776 articles since 2009
The Pennington Publishing Blog
Notes from 36 years in grades 4–12 classrooms: what to assess, what to teach, what to skip.
Latest · May 3, 2026
Problems with Morphology and Etymology
Having served as a reading specialist over multiple decades, I've seen plenty of changes in instructional emphasis. Such is the case with morphology and etymology. Teachers tend to be a…
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Reading Groups Revisited
Few instructional practices would merit the "American as apple pie" tag more than reading groups. Having served as a reading specialist and publisher for many years,…
Decodables to Fill Phonics Gaps
Sometimes reading deficits require comprehensive surgery. Other times a few band-aids are all that are needed. If your students are stumbling over reading some words, but…
How Elementary Teachers Can Turn Students Into History Detectives
How Elementary Teachers Can Turn Students Into History Detectives In the final post of our series, we're diving into historical thinking skills—an essential but often ignored…
U.S. Geography and State History Matters- Here’s How to Find the Time to Teach Them
Welcome to the third post in our series on improving elementary students' reading and social studies skills. If you haven't yet read the first two posts,…
Bring Community Right Into Your Classroom
Welcome to the second post in our series on how elementary teachers can boost their students’ reading and civic skills. In our last post, we explored…
The Social Studies Squeeze: How It Hurts Civic Engagement and Reading Skills
If you’ve stepped into an elementary school classroom lately, you might have noticed something missing. No? Look closer. In between the shelves full of books and…
Syntax Stretchers
Reading and writing research have been consistently clear that syntactic manipulation, revision, sentence expansion, and sentence combining improve reading comprehension and increase writing dexterity and sophistication.…