Individualized, multisensory, phonics-based literacy instruction. Sessions target knowledge and skill areas such as phonological awareness, sound-letter correspondence, decoding, encoding (spelling), vocabulary building, reading comprehension, and fluency.
On dyslexia, learning to read, and emotionally-sound teaching:
For many students with dyslexia and other language-based learning challenges, the task of reading can be accompanied by trepidation. Students may have watched a sibling or classmates learn to read with relative ease, and their own attempts may have felt confusing, frustrating, or simply not worth the effort. They may wonder why reading is so much more challenging for them than their peers.
There is some scientific debate on how humans learn to read, and it’s an area of neuroscience that has drawn a lot of interest in recent years. We do know that reading involves activation in, and the establishment of circuitry between, various parts of the brain, and that the neurological infrastructure for reading does not come pre-packaged – it must be built. I like to conceptualize the act of learning how to read as constructing a kind of reading “track” upon which the mind can travel. This construction takes time, and like any skill, some will have more facility with it than others. The significant hardship for students with dyslexia is that so much of the current academic environment, and many aspects of the world beyond school, are centered around reading and writing. Given this environment, it becomes especially important for students to have access to literacy support in a setting that is nurturing and confidence-building, as well as tailored to their particular learning needs.
As an instructor with a background in social work, I treasure the Orton-Gillingham approach for its attunement to the social-emotional aspects of learning. Lessons build on each other step-by-step, beginning with what a student knows and building ever-so-incrementally from there. No prior knowledge is taken for granted: everything is taught explicitly. This removes the anxiety created in students by thinking they should already know something, or that they have to guess. The O-G approach emphasizes repetition to the point of ‘automaticity’ – wherein a student no longer has to expend cognitive energy on a sound or a concept, because they have learned it so well. It also emphasizes cumulative learning, with a high degree of structure and scaffolding. Students are meant to feel safe and supported in each lesson, with the sense that they are being taught in a way that best allows them to learn. It takes time to build trust in any teacher-student relationship, and part of the trust building in this work is striking a balance in each lesson between a student’s experience of success on the one hand, and just the right amount of challenge on the other.
Lessons are individualized, multisensory, and phonics-based. Knowledge and skill areas targeted include phonological awareness, sound-letter correspondence, decoding, encoding (spelling), grammatical conventions, vocabulary building, reading comprehension, and fluency. Alongside our teaching of content, we engage students in developing their self-awareness around executive functioning skills such as focus and organization, and encourage them to find agency in their own learning journeys. The process of learning – of learning how to be learners, and seekers – is a tandem benefit. We invite students to make discoveries about language, connect what they’re learning to their own lives, and reap the experiential rewards of their efforts.
To discuss the possibility of working together, please reach out. We welcome all inquiries and look forward to talking with you.