If you are a skilled reader, you can comprehend this sentence as soon as you read it. Yet the process of reading is incredibly complex, and to do it your brain must integrate two normally distinct functions: visual processing and language comprehension. Not surprisingly, the first step in reading involves visual processing, which occurs in… Read more: How the Brain Reads

I published this post last week but added an addendum to the end of the article based on a reader comment. Last week, I wrote about being told that my daughter should be held back in first grade because she wasn’t learning to read fast enough. Her teachers tried to convince me that retaining a… Read more: Holding Students Back Fails

Short answer: No! Some twenty years ago my daughter’s first grade teacher and several education specialists called me into a meeting. I had no idea why– my daughter had no behavioral issues and I thought she was doing well in school. She wasn’t. At this meeting, I was told that my daughter was not learning… Read more: Is Learning to Read the Same as Learning to Talk?

I am creating lists of one syllable words sorted by sound. This week’s sound is /h/, which is always spelled with the letter h. If you can think of words that I missed, put them in the comments section of my Substack post: https://andreahazard.substack.com/p/one-syllable-words-sorted-by-sound-be1?r=38en9f&triedRedirect=true

I am creating lists of one syllable words sorted by sound. Last week, I listed rg as an ending consonant blend of the g sound, but an astute reader pointed out that an r that follows a vowel is blended with that vowel and is not a true consonant. Good catch! This week’s sound is… Read more: One syllable words sorted by sound: /o/

I am creating lists of one syllable words sorted by sound. This week’s sound is /g/. Beginning consonant blends with the /g/ sound include gl and gr. The only ending consonant blend with the /g/ sound that I can think of is rg, and I can think of only two one syllable words with this… Read more: One syllable words sorted by sound: /g/

I am creating lists of single syllable words sorted by sound. This week the sound is /i/, or short i. If you can think of any one syllable words with the /i/ sound that I missed, put them in the comments section of my Substack post.

I am creating lists of one syllable words sorted by sound. The sound this week is /f/, which can be spelled ‘f’, ‘ff’, or ‘gh’ If you can think of any one syllable, non-swear words with the /f/ sound that I missed, put them in the comments section of my Substack post: https://andreahazard.substack.com/p/one-syllable-words-sorted-by-sound-0b9

I am creating lists of one syllable words sorted by sound. This week, the sound is /e/, which is usually spelled ‘e’. However, the /e/ sound can also be spelled ‘ea’, ‘ai’, ay’, ‘ue’, and ‘ie’. If you can think of any spellings of the /e/ sound that I missed, put them in the comments section… Read more: One syllable words sorted by sound: /e/

I am creating lists of one-syllable words sorted by sound. This week, the sound is /d/, which can be spelled, ‘d’, ‘dd’, or ‘ed’.  Beginning consonant blends with the /d/ sound include dr and dw. Ending consonant blends with the /d/ sound include dge, ld, nd, rd, and ds. If you can think of any other… Read more: Single syllable words sorted by sound: /d/

I am creating lists of single syllable words sorted by sound. This week, the sound is /k/, which can be spelled, ‘c’, ‘k’, or ‘ck’. Consonant blends with the /k/ sound include cl and cr at the beginning of words, and ct at the end of words. Read more on my Substack post: https://andreahazard.substack.com/p/single-syllable-words-sorted-by-sound-603?r=38en9f&triedRedirect=true

I am creating lists of single syllable words sorted by sound. This week, the sound is /a/, typically called short a. We’ve all learned that short a is spelled ‘a’ and long a is spelled  ‘a-e’. However, I can think of three words in which short a is spelled a-e: have, axe, and Anne. Can you… Read more: Single syllable words sorted by sound: /a/

I need your help. To produce content for my Step-by-Step Reading Program, I’ve created lists of one-syllable words sorted by sound. The lists are pretty good, but not complete. Every time I go through them I think of another common word that I can’t believe I missed. Read the rest for free on Substack.

an introduction to graphemes The English language has over forty sounds but only twenty-six letters. Because there are fewer letters than sounds, many sounds, such as the /ch/ in chip, are represented by a letter pair or letter group. Learning to read English would be difficult enough if this were the only quirk of the… Read more: Spellings of the English language

an introduction to phonemes A phoneme is the smallest unit of a spoken language that conveys meaning. The English word bad has three phonemes (b, a, and d). If any one of these phonemes is substituted by another, the meaning changes. For example, when e is substituted for a in the word bad, a new word with a different meaning is… Read more: Sounds of the English Language

Growing up in the 1970s, I remember visiting my grandparents and looking through my dad’s old Dick and Jane books. I knew that these books were used to teach the antiquated method of look-say, in which students were required to memorize whole words, and felt glad to have born in the modern age of phonics… Read more: A Brief History of Reading Education