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Ms. Benison-

@BenisonMrs

A passionate teacher. Wilson certified.LETRS Level 1 & 2 Certified. UFLI, OG & PAF trained. #SOR believer & lifetime learner. My tweets are my personal views.

 New York, NY
Joined March 2019
  • Tweets19.7K
  • Following1.2K
  • Followers12.5K
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Ms. Benison- retweeted
Emily Hanford (@ehanford) profile picture
Emily Hanford@ehanford14h
The results were so good that people accused them of cheating. youtube.com/watch?v=n2EOPAf1…
The secret to Wesley Elementary’s success

The secret to Wesley Elementary’s success

In the 1990s, a school in a poor, Black neighborhood on the outskir...

youtube.com
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Ms. Benison- retweeted
Zach Groshell (@MrZachG) profile picture
Zach Groshell@MrZachG14h
If a student doesn't have to correct their mistake, they won't. Showing the right answer and moving on lets them skip the work. In Direct Instruction, the student fixes the mistake and then proves it.
Error Correction: What should happen in the seconds after a student gets it wrong

ALT Error Correction: What should happen in the seconds after a student gets it wrong

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Ms. Benison- retweeted
Anna Stokke (@rastokke) profile picture
Anna Stokke
@rastokkeOct 29
🔥 It's great to see the usual characters panicking over the notion that the same commitment to scientific evidence driving reading reform might be applied to mathematics. We want better reading instruction, but why would we stop there? Doesn't math deserve the same attention? I'm sick of pseudoscience driving education. Period. It's time to take education back and stop letting fads and ideology determine how children are taught.
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Ms. Benison- retweeted
Ms. Sam (@SciInTheMaking) profile picture
Ms. Sam@SciInTheMakingOct 28
Replying to @EdWeekOpinion
“Pedagogy of compliance.” Really? Using charged language to describe a pedagogy is not productive. People can do that with anything. “Inquiry: Pedagogy of Neglect.” See how ridiculous that sounds? We need to be more objective. Btw I don’t think inquiry is neglect. Lol
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Ms. Benison- retweeted
Sarah Oberle, Ed.D. (@S_Oberle) profile picture
Sarah Oberle, Ed.D.@S_OberleOct 28
Right. Seatbelts are just compliance too. How unkind.
Mike Sullivan🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@mikesully97) profile pictureMike Sullivan🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱
@mikesully97Oct 27
Replying to @EdWeekOpinion
I’m sorry - but this is just such a childish view of teaching and learning. Explicit instruction is about “compliance?” Really? You’d rather send kids off into society unable to read well, do basic math or understand what’s going on in the world if the alternative means asking them to pay attention and apply themselves? You don’t get to complain about “barriers to learning” if you’re acting as a barrier yourself.
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Replying to @EdWeekOpinion
I’m sorry - but this is just such a childish view of teaching and learning. Explicit instruction is about “compliance?” Really? You’d rather send kids off into society unable to read well, do basic math or understand what’s going on in the world if the alternative means asking them to pay attention and apply themselves? You don’t get to complain about “barriers to learning” if you’re acting as a barrier yourself.
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Replying to @NateJoseph19
@NateJoseph19 -What is the word on the street about the MClass math assessment? How valid and reliable is it as a BM tool and progress monitoring for students students well below grade level? Thx
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Thanks @NateJoseph19 and @burnsmk1 !
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For far too long, the ed system has been comfortable w/the idea of having some stdts succeed in reading/math while many other stdts struggle. When we choose the comfort of our instructional ideology & philosophy above what research has shown to be effective we R choosing comfort
Anna Stokke (@rastokke) profile pictureAnna Stokke
@rastokkeOct 26
Kris Boulton's pitch is simple: we can accept classrooms where some students succeed and others struggle, or we can be much more systematic about designing instruction so that all students have the opportunity to succeed at a high level. 🎧 The episode is a must listen! Link below @Kris_Boulton
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available now at Barnes & Noble 💜
Image from Megan Gierka 🌻 (@MeganGierka)
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What explicit instruction practices should you look for when observing for fidelity of implementation? Our free eLearning module and app support instructional coaches and admins in observing explicit instruction: irrc.education.uiowa.edu/res…
Measuring Explicit Instruction: Communicating Lesson Goals and Ensuring Alignment Johnson and colleagues (2017) developed a rubric for assessing the use of explicit instruction along seven dimensions. Goals and alignment are two of the seven and encompass a range of techniques. 1. The goals of the lesson are clearly communicated to the students. Not Implemented: The goal is not verbally stated. Partially Implemented: “Today you will demonstrate mastery of decoding words with a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern.” Fully Implemented: “Today you will blend sounds to read three-letter words with a short vowel sound (e.g., cat).”

ALT Measuring Explicit Instruction: Communicating Lesson Goals and Ensuring Alignment Johnson and colleagues (2017) developed a rubric for assessing the use of explicit instruction along seven dimensions. Goals and alignment are two of the seven and encompass a range of techniques. 1. The goals of the lesson are clearly communicated to the students. Not Implemented: The goal is not verbally stated. Partially Implemented: “Today you will demonstrate mastery of decoding words with a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern.” Fully Implemented: “Today you will blend sounds to read three-letter words with a short vowel sound (e.g., cat).”

2. The stated goals are specific. Not Implemented: The goal is not stated or displayed. Partially Implemented: “Today we will read a passage and complete a worksheet.” Fully Implemented: “Today you will use a graphic organizer to record important ideas in an informational text and identify the main idea.” 3. The teacher clearly explains the relevance of the stated goal to the students. Not Implemented: Relevance of the learning objective is not mentioned. Partially Implemented: “This lesson will help you with spelling words.” Fully Implemented: “We are practicing breaking apart [segmenting] the sounds in words because it will help you think about which letters spell each sound when you are spelling words.”

