Theodor Geisel, better know as Dr. Seuss, wrote his first children’s book in 1937. It was And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street.  It would be 23 years before he would write Green Eggs and Ham, and it probably would never have happened without “the bet.” Long before the publication of Green Eggs and Ham,...

Sometimes, the truth is “ugly,” meaning unpleasant. Unfortunately, we’re not always receptive to an ugly truth. Acceptance takes time. You know, it takes a while to accept a truth that we wish was a lie. Unfortunately, the longer it takes for us to acknowledge the ugliness, the more damage is done. This is where we...

It’s a new year! And it’s time to bet involved in your child’s education. Sure, we all check report cards, and most of show up for conferences, but that’s not nearly enough. We’ve accepted the notion that decisions about education should be made by “the experts.” That might be a good idea if there actually...

I’ve just read Mark Seidenberg’s Language at the Speed of Sight. He’s a co-leader of the Language & Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The book is filled with details about the science of reading and the conclusions reached through several decades of research. There is still a major question: why...

Over the course of the past two decades or so, reading scientists have settled the fundamental questions about reading: What is it? How do we learn it? How should it be taught? Our program for teaching reading, 7SS2R aligns with the science of reading. By now you know we believe that everyone needs to be...

Last month, I focused on the conclusions of reading scientists about what it takes to teach reading effectively. However, there’s more to the science of reading than meets the eye. You might want to know more about the science of reading. The primary motivation for the decades-long “reading wars” was a difference of opinion about...

How much do you know about reading science? Most people don’t know it exists. It’s a relatively new field of study. Frankly, it’s late to the party, and the party’s been in full swing for a long time. You may or may not know that our educational institutions have been adjusting reading methodology for decades....

Do you favor testing, or do you think it should banned? A lot of education experts think so. The experts assert that testing is counterproductive for our children. And yet, is that true? If you don’t already have an opinion, I suggest we answer three questions. First, what do we mean by “test”? Second: does...

I was introduced to Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” by Dr. John Silber’s book, Straight Shooting—What’s Wrong with America and How We Can Fix It. It was 1984, and Silber was president of Boston University.  He had a PhD in philosophy from Yale. Formerly a Dean at the University of Texas...

I am convinced that facility with language is the key to reading, and, ultimately, to learning. It seems obvious. What is not obvious is why some students acquire this facility with relative ease while others struggle and often never catch up. The difference may be 30 million words, more or less. Thirty Million Words was...