One of the greatest challenges in literacy intervention is something we don't talk about enough: What happens when a student's decoding skills and thinking skills are years apart? A fifth grader may need explicit instruction in a phonics concept typically introduced in first or second grade. A sixth grader may need to practice reading one-syllable words with short vowels. An intelligent, curious middle-school student may still struggle to decode words that much younger students read...

One of the phrases I use frequently when talking with teachers is this: There is a difference between teaching a phonics "rule" and exploring a word pattern. At first, that distinction may seem insignificant. After all, aren't both approaches ultimately teaching students how words work? Yes—but they ask students to do very different things with that knowledge. Consider the familiar phonics concept commonly called the “FLOSS Rule.” Students may be taught that in a one-syllable word with a...

Consider a typical phonics lesson on what is often called the FLOSS Rule: After a short vowel in a one-syllable word, the letters f, l, s, and z are often doubled at the end of the word. A teacher might introduce words such as: fill, hill, will These are sensible choices. They are familiar to most students, easy to illustrate or explain, and likely already included in the scope and sequence of the curriculum the teacher is expected to follow. But what happens if we expand that list? What if...