Students with dyslexia typically struggle with decoding words and reading fluently. They may also have difficulty with spelling and expressing their thoughts effectively when writing. As students progress through school, these skills become increasingly important and can affect nearly every subject. Help your child thrive with dyslexia tutoring that is customized to their individual needs. How can dyslexia tutoring help your child?

Decoding Basic Words

Many students struggle to decode basic single syllable words when reading. They may have difficulty learning sound-letter relationships, including short vowels sounds, and often struggle to blend these sounds together to form words. This challenge can create frustration and lead to poor self-esteem. Dyslexia tutoring or, more specifically, Orton Gillingham tutoring using the Orton Gillingham technique, can help your child strengthen these key skills. This multi-sensory approach to tutoring engages the visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic modalities and can help students master these foundational reading skills.

If your child struggles to learn the names of the letters and their corresponding sounds, Orton Gillingham tutoring can help build these skills, starting at a basic foundational level. For example, a tutor might hold up a flash card that has the lower case letter “a” on the front and the key picture of an apple on the back. The tutor might say to the student, “This is the letter a, like apple, it makes the sound /a/.” The student would then repeat that language out loud along with the Orton Gillingham tutor and then say it independently on their own. Next, the tutor may move onto skywriting and the tutor would write in the sky with their finger, “around, up, and down”, saying the formation of the lower case letter “a” aloud. Then the student would write the same letter in the sky along with the teacher and then independently on their own. Next, the Orton Gillingham tutor may take out a tray of colored sand or shaving cream and practice the same writing exercise in the sand or cream, again saying the formation of the letter aloud as they write it. Next, the student might complete Orton Gillingham workbook pages and then do exercises where they blend sounds together to form words, using tools such as flash cards or magnetic tiles. The more multi-sensory the Orton Gillingham tutoring can be, the better!

Decoding Multi-Syllabic Words

Some students can accurately read basic, single syllable words, but struggle to decode multi-syllabic words. An Orton Gillingham tutor can teach students strategies for breaking down and decoding multi-syllabic words. For example, an Orton Gillingham tutor may teach the student what a compound word is: two little words that are combined to form a big word. They might learn that certain words have endings, like est, ed, ing, or ful, and how to syllabicate these types of words. They might learn the “rabbit” syllabication rule, where the word is split between the two middle consonants, like in the word rabbit. By learning how to break down longer words into their smaller parts with Orton Gillingham tutoring, students can learn to more accurately decode longer, multi-syllabic words.

Reading Fluency

Many students, especially those with dyslexia, exert so much energy into decoding words that their reading fluency is slow. Learning to accurately decode words through Orton Gillingham tutoring can help students develop their reading fluency, but your child’s dyslexia tutor can also use specific strategies, like the choral reading technique, to build their reading fluency skills. The dyslexia tutor may select a passage form a book and use this strategy as follows:

1. Your child reads the passage aloud to the tutor as an initial read.
2. The tutor reads the same passage aloud to your child to model good fluency.
3. Your child reads the same passage aloud WITH the tutor‎, trying to keep up with their fluency.
4. Your child reads the same passage aloud one more time, and their dyslexia tutor empowers them with the improvement in their fluency!

As students move through school, they will be required to read and write increasingly complex material. Dyslexia tutoring can help your child develop stronger reading and writing skills and enable them to thrive as the demands of school continue to increase.

The post How can Tutoring Help your Child with Dyslexia? appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Most children look forward to the last day of school and the first day of summer break. They can’t wait to swim, play outside, and relax with their friends at a park. Yet summer is a long stretch of time, and without continuous learning, students face a real risk of summer slide. In fact, research tells us that over the summer students can lose up to 39% of the information they learned during the school year! Help your child avoid the summer slide with the ideas detailed below.

Create a summer reading plan 

It’s important that kids continue to read throughout the summer, despite the temptation to ditch all books and focus on play. Help your child set a goal for the summer – it could be reading four books, for example, or devoting a certain amount of time each day to reading. Encourage your child to find a series they like or take a trip to the book store and peruse different genres of books with them. If your child chooses to carve out a certain amount of time each day to read, like 30 minutes or so, help them pick a daily time. It might be right before bed or even right after they wake up; the key is choosing a consistent time slot. You might even try setting aside family reading time – maybe right after dinner – when everyone in the family comes together and reads a book of their choosing.

Make math real!

