All the Write Colors

What’s your opinion about teaching nonsense words? I get that we want to make sure a child is truly using their phonetic knowledge instead of memorizing familiar words. But, I haven’t see this approach actually be beneficial for kids with dyslexia or adhd because they already have to memorize the exceptions. When they read a word that doesn’t sound like a word they recognize, they may wonder if it’s one of the spelling exceptions. I vote for getting rid of this added pressure and just stick to teaching the thousands of English words already out there.

After all, we’re here to build confidence in reading. I don’t want to add anything to could contribute to them doubting their learning. Leave a comment below if you have an opinion about this. I know mine is not a popular opinion, but it’s what I’ve learned after successfully helping hundreds of neurodivergent kids read.

✏️ For more nontraditional teaching tips, follow my YouTube Channel: All the Write Colors.
💗 For my results-proven teaching resources that are adhd and dyslexia friendly, purchase and print from my website at allthewritecolors.com

Digraphs are the first “complex” spelling pattern I teach after a child learns their short vowels. For some kids, these 3 sounds are hard to remember so here’s how I teach it to build in muscle memory and active/play-based learning. I will only bring in practice worksheets after they’ve had hand-on practice like this. For kids with speech challenges, doing this with a mirror or reverse phone camera is important so they can practice placing the tongue between their teeth for “th”. Strengthening our tongue muscles is what we call it!

Try this at home or in school and tell me how it goes!
Find and Subscribe to my YouTube Channel - All the Write Colors for more teaching tips like this. I focus on literacy lessons for neurodivergent kids.

Do you know a kid who’s great at reading, but struggles with spelling? If so, here’s why. We assume reading and spelling go hand in hand and that reading/dyslexia programs will cover spelling regardless. But, spelling relies on auditory skills in more ways than reading. We need to be more intentional on teaching spelling. Otherwise, you’ll see a kid improve in reading while their spelling falls behind. Check out my program called All the Write Sounds where we place emphasis on both spelling and reading so that neither one gets left behind.

For more teaching and learning tips, follow and subscribe to my YouTube channel .

I don’t like to “fix” handwriting, especially with tracing worksheets 🙅🏻‍♀️, but I can understand that some kids have a hard time expressing themselves in writing because of letter reversal or formation challenges. So here are my non-worksheet handwriting tricks that have worked really with my dysgraphia kids. It takes about two months, 6-8 class sessions of consistent reminders. AND making sure it’s in a warm and inviting learning environment. But it works!!

Try this out for 6 short sessions, and come back to let me know if you see a difference.

** The reason I don’t think handwriting needs to be perfect is because I haven’t yet seen it negatively impact anybody’s career success. I could go on a soapbox about all of this, but I’ll stop myself for now and let you go on with your day. ✏️🤪

Here’s a fun handwriting story I made up to help kids write lowercase letters more clearly. Once in a while, I’ll discover that a spelling error was actually a handwriting error. So maybe they meant to write a G (get) but they wrote a Y (yet) instead because they didn’t close the top.

Grandpa G and Alex A can fix this little handwriting problem for your child/student! It’s hard to fix handwriting habits, but I have found results when I add a little bit of humor and give a good reason. To me, it works faster than handwriting tracing worksheets.

For more neurodivergent teaching tips, visit and subscribe to my YouTube channel https://youtu.be/OQbkI7ddYU8?si=AfRKvfj4nTwCh-KN

Shoutout to Calie Mee • Illustator for turning my teaching story into animation magic. You’re a gem!

Would your teenage self have loved being a published author? I wish I could turn back time and do this for my younger me so she knew her voice mattered. Thankfully, this is something we can do now for our tweens/teens now. Especially with A.I. being so prevalent, it’s important we give kids real opportunities to develop their unique writing voice. And there’s no better way to do that than to teach them how to publish a book.

If you’re interested, check out my online self-publishing course where I provide step-by-step kid-friendly videos on how to turn a seed idea into a published book. Visit allthewritecolors.com for more info.