How to pick your new couch color...

🏃‍♀️ 📚 🍳 🏋️ Can your new staff and students find your gym? Auditorium? Library? Bookmark this Amazing Race worksheet for some high-speed team-building! (Via @ctrisenetwork) docs.google.com/document/d/1…

Lots of you asking for examples of using questions for oppositional / defiant #kids. Here you go… this clip did 3.8 mil views on instagram. #OppositionalStudents #DefiantBehavior #TeachingStrategies #teach #teacher #edchat #sped

Some colleagues have pushed back on this piece, indicating that no one anywhere says that reading is done with a phonics-only approach, or as some have said, even a, "phonics first" approach. My experience working in schools across the U.S. these past few years, let alone in previous iterations of a phonics push such as when the National Panel report and A National at Risk were released, has been different. Teachers and supervisors with whom I've worked have indicated that phonics-heavy curriculum is being purchased (with teachers told to maintain fidelity to the program and to remove supplemental materials not aligned or included with the new programs from their classrooms), to limit classroom focus on wide and frequent reading from personal interest, choice novels and picture books in favor of more teacher-directed, phonics-heavy approaches, and to level the books in their book bins, which is a deeply uncomfortable and ineffective practice. In addition, many classroom teachers and reading instructors are being directed to emphasize phonics over most other elements of reading instruction, and when a student struggles in reading, it's a series of phonics-focused lessons that must be applied over other choices. Yes, I know this is anecdotal, but it exists. It's not an over-the-top, phonics-or-die approach in all places, of course, but decades of rock solid research and other effective practices in elements of reading instruction are being impugned and shelved, with most of the reading "eggs" placed in one basket, phonics - and seemingly done to be politically expedient in some places, not pedagogically sound or completely vetted under full research scrutiny. As the article declares, phonics is of critical importance, but not as the sole, instructional diet, or even the most prime for every single student in that diet, and we are doing a disservice when turning all these other helpful elements into conspiratorial monsters. Some of the biggest concerns for those of us struggling with the Science of Reading hype-train is expressed in this segment of the article: "While teaching reading instruction has always been plagued by controversy (Pearson, 2004), the science of reading has presented exaggerated, misleading, and at worse false statements promoted in the media by a small group of scholars, educational activists, publishers, and journalists. Policy makers and publishers are attracted to these simplified arguments which propose solutions that can be mandated, packaged, and sold to schools. We are particularly concerned about the indiscriminate implementation of unwarranted and under-researched practices that have been espoused by science of reading advocates (Hanford, 2018; Paige, 2020; Spear-Swerling, 2019), including: Directive and/or scripted lessons that tell teachers what to say and do within predetermined and paced lesson sequences, An exclusive focus on phonemic awareness and phonics, Denials that children and adults use multiple sources of information when they read, Decodable texts that do not engage multiple aspects of reading, Specialized forms of reading instruction designed for particular groups of children that are promoted as appropriate for all children, Mandating “structured literacy” programs despite a lack of clear empirical evidence, and Privileging the interests of politicians and publishers over children."