Tiffany K Peltier

The Practicalities of Teaching in a First Grade Classroom: Part 2

Let’s continue with how the science of reading may look in a first grade classroom. The last post discussed phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and high-frequency word instruction in a whole group setting. In this post, I’ll discuss what small-group reading instruction, when informed by research, may look like in a first grade classroom, specifically forContinue reading “The Practicalities of Teaching in a First Grade Classroom: Part 2”

The Practicalities of Teaching in a First Grade Classroom: Part 1

We all know that using evidence-aligned practices in our classrooms is important. But how does this look, practically, in a first grade classroom? This post is not meant to be prescriptive, but descriptive–meaning these are the practices that have worked for me in the classroom and that are aligned to the evidence about what isContinue reading “The Practicalities of Teaching in a First Grade Classroom: Part 1”

The Foundational Importance of Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness, although of great importance, is one of the least understood components of reading instruction. Less than a third of teacher prep programs reviewed by the National Council for Teacher Quality are providing training in phonemic awareness. This is probably why many teachers and teacher educators have misconceptions about phonemic awareness and have troubleContinue reading “The Foundational Importance of Phonemic Awareness”

What is dyslexia?

Let’s start off with a little test-yourself time! True or false: A characteristic of dyslexia is to see letters or words backwards. Dyslexia is a visual-perceptual difficulty. Dyslexia is a disability that is recognized by law in schools. Have you answered? What did you think? What is dyslexia?? Over 80% of pre-service and in-service teachersContinue reading “What is dyslexia?”

The Complexities of the Simple View of Reading

The Simple View of Reading was first proposed by Gough and Tunmer in 1986 and is one of the most supported models of reading to date. The gist of the Simple View is that Reading Comprehension (RC) is the product of Decoding (D) and Linguistic (or Language) Comprehension (LC). RC is the *product* of D andContinue reading “The Complexities of the Simple View of Reading”