When students are struggling - it’s hard to know where to start and what the most important steps are in providing support to get them to where they need to be.

After working with hundreds of students, and evaluating thousands of students, we’ve realized that the most important thing that parents and educators can do to support struggling students actually has nothing to do with intervention or tutoring, accommodations, modifications, IEP or 504 Plans…

Dyscalculia (dis-cal-Q-lee-uh) is another term that is used synonymously with Specific Mathematics Disorder.

Basically, it can be used to describe a student or adult who struggles with mathematic concepts and their foundational constructs. When we consider dyscalculia, we have to think about all the requirements of mathematics. Mathematics requires an incredibly complex set of skills that require multiple connections in the brain to come together quickly.

Dysgraphia is another term that is used synonymously with Disorder of Written Expression.

Basically, it can be used to describe a student or adult who struggles producing written content for a number of specific reasons.

When we consider dysgraphia, we have to think about all the requirements of writing. Writing is an incredibly complex task that requires multiple connections in the brain to come together quickly.

So often we hear from frustrated parents that they are receiving a run-around from their school. As a parent, when our child is struggling we want answers.

However, it can be complicated and sometimes it feels like you’re being told different things by different people!

So we are bringing back the holiday phonological awareness cards because we LOVE the holidays. Hopefully, you can incorporate some holiday fun into your week leading up to the Winter Break.

This fun activity is meant to support syllable segmenting, phoneme segmenting, spelling, and written work.

So if you have or know of a child who is struggling academically - hopefully they’ve been able to move through the first step of our 3 Step Assess - Design - Implement process.

Once a student has been assessed, we can begin to design an appropriate plan.

One of the most important things we have to consider when we are supporting struggling students is:

How we will measure student progress?

This is absolutely CRITICAL in making sure that the plan we have designed to help them get back on track is actually working. This is proof that we are on track.

As parents of struggling students, we need to be requesting this information.

As educators responsible for delivering on student plans and goals we need to be sure we are tracking this information.

So the question becomes, what on earth are we looking for and how do we appropriately measure student progress?

In order to close the gap, we need to have appropriate goals based on individual student needs. As part of an IEP goals are set in specific areas. If a student is struggling in a specific area (e.g., language skills, motor ability, reading, writing, math, etc) they should receive goals in those specific areas.

As you know, we are obsessed with helping students reach their highest potential. In order to do this you must follow the ASSESS -> DESIGN -> IMPLEMENT framework. First, we must assess students with a combination of formal and informal assessment measures. Then we must design an appropriate plan and finally, we must implement the plan at the highest level.

The process of diagnosing dyslexia can often feel like this huge mysterious task! It is truly this multiple step challenge for parents, educators, medical professionals, and other professionals working with struggling students. Let’s break this down.

This week we are so excited to share information on identifying student challenges.

One of the most challenging aspects of helping a struggling reader is understanding specifically where and why they are struggling.

Once we can understand the specific areas in which a student is breaking down and/or the cause of the breakdown we can begin providing targeted instruction and intervention.

In honor of dyslexia awareness month, we wanted to take this opportunity to dispel some common myths about dyslexia and to provide further information to go check out if you’re worried your child or one of your students may have dyslexia.

Let’s dive right in…

We are wrapping up the 5 Core Components of Literacy this week with the final component, arguably the most important component, comprehension!

The end goal of reading is obviously…

Reading Comprehension

So how do we make sure that students are able to effectively comprehend what they read?

Reading fluency is really important however, we need to be careful not to over-emphasize its importance as one of the core components of literacy. I say this because Reading Fluency is one of the most common goals you will see created for struggling students.

This month we’ve been talking all about the 5 Core Components of Literacy. Today, we wanted to jump into an extremely important and yet often overlooked part of literacy instruction.

Many educators in the field have a love hate relationship with phonics. In the sense that some educators love a phonics approach one week and hate it the next (it can be extremely difficult to organize it all for Pete’s sake). And…some educators LOVE a phonics-based approach and others hate it in favor of a more whole-language approach.

Phonological Awareness is the understanding of the sound structure of our English language. This is a critical component of literacy development and must be included in effective reading instruction programs!

We cannot begin to “sound words out” if we don’t understand that letters represent sounds that string together to read words or pull apart to spell words.

We all know that this can be such a sticking point for our dyslexic kiddos. It's important to note that many students display difficulty with b/d until the end of second grade or about the age of 8. By the time a child is 8 years old the dreaded b/d reversal should be pretty much gone.