Will my struggling reader ever catch up?
Although children do develop at different rates, attributing reading failure to immaturity is risky and usually unhelpful. Children, who are poor readers at the end of first grade, are most often still poor readers in fourth grade. Early signs of reading problems should never be ignored or passed off as a developmental lag. It is never a good idea to “wait and see” if a child grows out it. The safest assumption is that early, direct teaching designed to help a struggling reader will minimize risks later on. If a child is taught the sounds, letters, words, and language...
read moreSecrets to Successful Spelling
By Dr. David Raffle, PhD, CBIS I know many adults who truly believe that they cannot spell, saying “I can’t spell” in the same manner that they would say, “I can’t swim.” But spelling, like swimming, can be taught. However, while most teachers know how to test for spelling, very few know how to teach spelling. There is a misconception that spelling is a form of dyslexia, a disorder where one is unable to recognize words or sound them out phonetically. The acts of reading and writing occur mainly in the left temporal lobe of your brain – the part of the brain near your left...
read moreDoes a child need Phonological Awareness to learn reading?
Learning to read is a gradual and sequential process that is developed with explicit instruction and exposure. In the late preschool years, children begin the reading process by listening to stories and chanting nursery rhymes so that they can hear the similarities and differences in the sounds of words. Through this process, the children begin to manipulate and understand sounds in spoken language and proceed by taking the next step of making up rhymes and words on their own. As the children get older, they begin to learn the names of the letters in the alphabet and the different...
read moreNew Year’s Resolution for Kids: I will read more
Happy New Year! New Year’s resolutions give a perfect opportunity for you and your child to discuss areas in which there’s room for improvement. The one resolution you should always try and make as a family is to spend more time reading. Why is it that some children seem to take to reading with no effort and no nagging, while other children would rather do almost anything than read? If you are a parent interested in ways to inspire those reluctant readers in your family, then this article will offer valuable information for you. Reading is a skill that needs to be practiced regularly....
read moreThe importance of understanding your child’s learning style
One of the saddest aspects of the American elementary-high school educational system is that it fails to acknowledge the reality that we all learn differently. Students’ development is not always even, temperaments are different, and each child has their own learning style. While it is perfectly normal and all right to have learning differences and “glitches” (gaps between capabilities and performance) many educators ignore these variations and when they teach basic skills, there is little acknowledgement that information is processed differently. In our current system this disrespect...
read moreAuditory Discrimination Problems in the classroom
Children with auditory discrimination difficulties will often struggle in a classroom setting, especially in the areas of following directions, reading, spelling, writing and comprehension. Auditory Discrimination Problems result in a child mis-hearing, mis-pronouncing, and mis-repeating information. These children often have difficulty hearing the difference between sounds or words that are similar (coat/boat or sh/ch/. If you can’t hear the sounds properly, you can’t say the sounds properly you will also not read or write the sounds properly. Here are some...
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