Fisher Hill Blog

Spelling Rules   Did you know there are 44 English speech sounds? These sounds are used for reading and spelling. Eighty percent of the words in English follow these speech sound spellings. The word cat is made up of three speech sounds. The word eight is made up of two speech sounds. If you know…

Bilingual Workbooks   Bilingual Workbooks: Fisher Hill’s English literacy workbooks for Spanish-speaking teens and adults are great bilingual workbooks to get started with. In each workbook, the directions are in Spanish and the activities are in English. At the back of each workbook, is an English translation of the Spanish directions. The print is large…

Vocabulary   English Vocabulary for the Spanish Speaker is one of the four series in our English literacy program for Spanish-speaking teens and adults. This literacy program is made up of a collection of workbooks. The vocabulary series helps Spanish speakers increase their English vocabulary. Each vocabulary workbook reviews the vocabulary that was introduced in…

English Writing Composition for Spanish Speakers   Our English Writing Composition for the Spanish Speaker series contains six workbooks. The first book in the series teaches basic sentence structure then progresses to longer, more detailed sentences. The book ends with students writing informattive paragraphs. English Writing Composition for the Spanish Speaker Book 1 (Composición en…

Reading Comprehension   Reading comprehension is the goal of reading.  It is the ability to extract meaning from written words. Fluency and vocabulary play an important role in reading comprehension. Developing comprehension skills can help with acquiring meaning from written words. Summarizing, inferencing, sequencing, comparing and contrasting, drawing conclusions, distinguishing between fact and opionion, relating…

The FSZL Rule   The FSZL rule is a spelling rule. The letters f, s, z, and l are doubled after a short vowel sound. Here are words that follow this rule. ff ss zz ll off pass buzz bell puff miss fizz fill staff actress jazz hull bluff address fuzz doll dandriff boss pizzazz…

Syllables   Words are made up of syllables and syllables are made up of speech sounds. When first learning to read, most words will have one syllable: cat, dog, my, you, was. Breaking longer words into syllables can help you read and spell. Good readers and spellers can quickly break long words into syllables. There…

Do You Know Someone Who Is Dyslexic?   Dyslexia is a reading disorder but it does not reflect low intelligence. There are many bright and creative individuals with dyslexia who never learn to read, write or spell at a level consistent with their intellectual ability. According to the International Dyslexia Association, 1 in 10 individuals…

The Alphabetic Principle English is based on the alphabetic principle. This means letters are symbols that represent sounds. Most letters have one sound. Some have two sounds and the vowel letters have several sounds. There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet. Five of those twenty-six letters are vowels. Sometimes the letter y is used as…

Literacy   How old is literacy? Literacy is 5,500 years old says Dr. Mayanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist and Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University. She adds, the human brain has developed over the course of 40,000 to 50,000 years. She also states, there are no genes specific for…

English for the Spanish Speaker   Happy New Year! Do you know friends or relatives whose New Year’s resolution is to improve their English? Fisher Hill has workbooks to help them. We have a whole language series with CDs or we have four English literacy series. The whole language series is called English for the Spanish…

Samuel Orton Science of Reading Instruction   Have you ever heard of Samuel Orton? He is a pioneer in the science of reading instruction. He recommended systematic and explicit phonics instruction to teaching reading. Studies have shown that this is the best way to teach students to read.  I can testify to a systematic and…

Sentence Structure Struggling writers often lack good sentence structure, sentence organization and variety. Having a word bank available with actions verbs, vivd adjectives, and effective transition words is helpful to add variety to sentences. Starting sentences with a prepositional phrase, including an appositive after the subject or ending a sentence with a dependent clause also adds variety…

The main idea when reading:   When reading, especially when reading informational text, it is important to determine the main idea in each paragraph.  Most paragraphs have a topic sentence that states the paragraphs main idea. Paragraphs also have detailed sentences that support the main idea. Identifying main ideas is needed in order to understand and remember…