LisaBrooks

The rationale for explicit and multisensory phonics instruction can no longer be ignored. Science tells us that most kids will benefit from a structured, code-based approach to learning how to read words.(1) Students with dyslexia certainly require this type of teaching, and no child is harmed by learning the sounds and syllables types of his or her own language. When students are learning to crack the code of English, we use decodable text to help them apply learned skills to reading in context. In this type of text, the majority of the words follow the regular patterns of English. Practice with decodable [...]

Dyslexic second grader Olivia is learning to read and spell words with the digraph ch.  Her learning center teacher asks Olivia to trace the letters ch with her fingers while naming them. She teaches Olivia the key word chin and the sound /ch/.  Throughout her reading lesson, Olivia works with this new sound: she points to and reads ch words in isolation and in sentences, selects pictures that begin with /ch/, and writes dictated words with the target sound on dotted lined paper.  When she spells a dictated word, Olivia segments the sounds in the word with plastic chips and then names the letters while writing them.  Olivia’s [...]