Root to Read

Root to Read Early Literacy and Reading Foundations Specialist. Small group pods and individual tutoring sessions available.

Root to Read provides structured early literacy instruction grounded in Orton-Gillingham principles designed to build strong foundations in young learners. Using explicit, systematic teaching methods, students develop sound awareness, decoding skills, and reading confidence step by step.

✨ EASY AT-HOME READING ACTIVITY ✨If your child is working on early reading skills, try this simple 5-minute game:🧠 “Soun...
03/31/2026

✨ EASY AT-HOME READING ACTIVITY ✨

If your child is working on early reading skills, try this simple 5-minute game:

🧠 “Sound Swap”

Say a word like:
👉 “cat”

Then ask your child:

➡️ “Change the /c/ to /m/. What’s the new word?”

(cat → mat)

Try a few more:
• map → tap
• sit → sat
• dog → log

💡 Why this works:
This builds phonemic awareness, one of the most important (and often missing!) skills for reading.

If a child can hear and manipulate sounds, reading becomes SO much easier.

Keep it light, quick, and even a little silly. No materials needed!

💛 Save this to try later!

🌿Root to Read

If your child is struggling with reading or spelling, you’re not alone, and it’s not something they’ll just “grow out of...
03/23/2026

If your child is struggling with reading or spelling, you’re not alone, and it’s not something they’ll just “grow out of.”

I’m opening a few limited summer spots for:
• 1:1 support
• small group sessions

Using a structured, multisensory approach based on the science of reading. I am trained in Orton-Gillingham, a method designed to support children who need a more explicit and systematic approach to reading.

This is especially helpful for kids who:
• guess at words
• struggle to sound things out
• have difficulty with spelling
• seem bright but reading just isn’t clicking

📍 Green / Uniontown area

Feel free to message me if you’d like more information or to see if it would be a good fit for your child 💛

PSA 🗣️
03/21/2026

PSA 🗣️

📚 Parent Tip: Rhyming isn’t just a game… it’s the start of readingIf you have a preschooler, rhyming matters more than y...
03/18/2026

📚 Parent Tip: Rhyming isn’t just a game… it’s the start of reading

If you have a preschooler, rhyming matters more than you might think.

When kids can hear that cat, hat, and bat all sound the same at the end,
they’re starting to notice patterns in words.

And that’s a big deal.

Because before kids can read, they need to understand that words are made up of sounds.

Rhyming is one of the first steps in building that skill.

Easy ways to work on it at home:

Pause during a rhyming book and let them fill in the last word.
Sing nursery rhymes and songs with rhymes.
Play “what rhymes with ___?” in the car.
Be silly with it. Kids learn best when it’s fun.

It might seem small, but this is the foundation for everything that comes next.

Follow along for simple tips that actually make a difference

Root to Read 🌿

📚 Reading Tip for ParentsDid you know letter names don’t actually help children learn to read at first?What matters most...
03/17/2026

📚 Reading Tip for Parents

Did you know letter names don’t actually help children learn to read at first?

What matters most in the beginning is knowing the sounds the letters make.

For example:

The letter M is called “em”, but when we read we use the sound /m/.

Children who know the sounds of letters can start blending words like:

m + a + p → map

Knowing the letter names is helpful, but the sounds are what unlock reading.

⭐ Bonus tip: If you’re just starting out, focus on a few useful sounds first like m, s, a, t, p, and n. Kids can start blending these into real words very quickly (like map, sat, and nap), which helps reading feel successful right away.

Little shifts like this can make a big difference when a child is learning to read.

Root to Read 🌿

Sometimes when a child struggles with reading, the message they start to hear is that they just need to try harder.But m...
03/12/2026

Sometimes when a child struggles with reading, the message they start to hear is that they just need to try harder.

But many of these kids are already trying harder than anyone else in the room.

When the brain processes language differently, reading doesn’t become easier through repetition alone. It becomes easier when the structure of the language is made explicit and taught step by step.

That’s why structured literacy and Orton-Gillingham based instruction can be life changing for these kids.

Every child deserves to feel successful when they open a book. 📚

📚 Did you know the letter “e” has many jobs in English?Most of us learned that silent e makes the vowel say its name.But...
03/12/2026

📚 Did you know the letter “e” has many jobs in English?

Most of us learned that silent e makes the vowel say its name.

But that’s only one of its jobs.

