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Showing posts from October, 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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Cognitive Exercises Solve Reading and Math Difficulties

Many young learners struggle with basic reading and math because the cognitive skills required to do these tasks are weak. Therefore, these children need to strengthen these processing areas before they attempt to learn how to decode words and execute basic computations. What are the Core Areas of Cognition Required for Basic Reading and Math? Sequential processing and memory: The ability to scan, make sense of, and remember information in a sequence or series. Auditory processing and memory: The ability to listen, make sense of, and remember information that is heard. Visual processing and memory: The ability to scan, make sense of, and remember visual information and symbols. Attention to detail: The ability to thoroughly and accurately perceive and consider all the details and then determine the most important piece or pieces of information. Speed of processing: The ability to perform simple repetitive cognitive tasks quickly and fluently. Spatial skills: The ability to m
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Reading Comprehension Strategies for Stories

Helping your students to develop excellent reading comprehension skills can help them to succeed in academics as well as life. But simply decoding words is not enough. Successful readers must remember content, understand inferences, maintain focus and make connections. It is a comprehensive process that requires mindful pre-reading activities, reading activities and post-reading activities. Pre-reading Strategies Reading a summary of the chapter helps students to conceptualize main ideas so that they can read deeper and prepare to visualize the content. Questioning prior knowledge about the topic can help students make connections and it can capture their interest. Skimming a prior chapter or reviewing personal notes can help to bring back the story line or main idea for the reader. Predicting what will happen in the story can help to engage learners imaginations and creativity. Reading Strategies Underlining important characters, settings and events can help the
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Free Vowel Combination Game

Using games to teach students the vowel combinations or vowel teams can be a wonderful way to entice your students and brings the fun factor into your lesson. Here is a free game, Voweleos, that I created that is similar to the game Dominoes. One of 100s of reading games at GoodSensoryLearning.com For two to five players (for 3-5 players make two or more sets mixed together). The vowel combinations can be: Copied onto 3” by 5” index cards that are cut in half horizontally Written onto rectangular tiles Printed on card stock and cut Directions : Play on a surface with a lot of cleared space or play on the floor. Shuffle the deck or tiles. Decide which player begins and play proceeds in a clockwise rotation. Each player or team should be dealt ten cards or tiles. You can play open or closed handed. Beginners should always play with their vowel combinations visible to everyone, so that the teacher or parent can assist them. Place the rest of the
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12 Memory Strategies That Maximize Learning

Most students have had the experience of knowing an answer, but they are unable to access the information in a stressful moment. This is a common difficulty when students are taking a test, as anxiety can block recall. In fact, one may be able to recall the first letter of a name they are trying to conjure from memory but fail to retrieve the whole word. In addition, they may be able to describe the word or concept but only call to mind similar words or concepts. The brain is much like a filing cabinet, storing information that you have learned, and if a student quickly packs information into their head in a random or disorganized fashion, uncovering the needed material can be a challenge. Like finding a favorite shirt in a messy room, a student may waste a lot of time searching for the right word, or even worse, they may not be able to demonstrate their knowledge when called upon in class or when recording answers on a test. This can be frustrating and discouraging. However, if s
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