Aligning Classroom Practices to the Science of Reading

This is part of the Sister Mary Paul Educator Workshop Series.

For decades most every primary classroom prominently displayed something called a Word Wall. Up until very recently, Word Walls were considered a must-have in ELA classrooms, but Science has classroom teachers rethinking the use of Word Walls with Kindergarten, First, and Second grade students. What we know about how the brain learns to read is helping educators slowly replace the once widely used system with a more useful and student-focused tool.

Join us on a brief journey that explores implementing Sound Walls. (See Dr. Mary Dahlgren and Dr. Antonio Fierro at Tools 4 Reading) We’ll begin with an overview of the 44 speech sounds, and then examine how to layer on print. We’ll consider options for spelling all of the 44 phonemes by helping students first focus on what is natural, speech, versus what is not natural, print. Presenter Val Piccini