Mastering basic reading and writing skills is core to healthy human development. When teaching struggling readers, it is tempting to regard challenges with letter production as a secondary issue. This session includes one case study where writing instruction occurs for 5-10 minutes daily. Samples are presented that show the change in writing over the course of 150 lessons. We get into the nuts and bolts of how to do effective, simple handwriting instruction that develops the fundamental skills necessary for later growth in written expression. You will learn several techniques for helping all children develop the accurate and automatic letter production [...]

In this presentation, Svetlana shares the key implications of her dissertation findings, a mixed methods survey study exploring the ways in which 624 general k-2 classroom teachers around the nation define, understand, and teach sight word development through an orthographic mapping lens. Three key recurring sight word definitions were identified: Any word recognized instantly (38.5%), a phonetically irregular word(16.8%), and a high-frequency word (HFW) (13.1%), with a third who agreed with at least two or more definitions. A comparative analysis of open-ended responses identified 45 daily “essential” sight word practices, with only about a third aligned to orthographic mapping principles (n [...]