Final e can actually do several different things in our language. For example, it can:

⭐ make the vowel long
cap → cape

⭐ keep English words from ending in v
have, give, love

⭐ keep English words from ending in u
blue

⭐ soften c
lace, rice

⭐ soften g
huge, page

⭐ change the meaning of a word
breath → breathe

⭐ help form the consonant-le syllable pattern
table, little

⭐ maintain historical or conventional spellings
are, one, some

English spelling might seem confusing at first, but there are often patterns and reasons behind the way words are written.

When children learn those patterns, reading and spelling begin to make much more sense.

🌿 Root to Read

📚 Ever wonder why the word love is spelled with an o instead of a u?If English spelling always matched the sounds we hea...
03/10/2026

📚 Ever wonder why the word love is spelled with an o instead of a u?

If English spelling always matched the sounds we hear, it would probably look like luv.

But English spelling was influenced by medieval handwriting. In older scripts, letters like u, v, m, and n were written with repeated vertical strokes called minims. When several appeared together, the word became very hard to read.

A word like luv would have looked like a row of nearly identical lines.

To make certain words easier to read, scribes often replaced the u with o.

That’s how we ended up with spellings like:

• love
• come
• some
• son
• done

English spelling can feel tricky sometimes, but there’s usually a reason behind it.

Almost every word has a story. 🌿

Root to Read

📚 5 signs a child may need extra help with reading ‼️ Every child learns to read at their own pace. But sometimes a chil...
03/07/2026

📚 5 signs a child may need extra help with reading ‼️

Every child learns to read at their own pace. But sometimes a child is working very hard and still feeling stuck.

You might notice things like:

⭐ guessing words instead of sounding them out
⭐ difficulty blending sounds together
⭐ trouble remembering letter sounds
⭐ frustration or avoidance during reading
⭐ progress that seems slower than expected

These signs don’t mean a child isn’t capable. Often it simply means they need reading instruction that is more explicit and structured.

Approaches based on structured literacy and Orton-Gillingham principles teach children how the code of written language works so they can decode words with confidence.

If this sounds like your child, feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to talk through what support might look like.

Root to Read 🌿

One thing that can be confusing in the reading world is the term Orton-Gillingham.Orton-Gillingham is actually a teachin...
03/05/2026

One thing that can be confusing in the reading world is the term Orton-Gillingham.

Orton-Gillingham is actually a teaching methodology, not a single packaged program.

Many well-known structured literacy programs are built from OG principles, but the methodology itself focuses on diagnostic, sequential instruction that can be adjusted based on the learner.

Understanding that difference helps explain why OG-based instruction may look a little different depending on the setting or practitioner.

Did you know?If a child is guessing at words, skipping small words, or struggling with spelling… it’s usually not a moti...
03/03/2026

Did you know?

If a child is guessing at words, skipping small words, or struggling with spelling… it’s usually not a motivation issue.

It’s often a missing foundation in:
• phonemic awareness
• sound-symbol correspondence
• decoding patterns

Strong readers are not “naturally good at reading.”
They have built accurate neural connections between speech sounds and print.

When that mapping doesn’t happen explicitly and systematically, reading can feel confusing and exhausting.

Reading isn’t memorizing words.
It’s a structured process

🌿 Sometimes dyslexia doesn’t look the way people expect.In the preschool years, it may look like:• Trouble learning nurs...
02/27/2026

🌿 Sometimes dyslexia doesn’t look the way people expect.

In the preschool years, it may look like:

• Trouble learning nursery rhymes
• Difficulty remembering letter names
• Not recognizing letters in their own name
• Struggling to hear rhymes (cat, bat, rat)

In kindergarten and first grade:

• Guessing words that don’t match the letters
• Not understanding that words come apart into sounds
• Avoiding reading
• Difficulty connecting letters to sounds

By later elementary and beyond:

• Slow, effortful reading
• Trouble sounding out unfamiliar words
• Poor spelling
• Messy handwriting
• Low self-esteem that may not be obvious

And yet…

Many children with dyslexia also show incredible strengths:

✨ Curiosity
✨ Big-picture thinking
✨ Strong reasoning
✨ Imagination
✨ Excellent comprehension when text is read to them

Dyslexia is not a lack of intelligence.
It is a difference in how the brain processes written language.

And the earlier we notice the signs, the earlier we can provide structured support!

🌿Root to Read

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Mogadore, OH

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