Int elem. teacher; 🇬🇧 in 🇯🇵; interested in the teaching & learning of reading & writing and all things literacy.
Joined January 2020
- Tweets 1,270
- Following 89
- Followers 314
- Likes 508
187 Photos and videos
Mat Brigham retweeted
Apr 11
It's official. The Word Mapping Project website is up, and the curriculum is now available for purchase. A big thank you to everyone who supported me during this process. Let's do right by kids.
wordmappingproject.com
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Mar 16
Thanks for this brilliant recommendation⬇️
Will order for our our grade 1 students.
These books are the first things my kids read independently after 120 phonics lessons. One book a day. They're unbeatable for building background knowledge in just about every domain for early readers. My kids are so proud after finishing this stack!
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Mar 13
What type of sound wall (if any) do you recommend in a classroom where phonics is taught? @SWLiteracy
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Feb 26
2/4 Why is this type of reading not addressed more explicitly? Is this a "deliberate narrowing of scope" or do you see the same principles applying equally to standalone content-area and expository texts?
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Feb 26
3/4 A close study of 200-400 pg books can take months, stalling curriculum coverage. Do you advocate for prioritizing shorter texts or is there a specific pacing strategy to keep "Whole Class" momentum without losing depth?
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Mat Brigham retweeted
**New** chapter on “Literacy” just published in the Open Encyclopaedia of Cognitive Science. The whole series is super, accessible chapters and no paywalls, a great resource for teaching. oecs.mit.edu/pub/epclh9no/re…
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25 May 2025
Hi @Booktrust, have you removed the Poetry Prompts lesson guidance PDFs from your site? They were online just a few months ago. Could you please reupload or share a link? Many thanks!
booktrust.org.uk/resources/f…
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21 May 2025
In independent reading sessions, I alternate weeks: graphic novels allowed one week, not the next. Otherwise, some students read only graphic novels. Too harsh? Or a fair way to broaden their reading diet? @TeresaCremin
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Mat Brigham retweeted
19 May 2025
Campaign groups in the US, UK and India claim that TV subtitles will help children learn to read. But our new research led by @a_lopukhina shows that children don't even look at subtitles until they can already read at around 1 word per second.
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21 May 2025
Any primary teachers out there who have read "Reflect, Expect, Check, Explain: Sequences and Behaviour to Enable Mathematical Thinking in the Classroom" from Craig Barton. Does it work well in the primary setting and are there sequences available for primary?
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31 Mar 2025
This video ⬇️ is a must watch for anyone wanting to understand how reading works and how it all fits together. It is the same reading map used in Chris's second book, Primary Reading Simplified, but having it explained like this really does help!
14 Sep 2024
Following a few requests from teachers and school leaders, I've made short video on the key ideas that I think teachers (and parents/carers) need to know about reading development, based on my reading concept map.
The Reading Map - A Primer
youtu.be/JvtUxB5WM1k?si=XIXC… via @YouTube
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31 Mar 2025
If you know, you know and if you don't, you don't! I recommend you buy Chris Such's new book so you will be in the former camp when it comes to reading instruction! 😀
30 Mar 2025
If I've ever taken the time to reply to a request from you for advice on here - and you have read Primary Reading Simplified - please consider *retweeting* this tweet and giving the book a quick rating (or even a review) from where you bought it.
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Mat Brigham retweeted
27 Mar 2025
@ReadingShanahan has kindly responded to my thread in the comments in his blog.
However, I think that he has missed some of what I wrote. Here is his response:
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Mat Brigham retweeted
18 Mar 2025
If you are interested in reading instruction, evidence and thoughtful, productive debate, I'd highly recommend that you follow @mattw009.
I'm not certain we agree about everything, but I deeply respect his willingness to discuss ideas in good faith.
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20 Mar 2025
Brilliant thread from @Suchmo83! Is support for a gradual accumulation of knowledge through extended reading essentially the same as support for a knowledge building curriculum or is that a different focus and philosophy?
17 Mar 2025
@ReadingShanahan is a titan in the field of reading instruction, and lots of people I respect have praised this excellent blog, so I'm wary of disagreeing with *part* of it.
But, I'd like to offer an alternative perspective anyway.
A thread.🧵⬇️
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26 Feb 2025
"Decades of rsch show that tching syllable patterns to assist in decoding has value (Bhattacharya & Ehri 2004; Diliberto et al. 2009; Doignon-Camus & Zagar 2014) as long as we keep in mind that some syllble patterns are more reliable than others." Is there still a US UK divide?
14 Mar 2024
From a UK perspective, we are completely baffled by the seeming obsession in the US with syllabification rules.
🤷♂️
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26 Feb 2025
"Insufficient phonemic awareness is the most common cause of word reading difficulty (Ashby et al. 2022; Kilpatrick 2015)" (taken from p.120 from Shifting the Balance 3-5 by Cunningham, Burkins, Yates)
Is this actually correct?
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6 Feb 2025
Is there a strong reading/literacy community on Bluesky? Are folks moving across since Musk got involved in US politics? Curious if @margaretmckeow2 @Suchmo83 @ReadingShanahan and others in the literacy world are making the switch! 🤔
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6 Feb 2025
Nobody writes about reading like Chris Such does - his second book gives you everything you want to know about elementary reading instruction. Ordered in Japan and it arrived the next day. For non-Brits, you can still make it work for your context! 😀@Suchmo83
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Mat Brigham retweeted
25 Jan 2025
Great read! Don’t be a slave to text structure. ‘Instead of focusing reader attention on the author’s presentation strategy, we should get them thinking about the information itself.’ So, focus on how an author portrays the content.
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