Tag: education

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As parents, we want to make sure that our children have every chance to succeed and have all the support they need in place. One key component of ensuring academic success is to support literacy skills at home. If you are not a literacy specialist, it can be difficult to know exactly what to do to promote reading at home. Luckily, literacy skills can be practiced in a variety of fun ways that are both effective and engaging. 

Here are just a few ways to support your children at home and strengthen their reading skills. Keep in mind, these are activities that will help support skills your child already has acquired. If your child has a reading issue or needs to make forward progress, they may require more intervention and specialized knowledge than these activities offer. If this is the case, tutoring with a Structured Literacy™ intervention program is recommended. 

  • Flash card matching games: Kids of all ages love to play games with flashcards and they are easy to make using index cards. If your child is younger, use phonics patterns to practice skills they are working on like long a, blends, or consonant digraphs. To play, write several words containing the desired spelling pattern. Players take turns flipping over and reading a card. If they make a match, they keep the word. The player with the most matches when all of the cards are gone is the winner. Here is a short list of grade level appropriate spelling patterns to help you create your game. If your child is older, this can be a great way to practice base words, roots, and affixes. Write several root words and affixes on cards, players flip over each card, read the root or affix and explain its meaning, if they make a match, they get to keep it and the player with the most matches at the end wins. A few common prefixes you can use are <con-> (with or together), <un-> (not, opposite of), <re-> (again). Common roots include <struct> (to build), <ject> (to throw), and <cept> (to take).  For suffixes you can use inflectional endings which change the tense of a word like  <-s>, <-es>, <-ing>, or <-ed> or you can use suffixes such as <-ion> which turns a verb into a noun. Please note this is not a complete list and the roots and affixes your child needs to know will vary by grade level. You can also play memory match using sight words that your child needs to practice. 

  • Swatting games: I used these for independent practice in the classroom and kids love it! Write words using a phonics pattern, sight words, vocabulary words, or bases and affixes on pieces of paper and tape them on the floor. Give each player a fly swatter or they can use their hand. The referee says a word or definition and the players race to be the first to hit the corresponding word on the floor. This game is fast paced, action packed, and can be adapted for all skills and levels. 
  • Practice phonemic awareness: If your child is younger, read lots of rhyming books and books that have a natural rhythm and cadence. “Chick a Chick a Boom Boom!” and Dr. Seuss series are great for this activity. Have your child repeat words and phrases with you and ask them to give you additional rhyming words. You can have your child segment sounds with a rubber band and then blend them back together while releasing the tension. Legos can be used as well with your child pulling down one block for each sound and the running their finger under them as they blend the sounds back together.  Stick with two, three, and four sound words which can be real or nonsense words.  One example would be to progress from “at” to “lat” to “slat.” Clap out syllables in longer words. While phonemic awareness activities should focus on sounds, not letters,  these skills do transfer to reading and spelling. If your child is struggling to spell a word,  these activities can help. Ask them to segment the sounds in single syllable words or the syllables in multi-syllabic words. This will help them ensure they write the correct grapheme for the phoneme in the word. For more ideas on promoting phonemic awareness, check out our blog here. 

  • Make it multi-sensory: There are a variety of ways to make literacy practice multi-sensory and help those skills stick. Use words with a phonics pattern, base words, root words, vocabulary words, whatever your child needs to practice and follow these easy  and fun ways to activate other senses.
    •  Use a bumpy surface. An embroidery board is a great option and can be found at most craft stores. Have children use their index and middle finger to trace letters as they say the sound and letter name. Display the letter using index cards or a projector to incorporate the visual system as well.  
    • Use sand trays. Like an embroidery board, a sand tray provides a rough tactile surface. Have your child trace letters or words as they say the sounds and letter names. 
    •  Use shaving cream. Put some shaving cream on a non-porous surface like a counter-top or window. Your child can trace words and letters in it. This is a fun, messy activity that provides sensory feedback as they trace spelling patterns. 
  • Read, read, read: listen to audio books, read aloud, and have your child read books that are appropriate for their reading level and decoding skills. Ask questions while you read and practice rereading to encourage fluency. You can also practice poems and songs to improve fluency and give your kid some diversity in their reading material. Maps, cookbooks, and directions are great ways to practice reading functional text.  If you are feeling extra creative, you could even create a treasure hunt for your kids.

As you can see, it is possible to have fun and practice literacy at home. Literacy skills are so much more than sitting and reading in silence. Practicing with your child will help support skills they have and may keep them from regressing. 

