Skip to content

multi-sensory reading interventions

Why Learning About “Why” Helps Us All to Read

I can’t tell you why a “c” sounds like an “s” in the word certain. Without Googling, I can’t tell you why certain patterns of letters make a specific sound. Ask our daughter. She has an understanding of alphabetics, phonemic awareness and she understands the particular rules that make letters and letter combinations make certain sounds. She can tell you why. The Phoenicians Can Tell You Why & I Can Tell You a Little The alphabet and connecting sounds to letters have been around a long, long time. The Phoenicians were the first to start breaking down sound into letters. The earliest evidence of their work dates back to 1000 B.C.! The Phoenicians may not have written a structured literacy approach to reading, but it seems like they were moving in that direction. The Phoenicians invented the alphabet, and they can tell you why. I learned to read easily and naturally. Over the years, as I’ve discovered more and more about how all of us should learn to read, I’ve rediscovered the joy of the English language. I’ve learned to tackle long, confusing words that I would generally skip or try to figure out in context. I break the words apart or look for the meaning in the parts. I can’t tell you why, but I can tell you a… | Read More »Why Learning About “Why” Helps Us All to Read

Why the Alphabet Is So Much More Than A, B, C

It’s Dyslexia Awareness Month and the perfect time to consider why the alphabet is so much more than A, B, C. Each October, Dyslexia Awareness Month generates awareness about the 1 in 5 people who have difficulty decoding words because of a challenge at the most basic level in connecting sounds to letters and then mapping those words to print. Learning to read is a complicated process, and the first step toward understanding where we’ve taken a wrong turn is to look at the alphabet. Here’s why it’s worth a second look. The alphabet is a series of symbols or letters that work together to create words. The words work together to form sentences. That’s how most of us learn to read—me included. Why this process sets us down a squirrely path is because we take the alphabet at face value with minimal thought to the many sounds and patterns that work together to form words. The alphabet becomes nothing more than the alphabet song that we all learned when we were starting to read. We’re Reading and Guessing! Once we get the letters down and have some basic sense of how they dance around and create words we’re off and running. If we’re not sure of a word, we guess. In theory, we’re reading! It’s like jumping out of… | Read More »Why the Alphabet Is So Much More Than A, B, C

It Will Get Better for Kids with Reading Issues Like Dyslexia

“It will get better. Your daughter will be OK,” said a friend whose daughter with a reading issue recently started college. Many times, throughout the years, parents of an older child with a reading issue like dyslexia would assure us that their kid was doing fine; enjoying college, succeeding in a job, starting a family. Well-meaning friends and families would point out the latest celebrity that came out as being dyslexic. That wasn’t us. Our daughter wasn’t famous nor was she a genius or a prodigy. We weren’t famous. I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel that everyone told us we would start to notice. I didn’t see the gift of dyslexia. I saw yet another unwanted challenge. The light still hasn’t come, but it has gotten better. Our Journey It hasn’t been an easy journey for us, but our story is typical. Occasionally I meet people who embrace their child’s difference from the get-go and make peace with who they are. They glide through the education system with minimal drama. I respect those parents that keep their grace in the midst of challenges, but it is not us. The truth is that for years I would get angry, frustrated and sometimes depressed. I felt betrayed by the educational system that I spent my career working… | Read More »It Will Get Better for Kids with Reading Issues Like Dyslexia