Author: thecindyleafhall

How Reading, or more accurately, Guessing, is taught in American Schools.

How Reading, or more accurately, Guessing, is taught in American Schools.

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On the way home from running errands with my husband, we heard this documentary as we drove in the car. “At A Loss for Words: What’s Wrong with How Schools Teach Reading.”  I looked it up after we got home.  It is quite eye-opening, showing examples of how students are  being taught to “read” by a method called “cueing.”  Cueing is actually guessing, and, according to the documentary, works to teach kids to read only about half the time.  Phonics based instruction teaches nearly all children to read.

This is an hour long audio documentary, so save it for when you are doing weekend chores or another time when you can listen without interruption.  It’s going to be an hour well spent!  Listen here.

How It Feels to Take Notes as a Dyslexic Individual.

How It Feels to Take Notes as a Dyslexic Individual.

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I know it is hard for my dyslexic students to keep up with taking notes. Even dictation sentences with carefully chosen words can be a real challenge. A video of a new writing simulation that helps those of us who are not dyslexic understand just a bit of the reality of the note taking struggle can be viewed by going here.  I found it quite helpful in putting myself in my students’ shoes.  I hope it helps you envision the reality of what an enormous task accurate notes can be, and why our dyslexic students often don’t know the meaning of what they have just recorded.

From Struggling Reader to Harvard Grad

From Struggling Reader to Harvard Grad

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I love a good David vs Goliath success story, don’t you?  How about one where the difference maker is an elderly teacher who will not give up on a struggling first grade reader, even when she didn’t fully understand what was a the root of the problem?  Sounds like a must-read, right?  Follow the link to read the full story. 

Fresh Starts

Fresh Starts

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I love the fresh start offered by each new school year.  It feels to me like a field of newly fallen snow, clean and fresh, with nothing ahead by opportunities to create beautiful patterns with carefully placed footsteps.

This school year my team of small group teachers and I began using a standardized curriculum written for dyslexic learners called Spire.  It was written by an O-G Fellow, so we all had great confidence in it.  But the roll-out was difficult! It felt to us as if we were cooking fancy French food from recipes written in French. Recorded in fancy European style script. The fresh start we had all envisioned seemed more of an exercise in frustration than the natural unfolding of the next chapter of a growing and developing dyslexia center.

I consulted with a local Spire expert, a trusted colleague who had come to give us our training in how to use Spire. She had the words of wisdom that apply to so very many fresh start situations which seem quite promising before the first step is taken out onto the snowy field, but in which one quickly finds themself hip deep in what had looked ankle deep snow. She advised us to work the plans laid out in the new curriculum faithfully for two weeks.  At the end of those two weeks, she sagely predicted, we would love our new presentation materials rather than feel overwhelmed by them.  With those words of hope ringing in my ears, I  circled to the two-weeks-out date on my office calendar and pointed it out each time there was a struggle.  We encouraged each other, helped each other, and created organizational notebooks to corral all the various paper elements of the new curriculum, and determined to work our way through for two weeks.

The two week’s mark came a week ago Friday.  We have all more or less figured out how to use our new tools to best help our students. We are not perfect yet, but we are also no longer frustrated and tempted to pack up all the new books, flashcards and tracking systems and ship them back to the company.   What a huge difference those two weeks of allowing ourselves to learn the plan made!

The best benefit of all is the effect we small group teachers can see on our students. They are viewing reading and spelling in a whole new light and realizing there is a rhyme and reason to language after all. They view their small group teacher as an ally in learning a different approach to reading, spelling and writing.   She is the one blazing a trail through the deep snow of language, and encouraging each student to follow her lead in this new pathway to success.  Two weeks seems short time to invest in the fresh start of a different way for such an amazing benefit. All fresh starts are not instant successes, but are worth every moment of determined work to get on the right path.

Blog, Refreshed

Blog, Refreshed

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It has been several years since I have created a new blog post.  What you read below this entry are blogs I reposted from a former host site that I have now deleted. At the end of a few of the posts I added an update to clarify what may have been confusing as it was.  From this post on, you are reading new posts.

Still teaching dyslexic students

I am entering my fourteenth year of tutoring and teaching dyslexic students, and my tenth year with the dyslexia center that is part of Lindsay Lane Christian Academy.  I recently wondered how many students had passed through our center in the ten years, so I did some calculations from past enrollment documents.  I came up with 128 students we have been able to directly work with over the 10 years.  That makes me really, really happy.  I love to cross paths with former students and hear how they are doing, and what path their life is taking.  Many of them make me so very proud, a few burden my heart, but I am glad to hear from any and all of them.