However, if you  want your child to make forward progress or they need extra support in reading, our online tutoring program can be a good option to supplement literacy activities at home. Contact us today for more information. 



Becky Welsch
RW&C, LLC
www.rwc4reading.com

Becky Welsch is currently an Associate in Training with the Orton-Gillingham Academy of Practitioners and Educators. She has a Master’s degree in K-8 Education. She is certified to teach in the state of Arizona and has special endorsements in the areas of English Language Learners and Reading.

 Becky has worked with struggling readers in the primary as well as secondary grades. Her experience also includes intensive reading intervention both in person as well as with online tele-therapy. 

images from pexel.com


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As a teacher, you may have heard the terms multisensory instruction being used more and more frequently. This is a buzz word that tends to get thrown around a lot without full understanding of what it entails. It is a key component of Structured Literacy™ reading, writing, and spelling instruction. An extensive and growing body of research demonstrates that the Structured Literacy™ approach is effective in reading intervention for students with  reading difficulties (Birsh, 2005). In addition, newer research shows that Structured Literacy™ is a more effective approach than whole language for all students, including those with typical reading abilities (Lorimor-Easley & Reed, 2019).

In the Structured Literacy™ approach, multisensory means that instruction engages the visual, auditory, and tactile centers of the brain, often simultaneously. Students are encouraged to use manipulatives and movement to help reinforce sounds and spelling patterns. Here are a few ways that you can incorporate multisensory instruction into your reading block:

  • Use manipulatives. When you have students doing phonemic awareness activities like segmenting and blending sounds, you can incorporate a tactile experience by using blank tiles. They pull down a tile for each sound in a word and then run their fingers under the tiles to blend the sounds back together. If you don’t have tiles you can have them tap on their arms and blend or use rubber bands to stretch out phonemes as they simultaneously say the sounds out loud.  
  • Use a bumpy surface. An embroidery board is a great option and can be found at most craft stores. Have students use their index and middle finger to trace letters as they say the sound and letter name. Display the letter using index cards or a projector to incorporate the visual system as well. 
  • Use sand trays. Like an embroidery board, a sand tray provides a rough tactile surface. Have students trace letters or words as they say the sounds and letter names. 
  • Use shaving cream. Once or twice a week when your desks need to be cleaned, students can trace words and letters in shaving cream on their desk. This is a fun, messy activity that provides sensory feedback as they trace spelling patterns. 
  • Explicitly teach handwriting and letter formation. There is a growing body of research that suggests handwriting in and of itself can be a multisensory activity. Often students with reading issues as well as writing issues struggle to form letters. This extra load on their processing centers makes writing nearly impossible. By teaching explicit handwriting skills the load on a student’s working memory is decreased and they can focus on the content they need to write, rather than the writing process. 
  • Use paper with raised lines. Some research suggests that having paper with raised lines can help increase sensory feedback and make writing easier for students who struggle. 
  • Take it outside and use chalk. Using sidewalk chalk can be a fun twist on rainbow writing words and can be a great activity for a nice day. With the larger surface of the sidewalk, students can write the words larger which activates different muscle memory than writing them small on paper. Also, the texture of the sidewalk can help give tactile feedback as well. 

When incorporating multisensory literacy activities, it is important to keep in mind that they should be done regularly, not just once in a while as reward or when behavior permits. Once you start incorporating them into your instructional routine, you will find that they are not only fun for students, but also help solidify spelling patterns and improve reading and spelling skills. 

Students who continue to struggle even though they are involved in an excellent academic program may need extra help and expertise when it comes to literacy instruction. Our online program can help them with their reading skills so they can be more successful in your classroom environment. If you have a student who you think is a good candidate for our program, contact us today to learn more. 

Becky Welsch
RW&C, LLC
www.rwc4reading.com



Becky Welsch has a Master’s degree in K-8 Education. She is certified to teach in the state of Arizona and has special endorsements in the areas of English Language Learners and Reading.
Becky has worked with struggling readers in the primary as well as secondary grades. Her experience also includes intensive reading intervention both in person as well as with online teletherapy. 

Resources:

Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills, Judith Birsch 2005

“Structured Literacy: A New Term to Unify Us,” International Dyslexia Association 

“An Explanation of Structured Literacy, and a Comparison to Balanced Literacy,” Nina Lorimor-Easley and Deborah Reed 2019

Images from pexels.com

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Multisensory, structured language education is the most commonly endorsed and research-based approach for literacy education for students who struggle with reading. It includes methodologies like Orton-Gillingham instruction as well as programs based on those methodologies. Several years ago, the International Dyslexia Associated formally adopted the name “Structured Literacy™™” as an umbrella term to describe all programs that use a structured, systematic, and multisensory approach to reading (International Dyslexia Association). 

