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Teaching vocabulary is a key element of the revised Language curriculum that stretches across all grade levels. Effective vocabulary instruction is crucial for developing students’ reading comprehension and writing skills. One engaging way to teach vocabulary nuances is through the Shades of Meaning activity, which uses semantic gradients to help students understand subtle differences between related words. In ONlit’s Shifting the Balance in Junior and

In structured literacy, data-based decision-making is paramount to ensuring all children meet their right to learn to read. As Ontario moves toward province-wide early reading screening in September, it is important to consider how to use screening data to inform instruction. We screen to improve instruction and outcomes for students, first and foremost! Each of the three Ministry-approved screeners (Acadience, easyCBM, and AimsWebPlus) consist of

English orthography often has a reputation of being overly complicated and too difficult for students to navigate. While the English writing system certainly is complex, there is a predictable and consistent structure that supports strong reading and writing. This structure must be taught explicitly and systematically! Overlap is part of the nature of our code. The sounds of spoken language, phonemes, often have multiple different