Frankly Freddy Blog

TextProject president and CEO Elfrieda H. (Freddy) Hiebert blogs about important issues in reading research and practice.Frankly Freddy entries (published from 2005 to 2014) have been sorted into five topics of literacy learning and instruction. Click here to download the ebook!

Getting Back to the Page & Staying There

July 16, 2020

Elfrieda H. Hiebert

Reading is all about knowledge; it’s not just for practice.

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Bad with Names: Why Proper Names Deserve Instructional Attention

January 28, 2020

Alia Pugh and Elfrieda H. Hiebert

Rare words typically make up only 5% or less of the total words in texts, but it’s often these words that get students anxious about reading.

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A Whole New World of Vocabulary Instruction

January 21, 2020

Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Alia Pugh

Words are not only a means of communicating, but a foundation of learning.

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Not All Rare Words Are Sesquipedalian!

January 15, 2020

Alia Pugh and Elfrieda H. Hiebert

A small part of the English vocabulary accounts for the majority of the words in the texts students read across the grades – but some of the words may surprise you.

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What Does It Mean To Be A Digitally Literate Scholar?

November 27, 2018

Elfrieda H. Hiebert

Some thoughts for Literacy Research Association session: Opening up the ivory tower: Examining the elements of open, digitally engaged scholarship (November 28, 2018, Indian Wells, CA)

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Building Background Knowledge and Reading Proficiency: One Article at a Time

August 14, 2018

Article-A-Day” is an open-access program from Readworks.org. Daily, students read an article from focused topics that ensure their development of background knowledge. Evidence shows that daily reading of an article supports students’ comprehension and engagement.

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A New Kind of Leveled Text: Meeting the Needs of Challenged Readers

July 24, 2018

Elfrieda H. Hiebert

Short sentences and less text don’t add up to proficient reading. But that’s exactly what the current wave of leveled texts offers.

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What Should Goals Be For Increasing Students’ Oral Reading Rates?

May 26, 2018

Elfrieda H. Hiebert

The question of how much growth to set as goals for oral reading fluency depends on the grade level and where students are in relation to grade-level patterns. But before I give my recommendations, I would like to review several critical points about oRead More »What Should Goals Be For Increasing Students’ Oral Reading Rates?

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The Stories of Words: TextProject’s Newest Texts and Vocabulary Product

January 9, 2017

Elfrieda H.Hiebert

The texts in the Stories of Words series provide a great opportunity for students to expand their vocabularies, increase their background knowledge, and develop facility with the core vocabulary of written English.

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Interpreting Intervention Outcomes: Lexile-Based Assessments and Norm-Referenced Assessments

April 8, 2016

Elfrieda H. Hiebert

Are the results from Lexile-based assessments and Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE) comparable? For educators, how do the results from Lexile-based and norm-referenced assessments relate to the results of summative, end-of-the-year, state-mandated assessments?heere

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