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Phonological Awareness Mikayla Storey Phonological Awareness Mikayla Storey

Should I Teach Syllable Segmenting?

Can you spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? Can your students? 

In all seriousness, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious isn't the most functional word to spell – but as students progress academically, they do need to be able to break down long words for reading and spelling. Keep reading to learn why syllable segmenting is necessary and how to incorporate this instruction into your lessons!

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Differentiation, Research Corey Pollard Differentiation, Research Corey Pollard

Where Do Students Need Explicit Instruction?

Students struggle for different reasons and in different capacities. In order to truly support our struggling readers, we must not only understand why students are struggling but also -

Where are students struggling to read specifically?

Which specific areas are causing students to be ineffective readers? Because the bottom line is if we are trying to support struggling readers, we need to stop applying one-size-fits-all approaches and we need to know what type of support is needed to get our struggling readers on track. Keep reading to learn more!

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Phonics Ascend SMARTER Intervention Phonics Ascend SMARTER Intervention

How to Teach the au/aw Spelling Rule

Now, if you have been working with us for a while, you’ll know that we LOVE teaching with key images and phrases to help anchor skills for a student. For au/aw, we use the phrase “Yawn, I have to do the laundry.” This helps our struggling readers and spellers remember the rule. Keep reading for more tips, tricks and activities surrounding the au/aw vowel team.

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Parents, Helping My Child At Home, Advocacy Corey Pollard Parents, Helping My Child At Home, Advocacy Corey Pollard

How Much Therapy is Enough?

Typically we can help predict the length of time in a program based on standardized testing results (psychoeducational testing results, not necessarily state standardized assessments). Our team researched the length of time it would take to see consistent growth in reading ability. There were many factors at play but overall we found that student's could expect to see around 8 Standard Score points of growth in a 6-month period with therapy occurring once to twice per week. There was not a statistical difference between students being seen once to twice per week.

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Parents, Helping My Child At Home Corey Pollard Parents, Helping My Child At Home Corey Pollard

How is Learning Therapy Different From Tutoring?

Often by the time a student is suspected of having a learning disability, parents or caregivers have already gone to great lengths to support their child. Many have hired tutors or had teachers spend extra time with their child over the summer to no avail. So often families ask us how academic therapy or dyslexia therapy is different from what they have tried in the past. This is a wonderful and necessary question.

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