While the term Structured Literacy™ may be new, the approach to teaching reading is not. Samuel Orton conducted groundbreaking research in the 1920s on multisensory, systematic instruction and documented its success in teaching students with reading difficulties. An extensive and growing body of research demonstrates that the Structured Literacy™ approach is effective in reading intervention for students with  reading difficulties (Birsh, 2005). In addition, newer research shows that Structured Literacy™ is a more effective approach than whole language for all students, including those with typical reading abilities (Lorimor-Easley & Reed, 2019). 

Although the principles behind Structured Literacy™ and the methodology themselves are not new, it is also not well-known within the general education community. In fact, many schools still use leveled readers with heavy picture clues to teach reading in both whole and small groups. Phonics has become more mainstream yet is often not explicit and systematic. Teachers and educators have the best interest of their students at heart, yet do not always have the professional knowledge and resources to deliver the most effective instruction. 

In order to effectively remediate reading issues and teach reading, it is important to understand what Structured Literacy™ is and how it can be effective. First and foremost, Structured Literacy™ is structured. It is systematic and emphasizes phonological awareness, phonics, decoding and spelling along with morphology, fluency, and comprehension. Phonics follows a logical scope and sequence that explicitly teaches each spelling pattern. 

Using the Structured Literacy™ approach, students are encouraged to use decoding skills and phonics patterns to sound out words, rather than guessing at words based on context or pictures. The logic behind this strategy is two-fold. First and foremost, even in early readers, the pictures are not always a reliable way to figure out a word. For example, if there is a picture of a duck in water with the sentences “The duck swims,” a student could come up with a  variety of words that would make sense based on the pictures. Anything from “The duck splashes” to “The duck eats” could make sense depending on the illustration, but neither are correct. If students are taught proper decoding, they can read the word swim rather than guess at reasonable alternatives. A second reason that using the pictures is ineffective is that eventually the text becomes too complex to be encapsulated in an illustration. As students get older and text complexity increases, those who cannot decode often have few strategies to rely on and their reading level tends to not keep up with that of their peers who are able to use decoding strategies (Birsch, 2005). 

As a reading clinician, I can tell you that the “check the picture” strategy is very rarely effective, even when texts have significant picture clues. I have had students make wild guesses that often do not even start with the same initial sound as the word they are attempting to “read.” For example, in a book I was recently reading with a student, the text said “They sat…” the student read the words “They ate…” which based on the picture, made sense however it was not the correct word and did not even have the same initial sound.

The Structured Literacy™ approach is also multisensory. This is a buzz word that tends to get thrown around a lot without full understanding of what it entails. In the Structured Literacy™ approach, multisensory means that it engages the visual, auditory, and tactile centers of the brain, often simultaneously. Students are encouraged to use manipulatives and movement to help reinforce sounds and spelling patterns. Some programs may use colored tiles or tapping sounds to incorporate movement. In addition, during auditory and visual drills, students are encouraged to trace letters using their index and middle finger while saying the sounds, letter names, and looking at the letter. This engages all three critical areas of the brain while learning and reinforcing letter sounds, names, and formations. 

Another way the Structured Literacy™ methodology incorporates multi-sensory activities is by emphasizing handwriting and correct letter formation during instruction. Often students with reading issues as well as writing issues struggle to form letters. This extra load on their processing centers makes writing nearly impossible. By teaching explicit handwriting skills the load on a student’s working memory is decreased and they can focus on the content they need to write, rather than the writing process. 

The Structured Literacy™ framework is also cumulative, meaning that skills are constantly reviewed and spiraled in so that students have adequate practice time. Once a student learns a skill, that skill is not dropped from explicit instruction until it has been fully mastered. For example, if a student is working on silent e words, once that lesson is over the reading clinician does not move on and stop practicing. The skill is spiraled into reading and spelling so that the student can review and internalize it in multiple forms and at both low and high levels of complexity.

A final key component (for the purposes of this blog at least) is that Structured Literacy™ is delivered by a highly trained professional. Effective Structured Literacy™ instruction requires more than an 8-hour professional development where you look through the curriculum. Our reading clinicians all have credentials that align with International Dyslexia Association standards for working with students with reading difficulties. They attend professional development and engage in reading and discussing current reading research. In short, they are experts in the field of reading intervention. 

