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Teaching the Alphabet: Tailoring Instruction

One of my favorite things about being a learning specialist and educational therapist is creating a unique approach for each of my students.  Each learner comes with a one-of-a-kind set of strength...

Alphabet Cookies - A Practical and Delicious Way to Teaching Letters

Early literacy doesn’t have to happen at a desk with worksheets. When children engage their senses, touching, seeing, smelling, and even tasting, learning becomes more meaningful, memorable, and ...

5 Strategies that Make Learning the Alphabet a lot of Fun

I love to teach little kids the letters of the alphabet.  There are so many fun and creative ways to teach this fundamental skill!! 5 Letter Instruction Activities Your Children Will Surely Savo...

Alphabetizing Exercises Help to Develop Memory and Organizational Skills

Alphabetizing may seem to be a simple childhood task, but it plays an important role in building lifelong learning strategies. When students practice alphabetizing, they strengthen organizational...

How to Learn The 44 Phonemes and Have Fun

Phonemes are the smallest units of language-based sounds that can be paired with graphemes or symbols that represent those sounds. These sound/symbol associations are the foundations of writing and...

Three Activities that Strengthen Tracking Abilities for Improved Reading

Some students struggle with tracking words across a page. They may lose their place or have trouble scanning from one line of text to the next. Here are three strategies that you can do at home to ...

Exposing Students to the 12 Ways of Learning

Many know of the four common ways of learning: visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic. But did you know that students need to be exposed to even more ways of processing information, too? Going...

Using Visual Tracking To Improve Reading

Many students have difficulties reading text from left to right and from line to line. Although some outgrow this difficulty, others need extra help to develop this skill.        What Exactly ...

Word Finding Strategies for Dyslexics with Word Retrieval Deficits

Most of us have experienced that frustrating “tip-of-the-tongue” feeling when we know a word or name but cannot retrieve it in the moment. For some students, however, word-finding difficulties ha...

Teaching Handwriting: An Important Skill to Master

With the integration of technology into the classroom and limited instructional time, teachers spend less and less time on the teaching of penmanship.  In fact, many schools have stopped teaching...

12 Free Ways to Strengthen Visual Tracking

Tracking is the ability to move one's eyes smoothly across the page from one word to another, as well as from one line of text to another.  For some learners, however, this is a challenging task.  ...

Exposing Teachers to the 12 Ways of Learning

Many teachers are aware of the four basic learning styles: visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic. But did you know that there are eight more common ways that the brain processes information? A...

Finding the Best Reading Program for Students with Dyslexia

If you are helping a struggling reader and looking for reading or dyslexia programs, sifting through the multitude of options can be overwhelming. Many approaches focus on the well-researched, di...

Early Literacy: Letter, Number and Shape Challenges

Occasionally, I get inquiries from other learning specialists in the field who have difficult cases. Recently, a director of a tutoring academy asked me a question about a new student, and I though...

Did You Know Reading Skills Can Be Improved by Singing Songs?

I am so pleased to feature this insightful and informative blog by early literacy and reading specialist, Nancy Platt!  Nancy worked as a children's librarian for 15 years at the Ferguson Library i...

What Reading Games Ignite a Love for Learning?

Using games in the learning process brings joy as well as a positive motivating factor into lessons.  Instead of bribing kids with external motivators such as candy and stickers, games ignite an i...

Do Learning Styles Exist?

I think everyone will agree that no two people have the same strengths and weaknesses. But because we cannot observe each student’s brain behavior, it’s easy to blindly assume that what helps us l...

Reaching All Types of Learners With Multisensory Teaching

One of the most common issues teachers struggle with is how to accommodate the multiple intelligences and diverse learning needs of their students. With as many as 12 different ways of processin...

Eight, Dyslexia Games Make All Reading Programs Fun and Memorable

Do you ever have to bribe your students with candy or stickers to entice them to read through long lists of words or complete workbook activities? There are a multitude of phonics and Orton-Gillin...