There are so many great real life opportunities for practicing math over the summer. For younger children, bring them to the supermarket with you and build math into your shopping. Grab three peaches and two plums and ask them how many pieces of fruit you have altogether. Then ask how many pieces would be left if you ate one of the peaches. You can do these basic addition and subtraction problems with just about any items in the supermarket. For older kids, you might ask questions like, “This $6 box of cereal is 10% off. What will the new price be?” or “I have a coupon for $5 off two packs of paper towels that are each $15. How much will I spend on paper towels if I use this coupon and buy two packs?”
You can also try playing math games on the road. For instance, if you are driving on a highway with numbered exits and you are at exit 5, ask your child how many more exits you need to pass to reach exit 21. For older kids, you might tell them you have 100 miles left in your road trip. If you are driving 60 miles per hour, how much more time do you have until you reach your destination? Rather than telling your child to work out of a math workbook or complete worksheets, which they may complain is “boring”, try integrating math into your day-to-day summer activities. Read more about these ideas at https://eblcoaching.com/how-to-avoid-the-summer-slide-and-get-ready-for-back-to-school/

Write in a journal 

Writing is a key skill for success, and one that becomes increasingly important as students progress through school. Help your child maintain their writing skills over the summer by encouraging them to write in a journal. This could a general task, like spending 15 minutes per day writing in their journal about any topic they wish. Alternatively, it can be activity-specific. For instance, if you take them to a water park one day, have them write about which slides they went on and foods they ate while at the park. Likewise, if they spend a day at camp, visiting grandparents, or playing baseball outside, have them create a journal entry on activities they did that day and parts that they did or did not like about it. Writing tutoring to build this skill may help as well. The more writing, the better!

Build skills by baking

Most kids love to bake, whether it’s brownies, cupcakes, or corn muffins. Why not build some learning into this fun activity? Start by pulling a recipe  and ask your child to measure out the ingredients required for the recipe, like 1.5 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons of oil, 1 teaspoon of salt, and so on, to help build measurement skills. You might also ask them how much more of each ingredient you would need if you doubled each recipe, or how much less you would need if you cut the recipe in half. You can have them weigh different items and work on conversions from ounces to pounds, or vice versa. Keep it fun (and delicious) and they will build key math skills along the way.

Summer is a time for fun and play, but learning should never be completely neglected. Help your child continue building their key academic skills and avoid the dreaded summer slide with these ideas. You can also try summer tutoring or specific tutoring in reading, writing, or math during summer break. In doing so, you will help set your child up for success in the new school year.

The post Help Your Child Avoid The Summer Slide appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Help your child prevent the all-too-common summer slide and transition with ease into the new 2019-2020 school year with these tips!

Ditch the Summer Slide
Your child is embracing the long days of summer, playing outside, jumping waves, and building sandcastles. With this time off from school, it’s easy to neglect academic skills. Yet summer is a long period of time, and without any focus on academic work, your child will likely have a hard time readjusting to school once the new year begins. Help your child prevent the all-too-common summer slide and transition with ease to the new school year with the ideas detailed below.

Take Advantage of Car Time
During the summer, many families embark on road trips. This may mean hours upon hours of time in the car. Instead of watching your child mindlessly glued to her iPad as the hours pass, play some road trip games that reinforce learning.‎ Try engaging your child in a game of Mad Libs, for instance, where one player is designated as the scribe and asks the other players for words to fill in blanks in a story, usually in the form of a part of speech (noun, pronoun, adjective, etc.). You’ll have some great family laughs while reinforcing important grammar and writing skills. You can also play “I Spy” with your preschooler to practice visual perception skills or play the classic License Plate game with older children to reinforce geography. To play this game, have one player write down the name of each state they see on a license plate while driving, with the goal being to find license plates that cover all 50 states. Keep the games engaging and fun, and time in the car will fly by!

Carve Out Some Daily Work Time
While it’s important for your child to indulge in the outdoor perks summer offers, try to carve out some work time each day. You can choose the increment of time that works best, but 20-30 minutes per day is ideal. Your child may choose to read a book, newspaper, or comic during this time, or even do other learning activities, like a word search or crossword puzzle. Try to make it a family activity with a learning game such as Scrabble or Boggle and you’ll build in some bonus bonding time. You don’t even have to label this time as “work time ” — keep it fun and your child won’t even realize they are practicing academic skills!

Do Experiments
Take advantage of warm, sunny days to complete experiments outside. For instance, go for a walk at a park or the beach and find a collection of rocks. Then lay them out next to one another and compare and contrast them. How are they the same? How are they different? What characteristics does each one have? Perhaps create a Venn Diagram on a whiteboard or large sheet of paper, listing the similarities in the middle and differences on each side. You can even have your child write a creative story that involves rocks (or bugs, or flowers, or whichever item you select) to practice creative writing skills. ‎You might have them do a research project on different types of rocks, how they are formed, where they are found, and so on. So many skills — including math, science, reading, and writing — can be reinforced with this type of activity.

