Archives

Make It Visual This is one you won’t find in the books, but it works. Anything that moves a child closer to decoding works, in my world. You remember using Fast Flash (see also Fast Flash [...]

Awesome (and arguable) question. I’ll begin my answer with a history lesson: Historically, insisting on phonics training as the primary means to learning to read is only a [...]

Short Answer: No. You flat-out bust his comprehension engine if you do that. Long Answer: We want to encourage a flow in reading, because fluency and speed help comprehension enormously. We also [...]

Back Up The Train If you need comprehension tips, I give that below. But let’s back up the train for a minute first… Here’s the deal, and I will wave this flag ’till I [...]

My Christmas Story This is my story for Christmas, the time of Love and our unending hopes for Peace on earth. My son Jonathan (Down syndrome and a few other diagnoses) is physically very [...]

Simple Question, Simple Answer We use the “a” that your child will read for the rest of his or her life. That would be “a”. The alternative lowercase “a”, the [...]

Mom Needs Help! One mom, awash in homemade personal books and lotto games, wrote me this week saying, basically, “Help!” or, to resurrect a famous comic riff, “Who’s on [...]

How to Make a Great Teaching Sandwich I’ve said that Sandwich Style teaching is best for beginning readers. It’s a “bread-peanut butter-bread” system in the form of: [...]

Best Practice If you’re just starting down that reading road, remember that no matter which methods or materials you choose, you want them to be in line with best practice. Not many years [...]

New Disneyland Report! I’m happy to report that we survived another 12 hours at “The Happiest Place On Earth” on Saturday, and today Jonathan remembers it as Happy. Fortunately. [...]