What Is Visual Discrimination and Why Is It Important in PreK and Kindergarten?

My defining moment as an educator was in one of my first graduate courses. My professor gave us a decodable book she had created with symbols. As we started reading, we had to continue to look back to the first page to remember what letter of the alphabet was represented by which symbol. MY HEAD HURT and my stomach churned a little! This is what it must have been like for my then second graders who were trying to learn how to read! WOW !

Teaching Sight Words- Using Multisensory Sight Word Activities

I absolutely love the Orton Gillingham approach to sight words, my kindergartners do too ! If you are familiar with the program, you know that it includes crossing hemispheres with arm tapping, finger sliding, finger tracing and writing. This approach to “red words”, those that you have to STOP and think about , uses a multi sensory approach to learn these words that cannot always be decoded easily. In the rest of this post, I will give you some effective and fun ways to get the kids moving and memorizing those sight words.

How To Teach Phonemic Awareness 9 Simple Definitions and Examples

Phonemic awareness comes under the umbrella of phonological awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate the individual sounds in a word. It is very important for students to have this skills in order to do well later with phonics and higher level reading skills. Phonemic awareness teaches us to listen for and hear the individual sounds or phonemes in a word. PA helps students with spelling and writing later on.

Teaching Phonological Awareness Skills – Why Is Teaching Syllables Important and 7 Ways to Practice With Your Students

When readers understand how to break up a word in syllables, it makes it easier to read unknown words. When readers can read or “sound out” chunks , those chunks are easier to remember in our short term memory rather than remembering all the single phonemes in a word. Dividing words into chunks and blending the chunks together, speeds up the process of decoding which creates more fluent readers.

Is “The Science of Reading” Something New?

The best training, I ever had as a reading teacher, was my Orton Gillingham training. After I completed my master’s degree and became a reading specialist, I still felt like something was missing. I was teaching and tutoring and working with so many students who were still struggling with their reading. I fell in love with the approach because Orton Gillingham was already using direct, explicit phonics instruction.