Good Sensory Learning Blog

I think we are all familiar with the embarrassment of occasionally forgetting a person's name.  However, this is a common difficulty for individuals with dyslexia, and it is called a word retrieval or word finding difficulty. They may know someone's or something's name one day, but are unable to access the same information the next. What Causes One to Forget Names? There are four factors that can impact one's ability to encode and then retrieve a name.  Environmental Factors that impact the senses can pull one's attention away from a learning experience. Auditory distractions such as a noisy environment can make it...

There are a plethora of reading programs that walk students through the rules, patterns, and irregularities of our complicated English language, however, many students need to begin their remedial instruction by strengthening the core and foundational cognitive skills required to be a competent reader. What Are the Core Cognitive Skills Required for Reading? There are three main cognitive skills that students must strengthen to prepare them to read. Although there are other cognitive processing areas that the brain uses to read, such as executive functioning, spatial skills, and processing speed, here is a list and discussion of the primary ones:...

This week I am thrilled to share a case study of a fabulous teacher named Kim, from Cape Town in South Africa. Kim teaches a 3rd-grade class at a special needs school. The children range from 10-12 years old and most are bussed in daily from very disadvantaged areas all over the peninsula. Kim reported, "I was so thrilled to have stumbled across your website when I was drowning in a sea of unrecognizable words and paragraphs which were proudly presented to me by 8 out of my16 pupils." Kim knew they were capable, "as most of them could do...

I'm so excited to announce the release of my new Publication: Executive Functioning Game: Memory Master! It is the second of a series of four executive functioning games that I have been working on over the past six months. I’ve played it with my students, and it is ridiculously fun! Memory Master is a fabulously fun game for everyone, but it can also serve as a tool that exercises working memory, attention to detail, management of distractions, stamina, response inhibition, as well as mental shifting and sustained attention. This game can be used to integrate the two hemispheres of the...

Order of Operations is a difficult concept for young learners, and many teachers use strategies to help students learn the sequence of mathematical steps. The acronyms, such as "PEMDAS" or "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally," are common memory strategies that teachers use to help students remember the order of operations.  Order of Operations Can Be Confusing However, this mnemonic suggests a specific sequence which can cause confusion. Mistakes may result if the student is unaware that multiplication and division as well as addition and subtraction is of equal ranking order. When one has operations of the same rank, the...