What is phonics? Phonics is the ability to pair individual sounds with a visual symbol (letters). This method is frequently used to teach reading. Phonics teaches the sounds that letters or groups of letters make when spoken. Phonics is the process of matching sounds to letters. Reading experts refer to this as the alphabetic principle.…
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Background Knowledge and Reading Comprehension
Factual knowledge, also known as background knowledge, can make the difference from not having a clue what you have read to comprehending and completely understanding what you have read.
4th of July Family Activities
The 4th of July is perfect for outside activities in your backyard, like a BBQ. Some of our favorite activities include relay races and obstacle courses. You might not realize it, but obstacle courses and relay races improve several areas of learning, including laterality, directionality, visual memory, and auditory memory. These family activities target the mind-body connection, which…
The Visual Processing System: How Does it Impact Learning?
Visual processing often means how well you discriminate between one letter and another or one word and another. This is prominent with kids who confuse letters, also known as letter reversals. Below are some examples of letters and words that kids mix up…
How to Create a Daily Schedule for Kids (FREE Printable)
School’s out, and summer is here! Pool parties, backyard barbeques, days at the river… and summer learning loss! Hold up. Wait. Let’s put a stop to the summer learning loss, but let’s keep the good stuff. Kids often lose much of what they learned from the school year over the summer. This is because most…
Summer Learning Loss: How to Prevent the Summer Slide
4 Steps to Stop Summer Learning Loss Kids often lose much of what they learned from the school year over the summer. This is because most of the time, during the summer, we don’t spend much time stimulating the brain and keeping them active. It’s typical for kids to lose between two and four months…
What is Reading Fluency?
Reading Fluency Definition Reading fluency is the ability to read smoothly, easily, and quickly. Good readers can read words automatically without having to sound out each syllable (also known as decoding). In other words, you don’t have to spend a lot of effort and attention on the mechanics of reading. Reading becomes easy. Word recognition…
Brain-Body Connection: Movement and Learning
How does the brain-body connection affect overall learning skills? Most of us don’t think about learning skills in conjunction with the brain-body connection and movement. However, the brain-body connection and movement are very important to your ability to learn and master reading skills. The brain and body work together as a machine, one designed to…
Executive Function and Reading
“If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail.”– Benjamin Franklin Executive function is all about planning and organizing. It’s also your ability to strategize and pay attention to and remember details. Executive function also involves flexible thinking. This is used when you have an assignment, project, or problem that can be done in several…
Phonemic Awareness and Reading
What is Phonemic Awareness? Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds – phonemes – in spoken words. A phoneme is a unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another, for example, /b/, /k/, and /s/ in the words bat, cat, and sat. Phonemic awareness is critical to reading and…
