Early Reading

Aside from being loved and given a means of communicating, verbal or otherwise, being able to read is arguably the greatest gift you can give your child-who-will-one-day-be-an-adult. I’ve [...]

Learning can stall for many reasons, or maybe it hasn’t even begun yet; here’s a list of 5 solutions to get you started. Solution #1: Reduce the task size What does it mean when your [...]

Blessing or Addiction? Remember when I wrote about my son’s wonderful ability to message me and everyone else through FB? Jonathan is 32, has Down syndrome, reads and spells like a champ, [...]

WHAT DO THEY SEE? Much of the difficulty our children have with learning to read has to do with how that material LOOKS to them. But how do we know how it looks to them? Doesn’t it look the [...]

After I posted the “Christmas at Eleven” article, about Jonathan’s dictated contribution to the family Christmas newsletter, I realized what a huge part of Jonathan’s day [...]

PERSONAL PAGES You know I’m a serious soap-box champion of personal books, right? Yes. Forever. But here’s an alternative I use at nearly all of my teaching sessions: PERSONAL PAGES. [...]

As most of you know, I teach reading to our learners with Down syndrome, inspired forever by the quick success my son Jonathan (now 31) had at age 5 when I first taught him. Reading changed [...]

PETE AND REPEAT I know I’ve talked about this forever, and here it comes again!!!! Why am I writing about personal books again? Because it is so incredibly important to an emerging reader. [...]

Just kidding. There is no such thing as “Restless Student Syndrome”–except, of course, that THERE IS. We all deal with it on a regular basis, whether we’re parents or [...]

Why aren’t flash cards working for my child? Flash cards as they are traditionally used are the slow boat to China. Boring. It can take forever to get that information into the [...]