars of literacy instruction and should be included as part of any literacy program. Reading fluency refers to the ability to read quickly,  accurately, and with prosody. Learn how instruction improves these skills...
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Reading Progress in Practice

Discover how Vallaskolan, a forward-thinking school in Sweden, is transforming reading instruction using an AI tool that provides new opportunities to support students' learning…
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Give Teachers the Best Professional Books!

Read why principal Evan Robb recommends Promote Reading Gains with Differentiated Instruction to address a national education challenge for teachers in grades 3-8: supporting students reading at various instructional levels...
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The Myth of the “Best” Colleges

High school students’ senior year can be both an exciting and anxious time. This article explores the misguided thinking that it is imperative to enroll in an “elite” college...
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