Take the 3-Day Challenge!
You may have seen the recommendation to use decodable readers or decodable text with your students, especially early on in their learning. Let’s take a closer look at what that means, why it might be beneficial, and how to go about it. Many newly trained Orton-Gillingham educators or classroom teachers ask how to use decodable…
If you are a dyslexia specialist or educational advocates for your students with dyslexia, you may be facing an uphill battle. Trying to encourage structured literacy changes to classroom instruction can sometimes be a challenge/. There is bountiful scientific evidence supporting a structured literacy approach as part of the regular Tier 1 curriculum. However, the…
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…
In Part 1 of How To Teach Schwa Vowels, we talked about strategies for learning schwa a. Schwa a is a great place to introduce the schwa vowel because it is predictable in its location and spelling. In addition, this post offers a lot of suggestions about teaching children about accent and stress which is…
If there is one thing Orton-Gillingham teachers can never have enough of, it is decodable text. Finding books that are highly decodable, engaging for our students and suitable for a wide variety of ages is challenging. Differences in scopes and sequences further complicate matters. However, there are some resources that I turn to again and…
Some of the most powerful tools we teach our Orton-Gillingham students are spelling generalizations. These generalizations help them choose the correct spelling option. Most adults are not even aware of these “rules”, because, with increased familiarity with the orthography of English, one develops an awareness of what “looks right”. One way we can help our…
Using Multisensory Teaching Techniques Multisensory learning strategies are crucial not just for kids with dyslexia, or within Orton-Gillingham lesson plans, it is good solid teaching for ALL students. Incorporating multisensory learning tools into your classroom lessons will not replace intervention services, but it will make classroom lessons more accessible to students with learning differences. …
If you have a child or students who struggles with reading comprehension, there are a number of reasons why this is happening. These include: weak decoding due to poor phonological awareness skills that have compounded over the years and impacted a child’s ability to make meaning of text weak fluency skills poor vocabulary development due…
Soon after introducing the first vowel teams, the need to discuss homophones rears its head. This can be challenging for struggling readers during Orton-Gillingham lesson plans, especially English Language Learners. What’s the difference between a homonym and a homophone? Homonyms and homophones are frequently confused and the words are used interchangeably, but there is actually…