Sling Shot Educa8ion

10/09/2026

From reading to writing: when retrieving the facts is hard 📚✏️

Writing goal this week: one topic sentence with supporting details.

We read a short science text, The Blue Planet. I read it aloud, students followed, and we reread. Then we used a brain dump to retrieve what we had learned.

Here’s what stood out. Students struggled to pull out the key facts, even after hearing the text more than once.

So we went back to the text. What has the author told us about water and its forms?

We reread and pulled out the key information together. As we progressed, we also unpacked vocabulary such as evaporation and condensation.

Since then, I’ve built in more support from the start, using a graphic organiser and explicit vocabulary support to help students retrieve and organise what they have read before moving into writing.

Teaching, noticing, adjusting, and responding.

05/09/2026

Making intervention connect with the classroom

This week, our class topic gave us the perfect context for revisiting parts of speech in intervention.

Using a space-themed diamante poem, we worked with nouns, adjectives and verbs — identifying what each does, selecting vocabulary that fitted the category, and then using those words purposefully in writing.

🌍 Earth
✨ colourful, amazing
🪐 orbiting, spinning, moving
🌙 galaxy, stars, moon, planets…

What we liked about this activity was that the grammar wasn't taught in isolation. Students were drawing on knowledge from their current space topic while thinking explicitly about how words function in sentences and writing.

It was also a useful reminder that intervention doesn't always need to sit apart from classroom learning. Sometimes the classroom topic provides exactly the context we need to revisit language knowledge in a focused and accessible way.

Same topic. A different instructional focus. I had several options depending on the year level I was with.

Happy to share a copy.

05/09/2026

When sounding out is accurate, but blending is still hard…

During a Reading Pathways fluency session, this student could identify the sounds, but reading was still slow and effortful as he worked through them individually.

I used magnetic letters to explicitly model how to move through the sounds and blend them together.

By the end of the lesson, he was beginning to blend.

A small shift, but an important one. Knowing the sounds is one step; learning to bring them together smoothly is another.

01/09/2026

Making spelling words work a little harder 🔎

This week with a Years 5–6 group, we took some words from their MOV / MOT / MOB spelling focus and went beyond simply learning how to spell them.

MOV / MOT / MOB → MOVE

We investigated word parts, meanings and the connections between related words. The spelling words became the starting point, rather than the endpoint.

There is good research behind this too. Hiebert, Goodwin and Cervetti highlight the value of thinking about vocabulary in morphological families, where knowing one member of a family can help provide leverage for understanding others.

And the best feedback? Every student commented that it was fun! 😊

A lovely reminder that we can take the words students are already learning and use them to build richer vocabulary and word knowledge.

25/08/2026

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1581164380035961

25/08/2026

A useful, practical resource on reading comprehension from Dr Chase Young.

One idea that particularly stood out for me: two learners can get the same comprehension question wrong, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they need the same instruction.

One may be struggling with a word, another with vocabulary or background knowledge, and another with how the sentence or ideas fit together.

That’s where responsive teaching matters — noticing where meaning is breaking down and deciding what might help this learner, with this text, at this point.

Worth exploring 👇

All the sounds, phonics, vocabulary, and fluency work has been leading somewhere. Reading is not about pronouncing every word correctly while understanding absolutely nothing. The goal is meaning.

23/08/2026

Making connections

In this week's intervention, we worked with the students' own classroom spelling words. Rather than introducing a new set, we looked for ways to build on what was already being taught.

We connected several words through one sentence and a visual hook, then looked across the spelling list for relationships: the voc/voke connection (voice/call), grouped related words, and "peeled away" prefixes and suffixes to reveal the meaningful parts underneath.

It was a lot of words to work with — so we focused on a few, aiming to build understanding and grow their mental lexicon.

💡 Something to try with this week's spelling list:
🔎 Can any words be grouped by a shared root or meaning?
🧩 What happens when you peel away a prefix or suffix?
💬 Could you connect 2–3 related words in one meaningful sentence?

The aim isn't another vocabulary activity or another list of words it's another opportunity for students to notice, connect, and use the words already in front of them.

This also ties to my reading this week: the importance of both the quantity and quality of word encounters (Nation, 2017), morphological connections (Goodwin, Petscher, & Tock, 2021), and Hiebert's (2020) generative approach to vocabulary learning.

Same words. Another opportunity to make connections.

📚 Nation (2017) | Hiebert (2020) | Goodwin, Petscher, & Tock (2021)

14/08/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1DbZ5de9v8/

This is an oldie but still a goodie.
Start with what is familiar.

Her name. Sounds she already knows.

We use embedded picture mnemonics to help anchor the sound–letter connection, then look for lots of little opportunities to practise sticky notes, wooden blocks, writing on a metal tray… whatever is at hand.

Same learning. Different opportunities to practise.

Research supports embedded picture mnemonics as a useful memory support when learning letter–sound correspondences (Ehri et al., 1984; Shmidman & Ehri, 2010).

Hear it → connect it → find it → write it → read it.

Building the sound–print connection through familiar, meaningful and repeated experiences and most importantly, make it FUN!

12/08/2026

Connecting intervention back into the classroom.

This week, the classroom spelling focus was the suffix -ive.

We picked that up in intervention and used it as a bridge into adjectives and writing.

Students explored words such as creative, active, attractive and protective, noticing that -ive often forms an adjective.

From there, we explored what adjectives actually do:

Adjectives add more information to a noun.

Then into writing — building noun groups and using adjectives to add detail:

dog → the small brown and white dog

And now we can keep noticing those connections in classroom reading too. In Paper Tiger:

decorative bows
an impressive paper tiger

A classroom spelling focus became an opportunity to connect morphology → vocabulary → grammar → writing → reading.

One base. Many words. Stronger meanings.