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!
Opening the dialogue
June 24, 2010
There are some children who come to school who officially learn to read in school but who have had hundreds of hours of experiences with books, print, and language play.
What Exactly is a Decodable Text?
June 17, 2010
Any text written in English is decodable at some level in that the code never deviates from the alphabetic system. However, the degree to which the letter-sound correspondences within words are common or consistent can vary considerably.
Whatever Happened to Dick and Jane?
June 4, 2010
If you were 6 years old between 1930-1967 in the U.S., there is a high likelihood that this text was the first of your school career.
High-Leverage Action #3
November 14, 2009
ELLs may have the concepts of a topic but simply give the concepts different labels than the English ones. In a unit on the human body, native Spanish speakers know about a skeleton.
High-Leverage Action #2
November 7, 2009
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common origin.
High-Leverage Action #1
October 31, 2009
We know that oral language is a primary way in which meaning gets constructed and built. Through talk, we come to understand concepts and our interpretations and ownership of ideas.
High-Leverage Actions That Can Make a Difference
October 29, 2009
As facilitator of the 2009 CREATE conference, I promised attendees that I would reflect on what I view to the important take-aways from the conference and share them in this venue.
Private, Personal, and Peculiar
October 1, 2009
An idiom is a phrase whose meaning cannot be established by a literal translation of the words in the phrase.
Welcome back, Freddy
September 11, 2009
Some of you may remember that ’70s show—Welcome back, Kotter! Well…I’m welcoming myself back to writing Frankly Freddy. Why, after a three-year hiatus, would I resurrect this column? One reason is that I’ve joined a cooperative work space here in SantaRead More »Welcome back, Freddy
Everyday Events
September 9, 2009
Vocabulary is one of the topics that Cassidy and Cassidy listed as hot in Reading Today. Vocabulary should always be a hot topic in that it forms the foundation of knowing and learning anything. A typical direction that educators take when a topic is hot is to think of lessons and materials and curriculum. These things are part of the solution but an additional resource lies in the everyday talk of classrooms. Language is the medium of human interaction and, like any human context, language fills classroom life.