Building Wings

10/09/2026

📚 Are students engaged in learning—or simply completing activities?

It's an important question for every special education classroom.

Students can spend their day clicking, tapping, matching, and completing tasks. And while those activities may keep learners engaged, engagement alone doesn't always mean meaningful learning is happening.

The real question is: What are students learning, and how is that learning helping them grow?

For students with significant disabilities and complex communication needs, meaningful literacy instruction requires more than interesting activities. It takes explicit instruction, predictable routines, purposeful engagement, and opportunities to apply skills across reading, writing, and communication.

That's the difference between keeping students busy and helping them build lasting skills.

With Readtopia® and ReadtopiaGO™, engagement is designed to serve an instructional purpose. Research-based lessons and consistent daily routines help educators connect what students are doing to what they're learning.

Because the goal isn't simply to keep students participating.

It's to make sure that participation leads to meaningful opportunities for growth.

💬 Educators, how do you distinguish between student engagement and actual learning in your classroom?

🔗 Explore Readtopia and ReadtopiaGO: https://pulse.ly/japvkatlje

10/08/2026

📚 The school year is in full swing—which means IEP meetings are, too!

If you’ve ever mixed up accommodations and modifications, you’re not alone. They’re often used interchangeably, but they actually mean very different things—and knowing the difference can make all the difference for your learners.

👀 Check out our blog by Michael McCormick, M.S., LBS to help clear things up!
https://bit.ly/3CW2Rq8

10/08/2026

📚 You asked, so we’re bringing it back LIVE!

Missed Teaching Reading & Writing in Special Education: 10 Conditions That Drive Success the first time? Or have a colleague who needs to hear it? Here’s another chance to join Marci Butler and Nicole Nichols live!

Successful literacy instruction for students with significant disabilities isn’t just about what we teach. The conditions we create around that instruction matter, too.

Marci and Nicole will explore 10 conditions that can help students grow as readers and writers, with practical ideas for supporting communication, participation, engagement, and high expectations in special education classrooms.

Come learn with us, bring a teammate, and leave with ideas you can put into practice.

📅 October 20, 2026
⏰ 6 PM CST

🎤 Marci Butler & Nicole Nichols, Building Wings Implementation Specialists

🔗 Save your spot: https://pulse.ly/qunizz5a1d

Tag an educator who should join you! 👇

10/05/2026

📰 What’s happening in the world this week? News Currents® gives learners a way to explore it!

This week’s stories include:
🐻 Fat Bear Week 2026
🏝️ A mysterious vanishing island in Canada
🏡 Christian Bale’s foster care village

Current events can be a powerful way to build background knowledge, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and communication while giving students something interesting and relevant to talk about.
With News Currents, learners can engage with timely topics and make meaningful connections between literacy instruction and the world around them. 🌎📚

💬 Which story would your students choose first?
🔗 Learn more about News Currents: https://pulse.ly/dt59gs5isf

10/02/2026

💙 Feel Good Friday: AAC Awareness Month Edition! 💬

As we wrap up the week, let’s celebrate all the ways our learners communicate.

A word spoken. A message on an AAC device. A gesture. A look. A symbol selected. A joke shared. A choice made. A thought that finally found its way into the conversation.

Every one of those moments matters. ✨

AAC Awareness Month is a great reminder that communication doesn’t have to look or sound one particular way to be meaningful. Our job is to listen, model, provide access, and create opportunities for every learner to have something to say.

So for this Feel Good Friday, we want to hear about the moments that made you smile:
💬 What communication win are you celebrating this week?

Big or small, share it in the comments so we can celebrate with you! 🙌

10/02/2026

10/01/2026

💬 October is AAC Awareness Month!

Every student deserves meaningful ways to communicate, participate, and learn—and for many learners with complex communication needs, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) makes that possible.

But AAC access shouldn’t stop when literacy instruction begins. Students who use AAC also need meaningful opportunities to read, write, build language, make choices, and share their ideas. 📚

In ReadtopiaGO™, My Very Own Voice introduces learners to AAC while celebrating the many different ways people communicate. It’s an opportunity to build understanding around communication while engaging students in meaningful literacy instruction.

Because AAC and literacy aren’t separate parts of a learner’s day. Communication is woven throughout learning. 💙

This AAC Awareness Month, let’s keep creating classrooms where every learner has something to say—and meaningful opportunities to say it.

👉 Want to explore ReadtopiaGO? Learn more here: https://bit.ly/3LSNW1Y

10/01/2026

📍 Where is a learner now—and what should come next in literacy instruction?

Assessment should help educators answer that question, not simply produce another score.

With Readtopia® and ReadtopiaGO™, tools like Emergent Literacy Measures and the Assessment Roadmap help educators better understand student progress and use that information to make meaningful instructional decisions.

Because progress monitoring is most useful when it connects directly to what happens next: What does this learner need? What should we teach? Where do we go from here?

For students with significant disabilities and complex learning needs, that clarity matters. Assessment can become more than something we administer—it can help create a clearer path forward.

💡 Measure growth. Understand progress. Plan meaningful next steps.
Ready to learn more about Readtopia and ReadtopiaGO?

Explore here: https://bit.ly/3Llbsmv

09/28/2026

🔢 Can a student count to five without actually understanding what five means?

Absolutely—and that distinction can tell us a lot about how we approach math instruction for students with significant cognitive disabilities.

Number sense is about more than reciting numbers in order. Students need opportunities to understand quantity, counting and cardinality, comparison, representation, and how numbers relate to one another.

So instead of only asking, “Can the student count?” we can ask a more meaningful question:

“What does the student understand about what they just counted?”

Our newest blog explores how explicit, repeated, accessible instruction can help students build foundational number sense—and why predictable math routines can make meaningful instruction more doable for educators, too.

We’ve spent years challenging assumptions about what students with significant disabilities can learn in literacy. It’s time to bring that same thinking to mathematics.

📚 Read “Building Number Sense for Students With Significant Disabilities”: https://pulse.ly/5xhzayikk2

Learn why counting is more than reciting numbers and how research-based instruction can build number sense for students with significant cognitive disabilities.

09/25/2026

🎉 You did it. Happy Friday!

Educators, families, and school teams, another busy week is officially in the books.

Take a minute to celebrate the wins, big and small. The lesson that clicked. The unexpected laugh. The student who surprised you. The moment that reminded you why you do this work. 💙

Now, we want to hear from you:

💬 What was one win from your week?

Drop it in the comments so we can celebrate with you. Then go enjoy your weekend. You’ve earned it! 🙌