The incredible Pearl Poon will be giving a presentation on the History of English.

She will not be talking about the Great Vowel Shift, nor will she be providing a detailed history of the English language from the moment Angles and the Jutes landed. Instead, Pearl will focus on the key events, and forces, that most impacted on the English language and how we spell words today. 

Pearl will be doing her presentation through OG Canada on Nov 15 8:30 - 10:30 am. PST. And it’s FREE! 

Registration is open for the Dyslexia Training Institute's  10th Annual Dyslexia Virtual Conference. They are offering “Super Early Bird” prices until Nov 22 and it’s an excellent discount. 

They have quite a line up of speakers this year: Pete Bowers, Joan Sedita, Sue Scibetta Hegland, Lisa Barnett & Katie Squires, Patti Bottino Bravo, Rebecca Loveless & Fiona Hamilton, and more. This is definitely going to be an interesting conference! 

AI has been coming up a lot in our discussions lately and opinions vary widely. But now we have the chance to hear what some of the students think. 

The webinar is called Students Speak Up About AI in Their Learning Lives. This presentation is part of the 2025 Speak Up National Report. It is based on “...research findings collected from more than 60,000 K–12 students, educators, administrators, and families through the 2024–25 Speak Up survey and national report.”  I’m not sure who collected this data, so I can’t speak to how reliable it is. 

They say the key takeaways will be:

• “Learn what students identify as the most valuable uses of AI in their learning lives
• Understand student concerns about data privacy, ethics, and access for all students
• Gain practical insights into how AI can support personalized learning, deeper engagement, and career readiness
• Explore recommendations to help schools and districts align policies and practices with the voices of today’s learners”

It’s running Oct 23 at 12 p.m. ET and it’s FREE! But don’t worry if you can’t attend at that time, all of the EdWeb Webinars are posted free to watch any time. So you can catch this one whenever you have time. 

Keys to Literacy and Joan Sedita are celebrating 10 years of posting their blog: Literacy Lines.

In honour of that, Sedita has compiled a list of some of their most popular posts. She has grouped them under some very interesting headings: 

•  Foundational Skills
• Adolescent Literacy
• Instruction That Supports Both Reading and Writing
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension
• Writing
• Literacy
• Literacy Learning Difficulties

I haven’t had a chance to read them all (there are links to a lot of posts!) but there is some great stuff there. Sedita leans a little more heavily towards traditional OG than I do in some of her phonics work, but she understands the need for teaching morphology and orthography and her skill in teaching writing is undeniable. These blog posts are full of useful advice and smart ideas. Definitely worth taking a look! 

Games are such a great way to have fun while reinforcing skills and concepts. 

Emily Gibbons has come out with some fun new morphology games. She has a new game for practising both the to and Replace the suffixing conventions. And it’s FREE! 

She’s also created a series of what she calls morphology Pick Up Games that are only $1 USD each and look like fun. 

The Reading Mama has also come out with a group of interesting morpheme games. I picked these ones up and, while I’ll admit that I’ve already been modifying them, you could absolutely use them just as they are. If your student can't read the complex words, just have them use the box and underline method to distinguish the different morphemes.