I recently asked my email subscribers to participate in a brief survey about why you are thankful for Orton Gillingham. I asked, and you certainly did answer! There were so many wonderful thoughts shared about the ways in which OG has been a powerful influence on so many lives. From being a foundational part of…
Although the hard sound for g is more common than the soft sound, eventually the soft sound becomes necessary to learn and master. Many children may already associate the /j/ sound with the letter g due to the letter name. However, due to its greater utility, we typically teach the hard g sound first.
Letter names can often be confusing for young children just learning to read and can make learning sounds more challenging. Have you ever had a student who said that y said /w/ or w said /d/. Another place this tends to come up is with the letter c. Many students will identify the /s/ sound…
You will find most teachers of children with dyslexia are not fans of the weekly spelling test. Words arranged by theme or covering multiple spelling patterns is a recipe for failure for many of our students. Other students may manage to learn the words for the Friday spelling test, but not be able to spell…
October is Dyslexia Awareness month. Dyslexia Awareness Month has two big goals. One is to educate people with the facts about dyslexia. What is dyslexia? How is it best remediated? What are the signs? The other, and perhaps more important part of this campaign, is the social and emotional side of dyslexia. We strive to…
New sneakers, new lunchboxes, freshly sharpened pencils, and a fresh start are symbols of the beginning of a new school year. A new year also means new teachers and often some new challenges for your students with dyslexia. When a child has dyslexia, we have a particularly important role in their education. We become an…
At some point in their learning, you may hear one or more of your students shake their heads and ask, “Why is English so difficult?” or “Who made up this crazy language anyway?” Or perhaps you have found yourself having the same thoughts as you try to help struggling readers and writers understand the complex…
For many years, those of us who work with striving readers and writers have known that certain strategies or techniques are effective, but we haven’t really been able to tell WHY. We’ve known that students with dyslexia often have a pattern of areas of weakness in their psychological testing. We have theories and observations grounded…
As dyslexia teachers or parents, you understand the struggle many children have surrounding reading. The struggles surrounding writing problems may or may not build on reading difficulties. However, if your students do have trouble reading, they will also have trouble writing.
Decodable text is written in such a way that it contains very few if any unknown concepts. It uses known syllable patterns, phonemes, and learned words. The complexity of decodable text changes as your students learn new concepts. A decodable sentence for a student working on CVC words with short a is going to look…
