What to do When Your Child Gets Stuck on a Word

admin April 1, 2018 No Comments

My daughter, Lizzie, is now 21 and will be graduating from college soon. Many moons ago, when she was seven, we received word from her teacher that she wasn’t where she should be in terms of reading. Unlike my other two children, Lizzie just wasn’t into reading and I have to admit, our busy life seemed to get into the way of a nightly commitment to read. Knowing the importance of reading with your child daily, we made a concerted effort to read with Liz for at least 20 minutes each night. One night as I was walking by the couch I heard my husband tell Liz to “just sound it out”. As I peeked over at the book, the

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Bookshare- A Resource for Students with Print Disabilities

admin March 28, 2015 No Comments

If you are parent of a child with a print disability or a teacher with students with print disabilities in your classroom you will want to check out Bookshare.  Bookshare is the world’s largest online digital library which is available for FREE for students and adults who have a print disability.  There are over 1/2 a million book titles in the library including most textbooks found in schools. So for students who qualify, this means that their textbooks or books they are reading in class (oh, let’s say a book such Charlotte’s Web) as  can be downloaded directly onto a computer or a device, and using a reader (super easy to download the app on the iPad) have the words read directly

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A Lesson From Adreian

admin March 24, 2014 No Comments

My oldest son is now a junior at Michigan State University so for the past few years I’ve been following Spartan athletics.  I really enjoy football, but I really LOVE watching the Spartan basketball team.  Last year during a televised airing of the Spartans playing a game at the NCAA tournament, the announcer briefly shared the story of Adriean Payne.  Adreian is MSU’s star player and how he ended up at MSU is nothing short of remarkable.  As a kindergarten student, Adreian was identified as a student with a cognitive impairment and placed in special education.  Adreian is now a highly recruited player for the NBA and also a MSU academic scholar!  Below is an article I wrote on Adreian’s

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Vision and Reading Difficulties

admin March 1, 2014 No Comments

  It happened again.  I’m reviewing a file of a student having difficulty learning to read and there it is!  A recording of three failed school vision screenings.  I would love to say that this is an isolated incident, but unfortunately, all too often we seem to overlook the obvious.  With all of our literacy screenings, progress monitoring, digging deeper assessments, we have all seemed to neglect the possibilty that the child may not even be able to see the text clearly.  We assume that the parents, after receiving the letter from the health department, followed through on the recommendation for further vision testing.  Ugg…. what valuable instructional time has been lost. Another frustration is that many children who actually

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Bouncy Bands- Great Tool for Your Students Who Need to Move!

admin November 21, 2013 No Comments

I love it when we can find a super cheap and efficient way to meet the needs of our students.  For students with ADHD we often recommend tools such as sissel seats, therapy balls and fidgets for use in the classroom to allow students to move and, hopefully, maintain attention to instruction.   These items are often so expensive, and with our ever dwindling school budgets, well, need I say more?  A few weeks back, Scott Ertl contacted me and asked if I would try out his new Bouncy Bands.  Scott is an elementary school counselor in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and works with students and teachers in developing plans for helping students succeed in the classroom.  When I first received

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Strategies for Working with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

admin June 24, 2013 No Comments

Will you be welcoming a student with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) into your classroom this fall?  If this is your first experience having a child with ASD in your classroom you may be a tad nervous (well, likely more that just a tad).  You may be wondering how in the world are you going to meet the needs of this one child while balancing the needs of the other children in your classroom.  How will you handle the behaviors?  What do the parents expect?  Children with ASD often come with them a barrage of service providers such as Speech/Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, Behavioral Consultants and sometimes a 1:1 para-professional– how are we all going to be working together?  You may

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My Favorite Resources for Dyslexia and Learning Disabilities

admin January 10, 2013 No Comments

We are often asked by parents if we think their child has dyslexia when the child is having difficulty learning to read.  This question certainly is raised if the child is reversing letters or numbers in writing.   There seems to be a certain mystic around the term “dyslexia”.  “Dyslexia” simply means “difficutly with words” as dys means “difficult” and lexia, “words”.   The term “dyslexia” is used mostly used within the medical profession when describing children who are struggling with reading.   In the school setting, when a child’s reading difficulty is so severe that he or she requires special education, the child is often labeled with a “Specific Learning Disability” (SLD).   We know that dyslexia occur on continuum.  The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) reports that perhaps

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