Down Syndrome Reading

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 [...]

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 [...]

Sometimes it’s just all too much. That goes for both kids and parents. It’s wisdom to teach our kids to read if no one else is doing a good job of it, and… It’s also [...]

Bedtime “Read-Alouds” are for love, language, and letting go of the day’s cares. That’s it. Nothing more: no teaching, no testing, no struggling to master a skill. [...]

As parents of kids/teens/adults with Down syndrome, there are many areas in which we continue to give support through the years, because it’s needed. But Guess What? If you launch your child as [...]