What LETRS changed about how I teach reading
LETRS stands for Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling — two years of digging deep into how little brains learn to read. It was HARD work, and I loved every minute of it.
Watching a child learn to read is my very favorite kind of wonder. Speech comes to children naturally, but reading has to be built — sound by sound, letter by letter — and the research on how to build it well has never been clearer than it is today.
In our room, that means phonics time is structured and purposeful. We learn our sounds in a careful order, we practice until they feel easy, and we never ask a child to guess at a word from a picture. And don't worry — play is still the heart of everything we do! A child sounding out the sign they made for their block city is doing some of the realest reading practice I know.
If you'd like to help at home, it is wonderfully simple: read aloud together every chance you get, and welcome every single interruption. Those questions are where the learning lives — and they make for the very best bedtime conversations.