Brain Builders is an animated video series you can share with your students to help them understand what the brain does in order to read–the first time the Science of Reading has been placed in the hands of students.

Join Minh on his journey as his babysitter, Tamara, helps him cultivate a love for reading and understanding the Science of Reading. Series includes 13 episodes you don’t want to miss!

As this is a living free resource, you are required to enter your email so that you can receive updates as they happen.
When reviewing curricula for Tier I instruction, it is essential to ensure they do not include instructional practices that are not aligned with the scientific evidence base of how children learn to read.
The Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines are designed to highlight any non-aligned practices, or “red flags,” that may be present in the areas of:
- Word Recognition
- Language Comprehension
- Reading Comprehension
- Writing
- Assessment

Here are the supports needed for the DRA from Shari Martin of Sun West Division. The following are included:

Correlation Table of Diagnostic Leveled Reading Assessments in Use in Saskatchewan
Finding the Reading Level using DRA
DRA Quick Guide Handbook
Eligible Students for the Outcome
DRA Recording Tool from Sun West Division

Grades 1 to 5

As awareness of dyslexia in early literacy grows, more and more questions have emerged about the learning challenge and how to better identify and support students at risk.

This new toolkit offers explicit answers for educators looking to learn about dyslexia and how to effectively screen for it to ensure students are supported as early and as effectively as possible.

With this toolkit, educators can better understand topics like:
- Dyslexia: What exactly is it?
- How to screen for at-risk students (and what actually works)
- Dyslexia legislation enacted in recent years

Sign up to receive your toolkit today!

This guide covers the age range 6 years to 18 years. It also encompasses all students with reading difficulties, including those who have specific learning difficulties (dyslexia) as well as those who have made generally poor progress in reading and may or may not have additional general learning difficulties. Information here can be applied to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, minority groups and to students with reading difficulties for whom English is not a first language. While the full range of literacy involves more than just reading, the focus here is particularly on reading skills: the ability to decode and understand text.

Set your little one up for reading success with these interactive games that will build phonological awareness—the ability to recognize and understand sounds in words. Your child will learn to master vowel sounds, digraphs, blended sounds, and more as they find themselves embarking on a photoshoot, playing bumper cars, or soaring through the sky in these fun-filled phonics games!

Students can play three games for free.

• Covers everything from letters and sounds to reading full sentences.
• Designed in collaboration with leading academics.
• Complements all synthetic phonics programmes used in schools.
• Computer version is 100% free.

Be sure to check out the free math game as well!

FreeReading is an open source instructional program that helps educators teach early literacy. Because it is open source, it represents the collective wisdom of a wide community of teachers and researchers. FreeReading contains, Intervention A, a 40-week scope and sequence of primarily phonological awareness and phonics activities that can support and supplement a typical kindergarten or first grade "core" or "basal" program.

"This page pulls together lots of tools and resources to help you get the most out of Microsoft's inclusive tools for the classroom."

Did you know that learning to read is a challenge for almost 40 percent of kids? The good news is that with early help, most reading problems can be prevented. The bad news is that nearly half of all parents who notice their child having trouble wait a year or more before getting help. Unfortunately, the older a child is, the more difficult it is to teach him or her to read. If a child can't read well by the end of third grade, odds are that he or she will never catch up. And the effects of falling behind and feeling like a failure can be devastating.

Early identification is crucial. If you suspect a problem, don't hesitate! Learn about reading difficulties, get your child assessed, find out what you can do to help your struggling reader, and don't give up!

This entry includes a video to support your learning as well as text to help you learn how to successfully analyze running records to inform your teaching using Meaning, Structure and Visual information.

This site offers instructional activities for irregular and high frequency words. Not all words use the most common phoneme-grapheme correspondences, but most words are at least partially decodable. Many words appear so frequently in text that children need to learn them before they have been taught the necessary phoneme-grapheme correspondences. The resources on this site provide a range of options for you to teach such words.

While the long-term negative impact of poor readers can be enormous, the good news is that schools can train their own students to deliver effective tutoring in reading to younger peers. Kids as Reading Helpers: A Peer Tutor Training Manual is a complete package for training peer reading tutors. Peer tutoring answers the nagging problem of delivering effective reading support to the many struggling young readers in our schools. Furthermore, peer tutoring programs can improve the reading skills of tutors as well as tutees (Ehly, 1986) and - in some studies-have been shown to build tutor's social skills as well (Garcia-Vazquez & Ehly, 1995). Young children tend to find the opportunity to read aloud to an older peer tutor to be quite reinforcing, adding a motivational component to this intervention.

Phonological awareness skills are important in order to develop good reading and spelling skills. Having good phonological awareness skills means that a child is able to manipulate sounds and words, or “play” with sounds and words. For example, you might ask your child to break the word “cat” into individual sounds: “c-a-t.”

Important: These skills deal with SOUNDS not letters. For example, /t/ represents the sound and not the letter name “tee.” You will not use any written or visual letters when working with phonological activities. These activities are done with listening and speaking only. Learning the letter names and their corresponding sounds is also very important but should be taught and practiced at a different time of the day.

This resource will have a weekly activity for your to work on with your child/student(s). It will include a handout with information and guidance, as well as a video to help support you and the learner.

CLICK THE WORDS "INFORMATION FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS" TO GET STARTED (do not click on view description).

This is a great starting point for administrators when looking to improve and work on literacy in their schools.

Be sure to visit the MODULES section for excellent pre-made modules that will assist you with developing a culture of literacy within your school.

From the site:
"In this continuation of Saskatchewan Reads we have Kim, who is a principal with very little background knowledge in reading. Kim’s ability to provide leadership for a Saskatchewan Reads school is enhanced by following the key components of this document. This resource builds on the sound research from educational leaders such as Routman, Sharratt, Fullan and others. It also provides practical concrete application of promising practises within our province.

This document addresses key areas in being a successful leader within the context of a Saskatchewan Reads school. Some of these key areas include: self-reflection on why leadership is important, how to develop common beliefs, how to be a lead learner and role model, how to create a reading culture and environment, how to lead with a reading focus and how to manage all the different components involved.

The intent of Saskatchewan Reads for Administrators is to provide some very practical tools and processes for administrators at all levels of the system to use in supporting teachers implementing Saskatchewan Reads. The Planning Guidelines are intended to take all the information presented and map out how, when and where it all fits into the school year. It is important to realize that all schools will be at different stages of the journey, thus certain components will take on different levels of priority.

Schools just beginning their journey will not be able to accomplish
everything in one year, therefore chunking different components into a multi-year plan is advised."

Immersive Reader is part of the Learning Tools included in Microsoft Office 365 and Office 2016 applications. How to find Immersive reader in popular apps like OneNote Online, 2016 and iOS iPad, and Word Online.

Great free reading tool for Dyslexic / SEND / EAL Students in Office 365

Oral language provides a foundation for communication of ideas and intelligent conversation, and the development of other language skills. Before students achieve proficiency in reading and writing, oral language is one of the most important means of learning and of acquiring knowledge.
Things to consider when selecting words to teach:
•Teach words that are central to the concept students must learn.
•Teach only words students do not already know.
•Teach students to use context clues, when available.
•Teach only a few words at a time so meaning is retained.
•Relate new words to previously learned words.
•Provide multiple exposures to words.

Hopefully you can find some oral language activities in this handout that you can use in your classroom. Thank you for working to support the oral language abilities of the students on Saskatchewan’s Hutterite Colonies!

Oral language forms the basis of all reading and writing.
Here are some ideas of how to teach oral language skills in your classroom.