Posted September 16, 2020

Jasmine Lane is a first generation college graduate and an early-career High School English teacher in Minnesota. In her short time in the classroom, and through her own personal history, Ms. Lane knows all too well the negative and life-long impact that poor literacy skills have on students.  In her blog, “Literacy: The Forgotten Social Justice Issue,” Ms. Lane shares that her grandfather, Willie Lane, did not learn to read until he was in his 30s because he would have been “attacked, threatened, or possibly murdered for daring to be a Black Man reading in the Jim Crow south.”

Linda Diamond, president of CORE and author of the Teaching Reading Sourcebook, sat down with Ms. Lane, just a few short weeks after her beloved grandfather passed away, to talk further about how today’s failure to apply the science of reading to instruction continues to put young people, particularly those who have been marginalized and traditionally underserved, at a disadvantage and ill equipped to reach their full potential. READ MORE

Posted September 7, 2020

A must-read blog by Barbara Crook, an ELA editor at Victory Productions, that clearly articulates the flaws in balanced literacy.

An uneasy peace has settled over the land regarding phonics instruction and its critical contribution to reading competency. Since the heyday of whole language, phonics has returned to classrooms as part of a “balanced literacy” approach to reading.

Shouldn’t this put an end to the reading wars? Not so far, although the current state of the debate is a welcome de-escalation of the intense hostilities of the past. Critics of balanced literacy say it still does not emphasize enough the teaching of letter-sound correspondences in spoken language or sound-spelling relationships in written language, and that it relies too heavily on strategies long associated with whole language.

Keep reading on the Victory Productions website.

Posted August 19, 2020

By Dean Ballard, Director of Mathematics, CORE

Remote instruction has moved to the top of almost everyone’s list of concerns. We are asking ourselves how to do it, will students be there, what will actually be learned, and what will this mean when we return to face-to-face instruction? I cannot tackle all of this in one blog; however, I will share a few of the techniques we have been using in the last few months to create high levels of engagement online.

READ MORE

Posted August 6, 2020

by Linda Diamond, President, CORE and author of Teaching Reading Sourcebook and Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures

I just finished listening to Emily Hanford’s last podcast on APM, What the Words Say.

My husband wanted to know why I was crying.  I answered, “because I am so angry and so frustrated.” We have known for years how to teach reading, yet as a nation we still aren’t doing what we should. Reading instruction should not be a matter of personal philosophy or preference anymore than a medical intervention should be based on philosophy. Hanford’s most recent podcast hits so close to home. At CORE we had two consultants working with educators in juvenile court schools. They know that failure to learn to read is a direct route to prison. READ MORE

Posted July 16, 2020

By Ann Leon, M. A., Educational Services Consultant, and Linda Diamond, President, CORE

Because the current coronavirus pandemic has necessitated increased use of remote learning, thinking about the needs of our young students with dyslexia and other word-reading difficulties is of vital importance. How can we best teach these students in order to mitigate learning loss and to ensure that they become proficient readers? This is our challenge.

As a first priority these students need to continue to receive direct and explicit teaching. Although some of their learning can be done through targeted online curricula, they desperately need live teaching with a skillful teacher. Distance learning for these students has two purposes:

1. to review and maintain previous learning, and
2. to provide systematic, explicit, and intentional instruction of new learning

So how do we meet those two purposes through remote learning? READ MORE