“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” -Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, crusader for justice and peace

Reading is one of the most essential learning skills and has the potential to bring great joy to a person’s life.  Before children can read to learn (and read for pleasure), they must learn to read. Unlike speaking, learning to read is not a natural process; rather, the connection between sounds and letters must be explicitly taught.

You may have heard several different terms used in your child’s school or school district (currently or in the recent past): balanced literacy, reader’s workshop, “The Lucy Units,” and more. I too, used the approach that these terms refer to because that was how I was trained, and that is what the curriculum required.  Every step of the way I felt like I was not giving my students what they needed. Something was not right, but what was it?

The body of research on how we learn to read is often referred to as The Science of Reading (SOR). This is not new research, but it has recently come to the forefront of conversation on how to teach Reading.  School districts are beginning to make shifts in how they teach students to read, but this will likely be a long process as it will involve unlearning, relearning, and many resources (including human, monetary, and physical resources). I went through this process on an individual level while I was on maternity leave during the COVID-19 pandemic. I spent hours reading research, listening to interviews, finding the best program to retrain myself, and investing financial resources to build my own tutoring classroom. 

I now utilize a structured literacy model and teach students in an explicit and systematic way. I am trained in the Orton Gillingham (OG) approach from the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education. The OG approach is widely used to instruct students with dyslexia along with other struggling readers. While this method is used most widely with struggling readers, it is a best practice for all learners. 

“Orton-Gillingham is a highly structured approach that breaks reading and spelling down into smaller skills involving letters and sounds, and then building on these skills over time. It was the first approach to use explicit, direct, sequential, systematic, multi-sensory instruction to teach reading, which is not only effective for all students but essential for teaching students with dyslexia.” (www.imse.com) 

Reading (decoding language) and Writing (encoding language or spelling) go hand in hand. I work with students to build a foundation and strengthen their phonic skills so that they are both successful readers and writers. Your student will also develop their fluency, vocabulary and comprehension skills so that they are well rounded in all areas of literacy.