ALT 2. The stated goals are specific.  Not Implemented: The goal is not stated or displayed. Partially Implemented: “Today we will read a passage and complete a worksheet.” Fully Implemented: “Today you will use a graphic organizer to record important ideas in an informational text and identify the main idea.” 3. The teacher clearly explains the relevance of the stated goal to the students. Not Implemented: Relevance of the learning objective is not mentioned. Partially Implemented: “This lesson will help you with spelling words.” Fully Implemented: “We are practicing breaking apart [segmenting] the sounds in words because it will help you think about which letters spell each sound when you are spelling words.”

4. Instruction is completely aligned to the stated or implied goal. Not Implemented: The objective is that students will blend sounds to read three-letter words with a short vowel sound (i.e., CVC words), but the students read decodable books that do not provide focused opportunities and do not practice blending sounds to read CVC words. Partially Implemented: Students only blend sounds that are presented orally (e.g., /c/ / ă/ /t/) without reading printed words Fully Implemented: Students blend sounds presented orally (e.g., /c/ / ă/ /t/), then read printed CVC words. 5. All of the examples or materials selected are aligned to the stated or implied goal. Not Implemented: When teaching a spelling rule (i.e., double the final consonant when adding an -ing suffix to a word with a short vowel sound), the teacher generates impromptu examples that do not illustrate the rule (e.g., bus, jump, fix). Partially Implemented: When teaching a spelling rule, some words selected for demonstration

ALT 4. Instruction is completely aligned to the stated or implied goal. Not Implemented: The objective is that students will blend sounds to read three-letter words with a short vowel sound (i.e., CVC words), but the students read decodable books that do not provide focused opportunities and do not practice blending sounds to read CVC words. Partially Implemented: Students only blend sounds that are presented orally (e.g., /c/ / ă/ /t/) without reading printed words Fully Implemented: Students blend sounds presented orally (e.g., /c/ / ă/ /t/), then read printed CVC words. 5. All of the examples or materials selected are aligned to the stated or implied goal. Not Implemented: When teaching a spelling rule (i.e., double the final consonant when adding an -ing suffix to a word with a short vowel sound), the teacher generates impromptu examples that do not illustrate the rule (e.g., bus, jump, fix). Partially Implemented: When teaching a spelling rule, some words selected for demonstration

6. Examples of materials selected are aligned to the instructional level of most or all of the students. Not Implemented: The students work on segmenting sounds in CVC words (e.g., map), but most students in the class are not yet able to isolate the first sound in a word. Partially Implemented: Some students can easily isolate sounds in CVC words and some students have substantial difficulty. All students complete the same activities with the same level of prompting from the teacher. Fully Implemented: Students can easily isolate the first sound in a CVC word (e.g., /s/ in sit), and the teacher uses various strategies to help students at different instructional levels segment the sounds (e.g., elongating sounds, choosing words with continuous sounds like /s/). https://irrc.education.uiowa.edu/measure-first Find the other five dimensions for assessing explicit instruction on our free eLearning module and application!

ALT 6. Examples of materials selected are aligned to the instructional level of most or all of the students. Not Implemented: The students work on segmenting sounds in CVC words (e.g., map), but most students in the class are not yet able to isolate the first sound in a word. Partially Implemented: Some students can easily isolate sounds in CVC words and some students have substantial difficulty. All students complete the same activities with the same level of prompting from the teacher. Fully Implemented: Students can easily isolate the first sound in a CVC word (e.g., /s/ in sit), and the teacher uses various strategies to help students at different instructional levels segment the sounds (e.g., elongating sounds, choosing words with continuous sounds like /s/). https://irrc.education.uiowa.edu/measure-first Find the other five dimensions for assessing explicit instruction on our free eLearning module and application!

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Ms. Benison- retweeted
LSG (@LearnLead_) profile picture
LSG
@LearnLead_Oct 24
“We need evidence for equitable outcomes.” Anita Archer at ResearchED Toronto. @researchED1 @researchEDCan
Image from LSG (@LearnLead_)
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#rEDTO2026 Anita Archer in the house. @researchEDCan @researchED1 @tombennett71 @rastokke @JimHewittOISE A day to remember and to learn from.
Image from Nidhi Sachdeva, PhD (@nsachdeva2019)
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Nonteachers will never understand the art, precision, and patience needed to teach a classroom of reluctant writers how to write a coherent and well-structured paragraph.
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4/7 When someone observes me, they aren't seeing a special performance. I refuse to do that. They're seeing the same routines, expectations, & instructional structure my studnts experienced the day before & the day before that. The content may change, but the consistency doesn't.
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6/7 My director once told me that one of the things she loves about talking to me is how proud I always am of my students and their progress. My response? "Of course I am! I know how hard they've worked to overcome their learning challenges."
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7/7 Here is the thing: becoming an effective reading interventionist for students in special education did not happen overnight. It's the result of years of thoughtful learning, unlearning, reflection, adjustments, and intentional practice.
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1/7 Over the years, I've been observed teaching reading by administrators and fellow teachers. Some comments I hear consistently are how much instruction I manage to fit into 30 minutes, how quickly the lesson moves, and how engaged my students are throughout.
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3/7 One of the first things I establish with my students is a clear understanding of behavioral and learning expectations. My students know they are cared for, respected, and safe to make mistakes. They also know that my expectations are high, consistent, and nonnegotiable.
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2/7 Observers often comment on how smoothly students transition from one part of the lesson to the next. What they are seeing isn't accidental. It's the result of routines, clear expectations, and instructional decisions that I've developed and refined over many years.
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