If you are looking for a high quality, one-on-one Structured Literacy™ program for a student or your own child, RW&C’s program may be the right fit for you. We offer reading, writing, and spelling remediation services. Our online program is flexible and built to fit your needs. Contact us today for more information.

Becky Welsch
RW&C, LLC
www.rwc4reading.com



Becky Welsch has a Master’s degree in K-8 Education. She is certified to teach in the state of Arizona and has special endorsements in the areas of English Language Learners and Reading.
Becky has worked with struggling readers in the primary as well as secondary grades. Her experience also includes intensive reading intervention both in person as well as with online teletherapy. 

Resources:

Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills, Judith Birsch 2005

“Structured Literacy: A New Term to Unify Us,” International Dyslexia Association 

“An Explanation of Structured Literacy, and a Comparison to Balanced Literacy,” Nina Lorimor-Easley and Deborah Reed 2019

Photos from www.pexels.com

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With the beginning of the school year come excitement, assessments, and paperwork. While you are meeting your new students and their families, you are also planning for how to maximize their success this year. You are thinking about staff meetings, lesson plans, small groups, and countless other issues. 

One important factor to keep in mind is to make sure you are watching your students for potential reading, writing, and spelling issues. As their teacher, you are often their first line of defense against academic issues and their most important advocate. 

This time of year is extremely busy and you are getting to know your students. It is incredibly important to keep your eyes open for potential reading difficulties. The sooner you can spot them, the sooner you can begin to recommend reading intervention that works. 

There are a few telltale signs in a classroom that a student is struggling. They may: 

  • Avoid participation in reading exercise
  • Read the same word differently across a passage
  • Read the beginning of a word correctly but guess at the rest of the word
  • Work 2-3 times longer (harder) to complete an assignment
  • Struggle to remember the content of the reading material because, for that student, the process of reading is so laborious

Most importantly, a student with a reading challenge may show limited growth compared to their peers in reading, spelling, or writing DESPITE participating in an outstanding academic program. 

Chances are, you have a student in your class who fits this profile. They are struggling despite your best teaching and attempts to help them. They need intervention with a Structured Literacy program. Often, this means that they need outside help. 

We all want what is best for our students. If you notice them struggling, do not wait until conferences or after winter break to bring it up to their parents. Let them know as soon as you see issues and discuss the external resources available to help their child. 

Our online program is proven and effective with struggling students. Our trained clinicians deliver one on one tutoring via an online platform. Together, we can help your students succeed. 

Becky Welsch
RW&C, LLC
www.rwc4reading.com



Becky Welsch has a Master’s degree in K-8 Education. She is certified to teach in the state of Arizona and has special endorsements in the areas of English Language Learners and Reading.
Becky has worked with struggling readers in the primary as well as secondary grades. Her experience also includes intensive reading intervention both in person as well as with online teletherapy. 

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The beginning of the year comes with many challenges for teachers. Perhaps one of the most important considerations for language arts and self-contained teachers is how to structure their reading block. Research has shown that systematic, explicit, and purposeful reading instruction is vital for all students to learn to read. In addition, the National Reading Panel found that the most effective reading instruction requires a 90-minute time frame that includes differentiated reading instruction. 

Sounds like a piece of cake, right (that’s sarcasm there, carving out 90 minutes of a day is anything but a cake walk)? The truth is that between back to school staff meetings and meet the teacher nights, it isn’t always easy to find the time to create an effective Structured Literacy block. However, it is vital for student success. A second hurdle to overcome is figuring out exactly what should be included during your reading time. 

Lucky for all of us educators, we don’t have to figure it out on our own. We know that reading skills are a critical foundation in the pursuit of academic achievement. Early detection and appropriate intervention can improve achievement and self-esteem.

There has also been research conducted by a number of scientists and educators that have helped us figure out what we need to be doing during that reading time. Research has identified elements that are critical in implementing an effective structured literacy program. These elements are:

phonological awareness

syntax

phonics

semantics

syllable instruction

comprehension

sight word recognition

oral reading fluency

morphology

silent reading fluency

In addition, effective instruction will include spelling, grammar and syntax focus for written expression. When designing your reading lessons, it is critical that you include all components to reach all learners. By creating a reading block that focuses on the Structured Literacy methodology, you will help ensure that all of your students experience reading and writing success. 

Becky Welsch
RW&C, LLC
www.rwc4reading.com



Becky Welsch has a Master’s degree in K-8 Education. She is certified to teach in the state of Arizona and has special endorsements in the areas of English Language Learners and Reading.
Becky has worked with struggling readers in the primary as well as secondary grades. Her experience also includes intensive reading intervention both in person as well as with online teletherapy.