Hi! I’m Jessica Deering or Mrs. Word Nerd.

Thank you for stopping by. I’m SO glad that you are here!

I am a school loving student and reader turned into a passionate lower elementary educator. I enjoyed school, was good at it and even took chemistry for fun in college. Even though I had positive school experience as a student, it has helped shape my own teaching.

Reading books was one of my favorite things. Give me a book and I would read it. Yet, it wasn’t until I was a senior in high school helping out in a first grade classroom that I finally learned what a short vowel was. No joke!

After teaching first and second grade for a few years, I knew something had to change. I felt so inadequate when teaching phonemic awareness and phonics. I felt like I didn’t know enough to truly help my students. After teaching a student who was receiving Orton-Gillingham instruction, I realized there had to be a better way for me to make sense of our language to help all the students in front of me.

That is what you will find here. All the tips, tricks and resources I have made, continue to make to make sure I’m teaching our language and reading in a way students can understand without focusing on the idea that our language is too hard to make any sense.

I’m looking forward to helping you wherever you may be in your teaching phonics and reading journey! I just want to help teachers not feel like I did as a beginning teacher.