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Showing posts from February, 2013

100 Powerful Learning Specialist and Educational Therapy Materials

This week I wanted to tell you about my online store, Good Sensory Learning. I’m Dr. Erica Warren, and I established this site so I could share all the materials that I have created over the last 20+ years as a learning specialist and educational therapist. When I first began my private practice, Learning to Learn, I had great difficulty finding fun and multisensory materials for my students that were effective and engaging. So back in 2005, I made it my mission to design and distribute high-end, remedial products as well as memorable, motivating lessons that bring delight to learning. If you would like to try a free sampling of my activities , CLICK HERE . How Are the Products Organized at Good Sensory Learning? You can download my Free Printable Catalog or you can browse the site using the grey “search all products” bar in the top right of any page with keywords such as dyslexia, working memory, and executive functioning. What’s more, drop down menus in the red banner allow you t
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Free Money Game Idea

Integrating games into academic lessons ignites the fun factor, makes instruction multisensory and grabs the attention of even the most discouraged learners. I, too, enjoy the creative process and love pulling out my craft and scrapbook materials, so the new game of the week brings excitement and wonder into the classroom. This week, I created the Fun House Money Game to help students develop their skills identifying and adding pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Items needed: 1) small box 2) craft or scrapbook paper 3) glue 4) scissors 5) long table or a melamine shelf 6) marbles or shuffle board pieces (I purchased the shuffle board pieces on Amazon and included the link below.) 7) play money or real change in a small basket or plastic bin Process: 1) Remove the bottom of the box with scissors. 2) Cover the box with colorful craft paper. 3) Cut four doorways/holes in the side as illustrated. 4) Label the doorways: pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters
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Language Arts Letter Cubes: Fun Literacy Center Freebie

I love to use foam blocks for all sorts of language arts fun. Most recently, I created a game that my students adore. Here are the steps so you can create it too. 1) You can purchase colorful foam cubes on Amazon for a very reasonable price. I included a link at the bottom of the post. 2) Select 12 cubes and with a permanent marker add the vowels and consonants as suggested in the table below. 3) Assign the point value on the bottom right hand corner. This will also help the players to orient the letters. For example, the letter M will look like the letter W when it is upside-down but as long as the number indicating the point value is in the bottom right hand corner, players can recognize that they need to rotate the letter to the proper orientation. Also, using capital letters helps with letter confusion. Click on image to learn more 4) Other items needed to play: a timer a set of 12 colored cubes with the letters and point values for each player. 5) How to Play
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Learning Center Ideas: Free, Fun Phonics Activities

It’s wonderful when giggles of joy and excitement ring through the classroom as young students eagerly learn the skills needed to be proficient readers. Learning centers or reading centers are often the place where this can happen, but the trick to tickling your students attention often lies in multisensory, interactive activities or games. Here is a fun phonemic awareness activity I designed that you can make with old recycled pill or vitamin containers and other common household goods. It’s a wonderful learning center idea that will help students blend phonics sounds into words. Materials and setup:       1) Collect and clean old vitamin or pill containers. I like to use the clear, colorful ones. 2) Decide upon the playing pieces. I use a 1 inch hole puncher with thick cardstock, large lima beans, or wooden craft discs. 3) Place consonants, blends, digraphs, word endings or more onto both sides of the playing pieces. I like to color code the pie
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10 Strategies that Transform Passive Learners into Active Learners

Students’ forearms prop heavy heads and eye lids become fatigued and weighty. Information fills the room, but the restless audience remains impervious as attention is stolen by fleeting thoughts and boredom. If this is a common scene at your school, most likely the learning environment is passive. Although a passive learning environment can accommodate large numbers of students, it is often an ineffective scholastic milieu. In contrast, an active learning environment should have the opposite effect on students. This way of teaching encourages creativity, self directed learning, mindfulness, interaction, discussion and multisensory ways of processing . So what can I do to nurture active learning? 1) Help your students understand the difference between active and passive learning. 2) Encourage your students to complete the free Passive vs. Active Learning Profile offered free here . 3) Let your students brainstorm things they can do to become active learn
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