Let's Get the Inside Scoop

For many years, American school systems have been drifting further and further away from phonemic awareness and phonics in grade schools. There has been a BIG shift toward whole language learning and less of an emphasis on HOW kids learn to read. The thinking was that the more kids are exposed to reading, the more they will learn about reading.

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There is some merit to this. Having a text-rich environment, reading to your children, and sharing your love of reading with them will help them see the value behind reading. BUT...the sad truth is that your child still may not love to read.

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This makes you feel like you have failed your child. That simply is not true. And, it is NEVER too late to inspire your kids to try things they don’t like.

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I want to tell you about two recent experiences I had with two different students and the breakthrough we had during our reading sessions.

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I will call the kids by pretend names but both of them are in primary grades at their schools. One is a local student in a neighboring private school district. I could literally drive to her house and support her, but her parents and I both agree that online is the most efficient and effective way to support her. Let’s call her Lilly. Lilly was recently diagnosed with Dyslexia and her parents found me last summer and we began working together to get her a diagnosis and to help support her with her reading, writing, and spelling.

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The most recent breakthroughs we have had in our session is that Lilly has bought into learning how to spell. I am using a new software that supports my learners and she is SO excited because she does VERY well with her spelling. Why? The software learns the words she CAN spell and then challenges her with new words that then land on her spelling list. She doesn’t complain, and she feels supported and successful. Learning how to spell is helping her with her reading. Her fluency score is rapidly improving as is her expression. Why? She is able to quickly decode words because we aren’t just focusing on decoding, we are working on encoding and she is connecting the dots with the letters and sounds at a rapid rate.

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My other student attends a very large public school in New York. He is the sibling to another student that I support in this family and they saw the tremendous transformation I helped their child make and they knew I was the one for them. So, we started sessions last summer to hopefully start him off on the right foot as he entered his next school year. Let’s call him Hank.

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Hank has ADHD and Autism. He loves the color red, he prefers to have both of our cameras off once we get started, and he loves his dog. Anytime I can use red or dogs in our lessons, I know the outcomes will be awesome. One thing Hank also loves are games. Once we complete our lesson, having a game available will always lead to a smile and quickly shows him he has learned something new. A breakthrough we had this week was that he is finally willing to read more than one word at a time. Getting him to read a story with many words on a page feels overwhelming and shuts down. I have found some decodable texts that limit words on a page and they are very engaging. His goal at school is to be able to talk about his story. We are working hard on this and he's getting better at describing what the story is about.

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What is something that is going well with your child’s reading journey?

What is something that isn’t working?

Let us know! Leave a comment!

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Visit our website at https://tutoringwithsheryl.tutorbird.com​

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Visit our YouTube page at: https://www.youtube.com/@tutoringwithsheryl​

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Did you miss this?

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​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHDmv7MLf4w​

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