The Birth of Alphabet Quest

• During the pandemic, I was asked to leave my literacy coaching role and teach kindergarten.  When I went back to the classroom, I discovered that we were in desperate need of speeding up and enriching how we learned our alphabet.

• My time in the classroom was what birthed a really fun and effective idea I had:  Alphabet Quest!  Alphabet Quest is the idea of teaching the alphabet in an intense, systematic (and faster) way. 

• I returned to my literacy coaching role and introduced Alphabet Quest to my co-workers.  

• Instead of teaching one letter a week and spending 26 weeks inside the alphabet, Alphabet Quest was designed for children to learn their alphabet and letter sounds in only 5 weeks’ time.  

All About Melanie Brethour:

Full-time elementary resource teacher in Montreal, Canada and also a parent to a child with severe dyslexia.

Passionate about dyslexia and the science of reading, specifically supporting parents through navigating the dyslexia journey.

Can you chat about Developing Readers Academy and how you support parents?

Our program is self-paced. Kids begin with a diagnostic assessment (phonological awareness, letters, phonics, etc.) We look at the individual child and then give them a personalized path.

What we wanted to do that’s different from other resources out there is that we really follow the child. Families are getting us as if we are their private tutors, yet it’s flexible!

In your opinion as it pertains to literacy, what do we do really well and what do we need a better understanding of?

We’ve done a fantastic job at getting the word out. You see so many shares on a reel and hundreds of likes, which really means that people are finding this advice useful. The word is out now that there’s a problem with how we’ve been teaching reading. When you curate your social media feed so that it’s an uplifting experience, you’re sharing with the world that it works for all students.

A Podcast with Wiley Blevins

Author, travel-lover, and expert in all things literacy.

Comes from a history of grandparents who were illiterate - books were not a part of his everyday life. It was these limitations that encouraged him to perform well in school and learn to read.

When he began teaching, he didn’t know how to teach reading, so he had to do his own mini studies in his classroom.

Phonics instruction, which teaches the relationship between sounds and letters, is a fundamental component of reading development. To ensure effective phonics instruction, teachers must follow a well-designed scope and sequence. When it comes to choosing or creating a phonics scope and sequence, there are many things we should consider.

I don’t know about you, but teaching blends can be tricky. Blends (also known as consonant blends) are two or three consonant sounds that appear together in a word without any vowel sounds in between. These are words like flip, stop, strip, help, desk and spring.

In today’s podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Julia Lindsey, author of Reading Above the Fray. Julia is a literacy expert and reading researcher. In this episode, she helps us bust some common myths about decodables.

Michelle Sullivan, a literacy coach in New Jersey talks with listeners all about background knowledge. She shares what it is, why it’s important, and five ways we can easily implement it in our classrooms.