Teacher Trainings

One of my new, dyslexia related passions has become training teachers and tutors to work with whole sets of dyslexic students I will never meet nor touch.  But through setting up trainings and working with an AOGPE Fellow as

Clarifying Language Confusion

Clarifying Language Confusion

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Clear and Explicit Instruction

Orton-Gillingham is the name of the method used by teachers and tutors at the Lindsay Lane Christian Academy Dyslexia Center.  One of the hallmarks of Orton-Gillingham, or O-G as it is often shortened to, is an emphasis on direct and explicit instruction.

Direct and explicit instruction means we teach the students step by step, exactly what we intend for them to learn about language. This approach to teaching is precisely what dyslexic students need to help clarify language information they have stored incorrectly or incompletely.  Confusion about language is at the very heart of what dyslexia is.

Give Me an Example

For example, it is not uncommon for dyslexic students to be confused about the names or the sounds of the letters g and j. At first, we may wonder how something so foundational could be confusing, until we stop and consider that the two letters look similar, the names start with the same sound, and that sometimes g makes the same sound as a j. Instruction pointing out the differences, some tactile tracing of the letter forms, and practice categorizing words by j and g spelling help to quickly dispel the confusion.

The same type of clear, pointed teaching, applied to each area of language, is what changes the student from one who was confused about language to one who is now clear about language!  This happy outcome is not easily accomplished, but is worth every bit of effort required, since it can change the student’s life.

The Word Study approach to teaching spelling

The Word Study approach to teaching spelling

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In a traditional spelling program, students learn to spell words that are deemed appropriate to their grade level. In a word study program, however, students learn about words.  The Orton-Gillingham approach is essentially a word study approach.  This detailed article will teach you more about the art of teaching spelling than you ever imagined!

Word Study approach to spelling

Orton-Gillingham method explained

Orton-Gillingham method explained

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Orton-Gillingham lesson explained

In this very easy to read article, Susan Barton explains the Orton-Gillingham method for tutoring dyslexic individuals as well as explaining which brands of tutoring materials are based on the O-G method.  As with all of Mrs. Barton’s articles, get the information, but remember that she is ultimately selling her program.  Just read with that in mind.

Brain Files vs Brain Piles

Brain Files vs Brain Piles

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I am often asked exactly how a dyslexic person’s way of learning is different from a non-dyslexia person’s.  Parents in particular wonder how Orton-Gillingham can be better than a new, more modern way of teaching reading.

Brain Files

The answer to both questions is Brain Files.  The longer I work with dyslexic individuals, the more I liken their natural way of organizing information in their brain as the Piles System. We all have piles somewhere – maybe on the counter near where the mail gets dumped every day, or near the computer printer where untried recipes for Starbucks Outrageous Oatmeal Cookies competes for space with the car insurance paperwork. It takes longer to sort through it all the day that car insurance needs to be dealt with than if you filed things as they came in the mail or when you printed.

When a dyslexic child is presented with new language information, I don’t believe they just ignore it, I think it is as if they put it all into a big mental pile with the other language information they have.  It is there, and they can usually find it -given enough time, but it is not the most efficient way to go about.  As with us and our towering stacks of papers on the counter, there has to be a better way!

Enter Orton-Gillingham

The Orton-Gillingham method for teaching dyslexic individuals to read and spell is all about organization. It is specific, sequential; it starts with the basics and moves forward to the most complicated, covering every imaginable letter combination in between.  The O-G method is not only great for teaching language tasks, I am convinced it also builds the much needed Brain Files.

When I start with a new student, we begin with the alphabet.  We write it, and we name the letters and their sounds.  We learn which are the vowels and which are the consonants.  We learn that the consonants are the workers of the letter world, while the vowels are the prima donnas.  You have to have vowels, but it takes knowing the system to predict what they may do in any given word.  With this simple beginning, we have already begun to create file section for letters – consonants and vowels. The student now has a mental file in which they may drop information on those two subjects.  Subfiles are created, with the information categorized and neatly tucked away.

Lots of practice with letter sounds and language tasks means lots of retrieval of that information.  As with computer files, the more you get things out to work with them, the easier and automatic it is to find them. Orton-Gillingham provides that much needed practice, and adds the kinesthetic element to make the knowledge even more sticky.  The secret is finding a better way than the Pile Method to store them in the first place!

Now if only there was an Orton-Gillingham for the piles on my desk!