Early Reading

What do I mean by “pretend reading”? Our clever learners are great “picture-with-sentence” memorizers. You know exactly what I mean: they see a picture, know the sentence that goes with that [...]

What material can you create in just a few minutes that your learner will love to read, that will help generalize vocabulary, and that does not need a computer or printer? Personal Pages. You’ll [...]

WHAT’S FREE, FAST, AND TEACHES VOCABULARY LIKE THE BOMB? If you’ve been reading my blogs or my book “Whole Child Reading,” you know I’m talking about Fast Flash. [...]

What’s F.O.F. syndrome? Okay, I made it up. But I’ve seen it countless times, and so have you. FOF syndrome is Fear of Failure. FOF syndrome kicks in when we put something in front of [...]

Well, have you ever tried to start a car without turning on the ignition? Aha! You see my point. Long ago and far away, in 1989 when I taught my son to read, no materials existed that suited his [...]

Let me say at the outset, as I wrote in my last blog, that it’s never too late to learn to read if you have Down syndrome! Never. With older nonreaders, we’re even more careful to use [...]

My child/teen/adult with DS can’t read yet…is it too late? No, it’s not too late.  My oldest “starting student” with Down syndrome was 33 and legally blind. He is learning to read. This is [...]

I’ve been where you are. When my son Jonathan was 5, I was busy with PT, OT, ST, and a 3-year-old daughter with severe asthma. The idea of me teaching reading to my 5-year-old with Down [...]

Speaking of Boxing… At the NDSC Conference in Pittsburg last month, the Phonics Or Whole Word (POWW!) issue attacked me personally in the form of one attendee who voiced the opinion that, [...]

What’s the Sandwich? “Sandwich Style Teaching” is simple. It means making a reading sandwich where Fast Flash are the two pieces of bread and the middle, the PBJ layer, is the [...]