Growth Education Therapy

🦃 I had so much fun with these literacy crafts the last few weeks.

What should we make next?

Looking for easy, low-prep games to boost engagement in your reading intervention groups? 🙌
Here are 3 simple go-to games my students love: BAM!, Tic Tac Toe, and a quick word-guessing game.
Each one works with any phonics skill and takes almost no prep — perfect for small groups or literacy centers.
Which one would your students love most? 👇

I have tutored 2 6th grade students for a little while. Last year I tutored them in writing and math.

But suddenly this year, they needed help in just turning in assignments-especially homework.

This shift is actually super common when kids start to enter middle school.

The homework demands often increase in both the amount that is assigned and how complex the assignments are.

Students also start to have more teachers and classes to keep up with.

Grades also start to play a bigger role in academics.

All of this creates a perfect storm. Students aren’t used to managing their time. They don’t want to focus on, and so sometimes they can’t start anything.

Here are the 5 steps I use to pull students out of the missing assignment vortex and keep them out.

🤩 What does an Orton-Gillingham tutoring session look like?

For me, it’s very hands on, effective, and fun.

Here are a few snippets from the past month or so.

One super important skill special education teachers need to know how to use is scaffolding. Scaffolding is a part of specially designed instruction.

This means knowing where students processing and skill gaps are, and providing the right type of tools to compensate for and remediate weaknesses.

Here are some examples of how I scaffolded instruction for math.

What questions do you have about scaffolding or specially designed instruction?

Have you heard of the Orton Gillingham approach?

Recently, I’ve seen a lot of misconceptions pop up around with this approach is.

One of the biggest I’ve seen is that it’s a very rigid program, but I really think that this is actually very far from the truth.

The Orton Gillingham approach has actually helped me more flexibly meet my students needs, especially my students with dyslexia.

What questions do you have about this approach?

The International Dyslexia Association estimates that 30% of individuals with dyslexia also have ADHD.

Students with ADHD often have under developed executive functioning skills, which adds an additional challenge to reading intervention.

We cannot wait for students executive functioning skills to catch up before providing dyslexia intervention.

And if you’re a special education teacher, you know you definitely do not have the option to wait.

Here are three ways that I build executive functioning skills during reading intervention lessons.

Do you have an IEP coming up for your child or student with dyslexia, ADHD, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, or Autism?

If you are helping someone with any of the above, you know how important it is to learn about the diagnosis itself.

But if your child or student is enrolled in public school, it is also necessary to learn the language of special education.

Learning more about the special education process, including the IEP document/meeting, will help you effectively advocate for your child or student with unique learning or behavioral needs.

It will also save you the headache of learning at the actual IEP meeting-believe me.

Familiarize yourself with some of the most important sections of an IEP by swiping through these slides. Save them for your next meeting, or send them to someone you know.

🧠 Research tells us that students with ADHD have lower educational outcomes. They are at higher rates for behavior referrals, and lower academic success.

We also know that teachers are not consistently given the training and tools to support these students. This includes special education teachers.

So, what can we do to support our teachers, students, and ultimately our communities?

Here are 5 strategies that positively changed my teaching practice for all students, but especially students with ADHD.

I used these as a classroom teacher, and I still use them when I tutor students that have both dyslexia and ADHD (which is approximately 30% of students with dyslexia).

Are you interested in a longer more comprehensive list to give to special education teachers, or take to your next IEP meeting?

Comment list and I will send you a list of the most effective strategies for teaching students with ADHD.

intervention

I work with so many different students. Some of them are as young as 6, and are getting needed support even before an official diagnosis.

I also work with older students. Some of whom did not get the type of support they needed until they entered 4th or 5th grade.

By this point, the demands of learning are quite overwhelming for students who are still struggling to read and write.

Early intervention is absolutely necessary for our students that are showing signs of learning problems.

No two students with dyslexia are exactly the same.

Why?

Each of our brains has a set of unique processing strengths and weaknesses that show up as we are reading and writing.

As we think about the best way to teach students with dyslexia, we have to put the students in front of us at the center of our conversations.

I think this means training special education teachers on how to specially design instruction, and teaching reading specialists how to be diagnostic and prescriptive as they teach.

What do you think?