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Today’s children are able to tap and swipe as toddlers. They are digital natives more comfortable with exploring apps and technology than most adults. However, the use of technology with children is always a balancing act. There are many reading apps available that can be a wonderful! Reading apps can be an engaging supplement for…
Want to learn how to monitor your Orton-Gillingham lessons? Here are some useful tips. The data-driven world of education can sometimes feel overwhelming. But with the tips I have for progress monitoring, the task isn’t going to feel so daunting. Is it important for you to take some time to consider progress monitoring? Yes! When…
It is easy to feel overwhelmed about how to help your child practice their reading, especially when they have dyslexia. There are a few simple tools for reading with dyslexia that can help make time spent reading with new readers more productive, less frustrating, and happier for you and your child.
The science of teaching reading can sound like a foreign language, especially when you are first learning about Orton-Gillingham or Structured Literacy instruction. While you will likely be talking about digraphs, trigraphs, and blends before you know it, some of the specialized vocabulary can be a bit confusing. Let’s discuss three important terms: phoneme, grapheme,…
The spelling generalizations for vowels really are cumulative. Although it may take a lot of practice for your students to internalize them, an understanding of the principles at work is very important. As your students continue to learn less frequent vowel teams, they will need to draw on their knowledge about other vowel teams and…
When you’re thinking about spelling a word with OI or OY, location is everything. In some ways, the /oy/ sound is one of the more straightforward vowel teams and spelling generalizations that your students learn during their Orton-Gillingham lessons. The /oy/ sound really only has 2 spellings: oi and oy and the letters oi and…
Some spelling considerations are less about clear rules to follow than frequency and expectations. Such is the case for spelling the long o sound. O-e is the most common spelling for the long o sound in the middle of a word, but oa isn’t far behind. Ow is the most common way to spell the…
Not all spelling generalizations are as neat and tidy as you might like them to be. Just as the spelling generalizations for the floss rule, ck, and tch build on each other, the same is true for the vowel spelling generalizations. By the time your students are introduced to ou as in ouch and ow…
As part of our spelling generalization blog series, this next post is going to give you the low down on Y as a vowel. Most of us remember learning the vowels as children: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. For a long time before I became trained in OG, the when and where…