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When you’re new to Orton-Gillingham (OG) or structured literacy instruction, you might feel like you have to teach something new in every single lesson. A new phonogram. A new rule. A brand-new syllable type. However, in OG lessons, review trumps new concepts. With OG lessons, review is essential. Teaching new concepts every time isn’t necessary….
One of the most common patterns I see with students with dyslexia is difficulty with little words. They may get some of the more challenging content words, but then skip, substitute, or misread little words. Very often these are function words like the, or, and in. So do these types of errors matter? As teachers,…
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…
One thing that I find myself frequently explaining to parents, students, and other teachers is the rationale for using decodable texts. Students are accustomed to using leveled texts in their classrooms and in many school-based interventions that follow the balanced literacy model of instruction. While engaging, there are important reasons why decodable text can be…
When someone says poetry, my immediate image is classical poetry forms such as sonnets. But I also have fond memories of reading Shel Silverstein poems or writing structured poetry forms like haiku when I was a child. Often, poetry is not one of the things people think of when they think of challenged readers. However,…
Here is a special guest post from Karina Richland of PRIDE Learning Center! I’m certain you will find these practical tips for improving reading fluency just as helpful as I have! How to Improve Reading Fluency in Children How do you figure out your child’s reading level? Do you watch your…
As a dyslexia practitioner using the Orton-Gillingham approach, I can’t stress enough the importance of a good fluency intervention for your struggling readers. I’ve taught in a 3-5 building for twelve years and saw many children that really needed this added component into their reading repertoire. Sadly, there were problems with implementation. I would hear things like:…
I’m writing today about a reading activity that I absolutely love doing with students: Reader’s Theater. It’s such a great way to build in fluency practice and have fun at the same time. Over the years, I’ve picked weeks here and there in my reading workshop plans to take a little break from the typical schedule…