Helping Struggling Writers: Building Foundational Writing Skills
Writing has its foundational skills, one of which is sentence construction. In a recent article, Chandler and Sayeski (2021) presented a plan for developing sentence-writing capability while at the same time building content knowledge. The authors described six instructional activities that range from identifying and revising sentence fragments...
Assessing Students’ Ability to Read Multisyllabic Words
A first step in developing syllabic analysis is to assess students’ ability to read multisyllabic words. Students’ syllabic analysis ability can be assessed in running records, informal reading inventories, oral fluency tests, and word lists tests by analyzing the students’ performance with multisyllabic words. The Syllabic Analysis Index,...
Importance of Teaching Students to Read Multisyllabic Words
As they progress through the grades, most students eventually learn phonics and become adept at deciphering single syllable words. However, a significant number of students have difficulty applying their knowledge of phonics to multisyllabic words. Alicia is a fairly typical example of a student who has this deficiency. She is able to read...
Revised Intervention Program
I have just published Beginnings, the last component of Building Foundational Literacy, an intervention program that includes provision for the most severely disabled readers. Building Foundational Literacy is a revision of Word Building, which has been used in classrooms and clinics for more than 25 years. Building Foundational Literacy consists...
Assessing Foundational Skills
With their schooling having been interrupted by Covid-19, it is more important than ever to find out which foundational skills students have learned and which skills need to be developed. There is a temptation to begin at the beginning and reteach skills. However, this wastes valuable time and will bore students who have mastered the skills. As...