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There’s so much more to phonics than simply letters and sounds. Help your students to engage in active word play, learn about the alphabetic principle, master morphology, and develop strong phonemic awareness. Check out these tips and resources all about phonics and word study!
Just as learning syllable types is an ongoing process that continues and builds over time, so too is learning about syllable division. Learning to divide multisyllabic words opens many doors for students and expands the number of words that they can successfully decode. Your Orton-Gillingham students may feel overwhelmed and panic when presented with a…
VCCV words are usually the first ones you teach in your Orton-Gillingham lesson plans. These word lists are a bit easier for students because you’ve already taught closed syllables. You may even refer to these words as Rabbit Rule words. Today, I will discuss a fun way to make learning VCCV words a bit more…
If you were to write a job description for yourself, chances are it would be full of many varied types of tasks of varying complexities. As an educator, you wear many hats. You fill many different roles in the lives of your students and in the culture of our schools. Like human jobs, phonograms have…
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. Prerequisites…
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…
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…
What are nonsense words? Nonsense words are words that follow the patterns and rules of English, but are not actual words. Just like real words, nonsense words must contain a vowel, use real vowel patterns or consonant blends. For example, crob could be a nonsense word, but xzyml could not. By using the sounds of…
I still get a bit of the thrill of anticipation that I did as a child looking forward to summer vacation. However, this break from the routine of school doesn’t have to mean a break from learning. And, summer learning doesn’t have to mean a break from the fun. There are lots of ways to…
Have you ever noticed students having difficulty not only with visually similar letters such as b and d, but also having difficulty with letter sounds that seem more surprising such as /b/ & /p/ or /k/ & /g/? For mature language learners, it is sometimes challenging trying to find out what is causing the difficulty….