"Unscrambling Dyslexia"

I recently earned a grant to purchase a specialized reading, writing and spelling program for students in my classroom that have dyslexia. The program is the Barton Reading and Spelling System.

This story is featured in the article, "Unscrambling Dyslexia" and can be found in the April 19th edition of The Columbian Newspaper. I was delighted to see it was the front page story. "Research supports that the more methods used when learning, the better chances the brain will retain the information." This is a quote from the article, and is referring to multi-sensory teaching. It is important that students with dyslexia are given research based programs to help them succeed in reading. This program is simultaneously using auditory, tactile/kinesthetic, and visual learning to train their brains to decode new and multi-syllabic words.

Being able to offer an Orton-Gillingham based program is like a breath of fresh air for the students I am working with. It gives them a chance to succeed and offers hope for their academic future. My student Andrew, who has used the system with a private teacher for 3 years stated, "It's changed my life..."

Why Lemonade?

Because there's nothing better on a hot summer day than a refreshing glass of ice cold lemonade. For the past 10 years, I've taught students with learning disabilities in resource or learning support classrooms. Sadly, I would say most students I've worked with feel like "lemons" when it comes to areas of weakness in academics. Getting students to make "lemonade" out of their "lemons" is possible. In fact, watching students experience success - despite learning differences - is truly rewarding. Through persistence, research based appropriate instruction, and hard work students with reading disabilities or dyslexia can achieve success in reading, writing and spelling and in life.