Good Sensory Learning Blog

In my practice as a learning specialist and educational therapist, I quickly learned that games were the secret weapon to learning.  Candy, toys and other bribing forces trigger limited and brief bursts of motivation, but sparking a love for learning remains the bullseye.  Everyone loves to play a game, and when instruction incorporates creative and multisensory merriment to combat and obliterate learning fatigue and frustration, even the most discouraged learners will rise to the occasion. Why do Games Grasp the Hearts and Minds of Students? Paring pleasantries and positive feelings with scholarship increases the motivation to learn over time.  I can't...

Although there are a number of cognitive processing deficits that can cause a diagnosis of dyslexia or a reading disability, challenges with auditory processing tend to be the prevailing cause for many struggling readers. However, many of the terms used to describe these core problems can be confusing. In fact, wading through a comprehensive testing report can be overwhelming, because they are packed with complex cognitive and remedial terminology. In this blog, I hope to unscramble the tangle of terms associated with auditory processing. What are Some Key Terms One Should Understand? Auditory Processing: Auditory processing is the brain's interpretation...

Inferences or an implied hidden meaning is an abstract higher-order language skill that is challenging to teach and tricky for students to master. For many concrete learners, taking the leap into hidden meanings is both confusing and frustrating. Most students first come across inferences when reading books, but I like to prepare and teach my students how to make sense of implied meaning through images, metaphors, product names, games, and more.  7 Fun Strategies that Teach Students How to Uncover Inferences: Review magazine advertisements and search for hidden images and messages that lure buyers to purchase products. Look at the...

Descriptive writing enables the author to paint scenes and characters in the mind’s eye of the reader. Like an artist, carefully selected, colorful words can convey vivid imagery, but only if the author learns to "show" and not "tell" the audience. Learning how to use illustrative adjectives, action verbs, graphic adverbs, expressive metaphors, vivid similes and showy personification is the key to writing engaging stories. What's more is it makes the process of writing a lot more fun! Who Struggles with Descriptive Writing? Concrete learners or students that struggle with visualization or language processing can find descriptive writing difficult to...

How can we nurture resilient, active learners that embrace challenging academic material and become successful lifelong learners? Carol Dweck suggests that what we need to do is help students shed a fixed mindset and adopt a growth mindset. What's more, Dweck contends that developing a growth mindset will also result in less stress and a more productive and fulfilling life. What is a Fixed and Growth Mindset? In a fixed mindset, students believe that their abilities are dependent on fixed traits that can not be changed such as intellect or talent. Individuals that think this way, often cultivate a self-defeating...