Is Your Child Having Difficulty Learning to Read?

I am a retired fifth, fourth, first and kindergarten teacher.  Both of my own boys had difficulty learning to read which came as a surprise since I love to read.  I read stories to them starting when they were babies and they both went to Mommy and Me classes and weekly story hour at the library.  We had many books in the house but yet they had difficulty learning to read.  I joined the International Dyslexia Association and learned how to teach reading to students who have difficulty learning to read.  This is where I learned about the Orton-Gillingham approach to teach reading and spelling.  I use these methods in my books because they were successful for the students in my classroom and my sons.

Students who have difficulty learning to read and spell need a lot of practice. My workbooks provide practice.  It’s very helpful when students can learn decoding skills instead of trying to memorize thousands of words.

As a teacher, each morning I would dictate ten words and the students would write these words on their white boards and then read and spell the words back to me.  These words would have the targeted sounds for the week, several review words from previous lessons and high frequency words that often do not following the sound spelling rules.  After the students spelled a word back to me, I would write the word on the large white board.  I would also dictate two sentences which the students would write and then read back to me.

In my Reading and Spelling workbooks, https://fisher-hill.com/product-category/ebooks/  targeted sounds are presented in each lesson.  Good sentences for sentence practice can be found on the second or third pages of each lesson.  After students read back the sentence, I would write it on the white board.  At the end of this activity, the students would then read the words and sentences one more time from the large white board. Before the dictation activity each morning, I would flash consonant flashcards so letter sounds would become automatic for students.  I would also flash the new vowel sound cards each morning.  Besides flashing letter cards, I would flash high frequency word cards.  This constant practice builds automaticity.

Fisher Hill has four Reading and Spelling Workbooks. On our website at  https://fisher-hill.com/product-category/ebook, click on each workbook to view sample pages. Each lesson follows the same format. There are 20 lessons in each book.  Each ebook is $15.00.

Each lesson begins with a word list that includes words with the targeted sound for that lesson. Many of these words can also be used as vocabulary words.

The next page works with irregular spelled words.  These are words that often do not follow the sound spelling rules but are frequently used in reading and spelling.  These irregular spelled words are repeated throughout the book so students can practice reading and spelling these popular words. These irregular spelled word are often called high frequency or sight words.

The third page in the lesson is a fill in the blank page so students can practice using the words from the word list from the first page of the lesson and the high frequency words from the second page of the lesson.  There are pictures from the first page of the lesson at the end of some of the fill in the blank sentences since many sentences could have more than one answer.  Students use the pictures at the end of the sentence to know which word from the word list to use.

The fourth page of the lesson practices spelling, grammar, vocabulary or a writing activity.

The last page of the lesson ends with a Word Search or Jumble of the targeted and irregular spelled words from the lesson.

There is an Answer Key at the end of the book.

These workbooks are good for all students.  It teaches and provides excellent practice. It’s good for any age: from kindergarten to adult. If you have questions when using these workbooks, email us at [email protected].