Read All About It- Important things to review from the week of Feb 16
by Dr. Sam Bommarito
As I said last week, I’m adding a new feature to my blogging routine. Each week, I scour the internet to find important posts you shouldn’t miss. The descriptions of these posts are brief, hence the title Read All About It.
THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES
This week marks a career high for me. On March 24th, I will be the Keynote speaker at The State of Maryland’s annual convention. That evening, I’ll be joined by Dr. Timothy Rasinski. Dr. Rasinski will attend the event virtually. I’ll be on the stage in front of 100 dinner guests, and Dr. Rasinki will appear behind me on a very large screen. That should be quite a sight.
Dr. Rasinski is the world’s foremost expert on fluency. Stanford University recognized him as among the top 2% of researchers worldwide. He has conducted years of research on fluency. He has found ways to TEACH (not practice) fluency through repeated reading. Using his methodologies, he has clearly demonstrated that students not only learned the target words during each week’s session, but also start at a higher level in the next week’s readings. So the students are not just learning a few sight words; they’re also improving their ability to figure out future words. He found the effect size of this bridging process to be larger than that of explicitly taught phonics. So imagine what it will be like when you do use both explicit phonics and repeated reading with your students.
After the podcast, Dr. Rasinski and I will stay around while Julie Armstrong and her cadre lead several engaging activities with the audience. Each audience member will receive a copy of the Benchmark book Pat & Pals Decodable Readers Theater. That book contains eleven hilarious CVC/digraph scripts tailored for small groups. A very special thank you to Benchmark for sponsoring the event. This is an event you won’t want to miss. Find out how to register for this in-person convention on the SoMLA Facebook page LINK. I hope to see you all there!
Recently, Lester Lemack posted what may be the most important announcement of this school year.
Be on the lookout for my upcoming blogs. This week I talk to Dr. Latisha Smith. She is the author of numerous children’s books. She calls herself an avid writer. I have to agree. The timing for talking about her books couldn’t be better. After all, it’s Black History Month, and Latisha is a black author writing books for black children. You can’t get a better match than that.
And there’s more to come after that, including interviews with Jefferey Austin, who serves as a Dyslexia Reading Consultant to several school districts, Dr. Chase Young and Dr. Rachel Gabriel.
So those are this week’s headlines. Until next week:
Happy Reading and Writing
Dr. Sam
The guy in the middle: catching flak from all sides
Copyright 2025 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.