Fisher Hill Blog

Día de Dar Gracias   Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. It is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in…

Schools at Correctional Institutions   The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) offers various academic and education programs at each of California’s adult state prisons. Their goal is to provide offenders with needed education and career training to increase public safety and reduce recidivism. All adult schools in the CDCR prisons are fully accredited…

Adult Education  Adult education is a public education program for all adults. Adult schools offer free to low-cost classes for adults 18 and older. Students can get a high school diploma, general education diploma (GED), learn about jobs, learn to speak English, and learn how to become a U.S. citizen. Adult schools are located in…

Dyslexia   October is National Dyslexia Awareness Month. The International Dyslexia Association defines dyslexia as “characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.” The word dyslexia has two Greek morphemes: “dys” meaning “difficulty with” and “lex” meaning “words or language”. The Greek prefix “dys” or “dis” is…

Día de los Muertos   Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a holiday honoring deceased family members and friends. It is celebrated on November 1 and 2 in Mexico and other Latin American countries. On November 1, children who have died are honored. Their graves are decorated with white orchids and baby’s…

English Spelling Rules and Generalizations Part 2 Knowing English spelling rules and generalizations makes learning English more logical and easier to master. The Letter e The letter e is the most used letter in English. The silent e at the end of a word usually makes the preceding vowel say its name (long vowel sound).…

English Spelling Rules and Generalizations Part 1  Consonants There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Twenty-one of those letters are consonants and the other five are vowels. The letters a, e, i, o and u are vowels. The consonants make one sound except for c, g, and s. The letter c is the first…

English Literacy Program for Spanish Speakers   Fisher Hill has an English literacy program for Spanish-speaking teens and adults that includes four different workbook series. These series can be used in conjunction with each other. How does the program work? English Reading and Spelling for the Spanish Speaker Book 1 introduces students to reading in…

Teaching Letter-Sound Association Strategies    According to Stanford researchers, beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, in contrast to memorizing whole words, increase activity in the area of their brains most efficiently wired for reading. Those taught to attend to letter-sound patterns, or phonics, were able to read new words never seen before. When the…

Vocabulary Development   Having a well developed vocabulary is the key to reading comprehension. The more words a person knows, the better he/she will understand the text. For English language learners (ELLs), vocabulary development is especially important. The average native English speaker enters kindergarten with a vocabulary of 5,000 words. The average ELL kindergartner may…

Argumentative Writing  With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), argumentative writing is required at every grade level. Three types of argumentative writing are opinion, persuasive, and argument. It is helpful to compare the three types of writing. Below is a chart developed by Smekens Education Solutions, Inc. which explains the three types of…

Reading Difficulties in Teens and Adults   Older struggling readers need instruction in skills they missed in the primary grades. They need effective instruction geared toward older students. The consequences for low literacy skills are well known: dropping out of school, poor quality of job choices, chronic social dependency, poor health, and incarceration. Effective reading…

 Writing Skills    Being able to communicate well is important in the workplace. Supervisors in the workplace believe the writing skills of many people in the United States are far below acceptable standards. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is a set of national benchmarks for college and career readiness. The CCSS address the need…

Reading and Writing Difficulties   Do you know someone who has difficulty reading and writing? There is an excellent organization that helps people with these challenges. The organization is the International Dyslexia Association (IDA). There are forty-one branches of the IDA in the USA. There are also branches in Canada and around the world. IDA…