A blend, or a consonant cluster, is a group of consonants that stand together in a word such as cl, br, or st; there are no vowels between the two consonants.
Words, Words, Words- Consonant Blends and Digraphs, Triple Consonant Blends, Short Vowels, Long Vowels
Consonant Cluster Word Lists and worksheets

Never heard of a phoneme, have you?
In the human language, a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound and is one of the MOST important aspects of learning to read because without learning how to isolate individual sounds a child can not learn to connect units of sound or isolate units within larger groups of sounds.
For example, isolated sounds are connected to written letter forms and children can easily match the same beginning or ending sounds (unless there are some learning disabilities like auditory processing).
Cat, bat, mat,
Note that phonemic awareness is auditory and does not involve words in print …read more

Why are Syllables important? Well, pronunciation. If you can’t properly divide the word into the correct syllables then you can’t pronounce the word correctly.
Take for example the word marry (as in, to marry someone).
1. ma-rry
2. mar-ry
In the first example the pronunciation is May-re but in the second it is mar-ee, which is correct.
Now, to learn how to find the number of syllables and to count them please head to this site on Syllable Rules (because I can’t summarize the entire thing without copyright issues).

Decoding is the ability to apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words. Understanding these relationships gives children the ability to recognize familiar words quickly and to figure out words they haven’t seen before. – Reading Rockets

If children can’t decode words then they can’t work their way effectively through increasingly harder texts. What happens then is that their frustration level rises and teachers and parents start seeing them struggle and fall behind. Comments like “I hate this” or “I can’t do this” start to become common place.
Decoding is the ability to read …read more

Making predictions does not come naturally to all of us but it is a necessary step to becoming a good and successful reader. To be able to predict means being able to use cause and effect and cognitive thinking skills.
When I was teaching middle school I would incorporate predictions into every reading log and students would predict at the end of each chapter or reading session, even if it was as simple as “the girl will go into the house”.
Another activity you can do is make predictions on what will happen in the story based just upon the title. This …read more

The very first children’s library in the nation began in 1835 when a local physician in Hopkington, New Hampshire left $100 in his will to create a children’s library in West Cambridge.
The money was used to purchase several books from Little, Brown, and Company. According to legend, the books were brought by wheelbarrow to the new library and the librarian, Mr. Jonathan Dexter.
The doctor, Dr. Learned created the first free and continuous children’s library in the nation.
Information from Robbins Library.

I was never a spider lover myself but for some reason little boys live spider webs and they certainly love spiders. In fact, Google has even named their search engines after spiders because of the creepy crawly legs that reach out to all parts of the Internet.
But, when did we, as children, start learning spider tales? Well, there are the pre-school versions of the Itsy Bitsy Spider, There was an old lady…, etc.
And apparently, October is the month for SPIDERS! Classrooms all over the country are building webs, singing spider songs, and counting legs. Over the next few days watch …read more

Dr. Seuss is the master of all Rhyming and children’s books but what you may not know is that he is also a fabulous teacher. Most of us know that Seuss was not the most responsible adults, dropping out of college to travel Europe and contributing political cartoons in his early career.
His first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, published, however, required a great degree of persistence – it was rejected 27 times before being published by Vanguard Press. The Cat in the Hat, perhaps

OneBookTwoBook.com
One of my favorite activities involves in encouraging young writers.  I enjoy visiting schools and working with teachers, either coordinating something they’re teaching or planning my own workshop.  It’s rewarding to see youngsters become excited about writing stories, poetry, plays, essays and often illustrating them.
Youngsters work at various speeds and with differing degrees of inspiration.  When you can get a youngster, who professes to hate writing, turned around so he/she enjoys it, that’s a height of joy for a teacher.  Because I’m also a teacher (doing solely substitute teaching now), I can keep up with what teachers are teaching about writing …read more

Oprah and the American Library Association (ALA) have teamed up to provide parents and readers with a Kids Reading List on “The Oprah Winfrey Show’s” website.
The list is divided in to give age groups, from infant to ages 12 and up and contains an annotated bibliography of librarian recommended reading. There is also a Classics section.
“One of our goals as librarians is to provide all children with quality reading materials,” said ALSC President Pat Scales. “By teaming up with Oprah’s Book Club, we’re able to connect with a wide range of people we may not have reached otherwise. Whether children …read more