Dear Parents:
L to the Third Power!!!

My singing voice can best be described as, well, ‘mediocre’. Despite my mediocre voice and my Jewish identity (therefore not celebrating the Christmas Holiday in any way throughout my childhood), I simply adored singing all those wonderful holiday songs, especially Christmas carols throughout my childhood. I even recall caroling door to door with friends as a high school student, a practice that has surely diminished over time. A 2013 Pew Study found that while 36% of adults recall going caroling as children, only 16% had gone caroling as adults. I realize this study is on the ‘old side’, but…

Many multi-generational families spent time together this past weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving and the start of the Holiday Season together. A grandparent posed this question:  “Why is ‘xylophone’ a poor word choice to use when teaching the letter ‘X’?” SO many children’s ABC books are out there on the market ready to purchase for well meaning parents, grandparents, relatives, and friends. In fact, when I checked out ‘ABC Books for toddlers ages 1-3’ on Amazon, I found over 7,000 different choices!  When I checked out ‘ABC Books for children ages 3-5’ on Amazon, I found over 6,000 different choices!…

I’m going to respond to a question posed by a parent recently on a Facebook Group. Parents and teachers repeatedly pose this same question concerning the sounds and spellings of suffix -ed. All stakeholders (children, parents, teachers) need to understand that the English language is a ‘morphophonemic language’. What’s that??? It’s a pretty long word, made up of 3 parts, which all carry meaning: Morph: meaning ‘form or change’ originally from Greek word roots Phoneme: meaning the smallest unit of sound in a language, from the Greek root ‘phon’ meaning ‘sound’ -ic: an adjective suffix, referring to “having the…

I would like to share the story of Ashley, now a young woman who I’ve known for about twenty years. She has had a ‘long road’ marked by academic challenges and personal successes. Ashley, a student with severe dyslexia, was able to experience educational, vocational, and social-emotional success because she had the following important supports: intensive appropriate instruction and remediation using a Structured Literacy Code Based Approach to develop reading, spelling, and written language skillsengaging in read alouds and discussions (live or recorded) to foster vocabulary and comprehension growthcaring teachers implementing appropriate student accommodations  These supports allowed Ashely to…

“Dyslexia is not contagious. I go to tutoring. I love to read, write and draw. I am a normal kid like you.” WHERE ARE YOUR CHILD(REN)/YOU IN TERMS OF LANGUAGE AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT RIGHT NOW?  Many parents whose child(ren) experience difficulty learning to ‘crack the code’ of the English language for reading and/or spelling may begin to think a problem exists. These parents might wonder if there is something they can do to ease their child(ren)’s path to literacy. These parents may even recognize some of the same characteristics in their children’s literacy development they themselves experienced long ago—and…