Practice Money
For children who are in elementary school or above, try doing some money exercises throughout the summer to practice real-life math. If you stop at a convenience store, for instance, talk about which items you plan to buy and roughly how much each one will cost. Then tell your child that you will give them a $10 bill and ask roughly how much change they should receive. Do this activity in various places — carnivals, the supermarket, a coffee shop, and so on. This exercise will help your child grasp real-life math and money concepts.

Summer should be a time for rest, relaxation, and outdoor fun — but don’t let academics fall to the wayside! ‎Try doing these learning activities with your child and you will prevent the summer slide while preparing him for academic success when the new school year begins.

The post How to Avoid the Summer Slide and Get Ready for Back to School appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Help your child continue to build her academic skills and prevent the all too common “summer slide” with these fun ideas.

Summer is a time for outdoor games, poolside laughter, and fun in the sun. Yet, it is also a time when many kids lose valuable academic skills. In fact, research tells us that kids can lose up to three months of academic gains in reading and math over the summer. Help your child continue to build her academic skills and prevent the all too common “summer slide” with the ideas detailed below.

Read…a lot!

It’s easy to let regular reading time slip over the summer when days are long and activities often run late. Yet, it is important that kids continue reading on a consistent ‎basis throughout the course of the summer. This isn’t just limited to novels–your child can read newspapers, comic books, trivia books, short stories, or the like. You may even try setting up “family reading hour” (or portion of an hour) where all members of your family gather together for a pre-set time period and read. Try to lead by example and show your child how much joy reading can bring. In doing so, he will likely follow your lead and eventually come to enjoy the task.

Play (fun) learning games

Most kids enjoy playing games, so take advantage of down time this summer to play some education-based games that are still loads of fun. You can play Boggle, for instance, where you shake a tray filled with dice to form a grid of 16 letters. Players then have three minutes to create as many words as they can using the letters. You can also try playing Apples to Apples, where players build their language skills by matching red “object” cards to green “descriptive” cards and try to come up with the best pairs. To build your child’s vocabulary and reading skills, play Zingo!, where players match pictures and words, or you can play HiHo! Cherry-O with younger children to build foundational math skills, like number recognition, counting, and basic arithmetic.

Have fun in the kitchen!

To build your child’s math skills, ‎try cooking a meal or baking a dessert with him. If you decide to make brownies, for instance, ask your child to measure the correct amount of oil and water in a measuring cup. You may try “doubling” the recipe and ask him how much more of each ingredient you would now need, and how many more brownies you can now expect with the doubled ingredients. Have him read the recipe and directions to practice his reading skills, or perhaps have him write a menu for a meal you cook your family, or a review on each dish you created. The more fun and interactive you can make the process, the better!

Practice writing at the beach

For younger children, you can work on basic skills development, like letter and number writing, using sand at the beach, dirt at the park, or even flour in your kitchen. For instance, if you are practicing the letter p, have your child say the words “down, up, and around” out loud as she traces the letter in the sand, or “around, up, and down” as she writes the letter a. You might try spraying some shaving cream on a cookie tray and have her trace different letters and numbers using her finger for added tactile reinforcement. For basic math skills, have her count out a quantity of jelly beans or buttons, then ask her questions like, “If my friend gives me 2 j‎elly beans and another friend gives me 2 more jelly beans, how many jelly beans would I have all together?” or “If I had 5 jelly beans but I ate 2 of them, how many would I have left?” These types of exercises will help your child learn to solve basic addition and subtraction problems.

Electronic learning

Most kids love playing games on an iPad, so why not try integrating some learning-based apps? Try some of the following ones:

Starfall Learn to Read

Ages 4 and up

This is a great app for reinforcing basic reading skills. It includes 15 short books for kids to read that each emphasize a different sound pattern and contain animated videos, songs, and engaging characters. Each book also includes activities related to the story, including matching and fill-in-the-blank exercises.

Hungry Fish
Ages 4-8

This app is a helpful tool for building addition, subtraction, and mental math skills. To play, kids drag and combine numbers in bubbles, then “feed” them to a floating fish. When the fish is fed correct answers, it expands, and it shrinks when it does not receive correct answers. As players complete each level, they move on to more challenging ones, always receiving immediate feedback along the way.

Sentence Builder

Ages 6 and up

Your child can develop important grammar, sentence structure, and overall writing skills with this fun and engaging app. To play, students use slot machine-style wheels to select words, then create sentences describing various pictures. The app begins with basic sentences and later moves onto more complex ones. The images are bright and colorful, and students build critical sentence formation and writing skills.

Summer is a time when many kids lose key academic skills. Try these activities to help your child prevent “summer slide” and jump-start the new school year on a positive note.

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