Skip to main content

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

Memory Strategy: Hooking's a Fun and Memorable Way to Learn

As an educational therapist and learning specialist, hooking is one of the most valuable memory strategies that I teach my students. In fact, tedious study sessions can be transformed into a memorable and often hilarious task.
hooking memory strategies














What is Hooking?
Hooking is a memory strategy in which you use the term itself that you are trying to remember to guide you to the answer. In other words, you search for clues in the word. You can "hook" auditorily, to the sound or sounds in the term or visually, to the way the word looks. Occasionally, you might find a hook in the word that does not guide you directly to the answer, but you can often create a story or visualization that will make it work.

Visual Hooking Example:
Take the Spanish word ojo. Ojo means eye, and it is easy to make the word look as though it has eyes.
pints in a quart
Auditory Hooking Example:
Mesa means table in Spanish. Mesa sounds like messy and I tell my students to think of a “mesa table.”

Auditory/Visual Examples:
If a student wants to learn how many pints there are in a quart, I say that pints sounds like pines and a quart sounds like a tennis court. I then ask them to imagine two pine trees, playing tennis in a quart.

Take the distributive property in mathematics. In the middle of the word you can see the word rib. I tell my students that they have to draw in the “ribs” to solve the problem.

Learning about the different types of angles lends itself to some fun strategies. I tell my students that acute angles are “a cute” type of angle, obtuse are “obese” or fat angles, and right angles are “right on” and I show them that they can find the right angle in the “thumbs up” gesture. 
 
When my students are learning about the cell organelles one of my favorite hooks is for the golgi body, which manages intracellular transportation. I encourage my students to think of it as the “Go go Golgi” and ask them to visualize a shipping company like FedEx but the name is “Go Go Golgi.” 

Teaching Students to Create Their Own Hooks:
Creating hooks for your students can be helpful, but if students create their own hooks, memory works even better. Self-generating strategies gets students to make their own personal connections and connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge is a well research technique to enhance learning. What’s more, when two people look at a term, they don’t necessarily see or hear the same strategy. So, for example, take the word, benevolent. There are many hooks that could be created to help one remember the meaning of the word, but the question is what does the student hear or see in the word? Benevolent means, kind-hearted, and you could use any of the following hooks:
  • benevolent: If someone lent you something, that was a benevolent gesture.”
  • benevolent: Perhaps you know of someone named Ben or Len and they are benevolent.
  • benevolent: The Latin root means “good” and you could make that connection that good people are benevolent.
  • be-ne-volent: When you break up the word, it sounds like “be not violent.” One could that that the opposite of violence is benevolence.
  • benevolent: Right in the middle of the word, you can find the word love written backwards. One might think, when two people fall in love they are benevolent towards one another.
Teaching the hooking strategy to your students can help them to enhance their memories and find joy and laughter while learning. I hope you found this blog post helpful! Please feel free to write a comment and share your own hooking strategies.

Cheers, Dr. Erica Warren
Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator, and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials. She is also the director of Learning to Learn and Learning Specialist Courses.

· Blog: https://learningspecialistmaterials.blogspot.com/
· YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/warrenerica1
· Podcast: https://godyslexia.com/
· Store: http://www.Goodsensorylearning.com/ & www.dyslexiamaterials.com
· Courses: http://www.learningspecialistcourses.com/
· Newsletter Sign-up: https://app.convertkit.com/landing_pages/69400

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

88 Assistive Technology Tools for Struggling Learners

Making sense of the complex weave of assistive technology devices and applications for struggling learners can be a confusing and frustrating chore. This blog talks about 15 different types of assistive technology that can benefit struggling learners with links to my favorite tools. For a more comprehensive discussion of these technologies  CLICK HERE Comprehensive Technologies: Don Johnston Inc. - $. Kurzweil 3000 - $   TextHelp - $ ClaroRead - $ Planning, Time Management, and Organization: iStudies Pro - Free/$ - Remember the Milk - Free - RescueTime - $ Strict Workflow  - Free - Wunderlist - Free - Text to Speech: AnyBook Personal Reader - $ Audible.com - $ IntoWords - $ NaturalReaders - Free/$ Project Gutenberg & Librivox - Free Raz-Kids - $ Read & Write for Google Chrome - Free/$ Read OutLoud - $ Snap&Read Universal - $ Voice Dream Reader - Free/$ Voice Typing - Free Speech to Text: Co-writer Un

10 Free Ways to Improving Visual Tracking for Weak Readers

While reading, tracking across the page from one line to the next can be tricky when the text is small, but for students with dyslexia or weak reading skills, it can be a problem regardless of the font size.  So why is this the case?  Perhaps one of the problems is poor tracking skills. What Exactly is Tracking? Tracking is the ability for one's eyes to move smoothly across the page from one line of text to another. Tracking difficulties happen when eyes jump backward and forward and struggle to stay on a single line of text.  This results in problems such as word omissions, reversals, eye fatigue, losing your place while reading and most importantly it can impact normal reading development.   Can Tracking be Improved? Tracking can be improved by strengthening eye muscles as well as getting your eyes and brain to work cooperatively.  There are three eye movements that need to be developed:   Fixations: The ability to hold one's eyes steady without moving

Do I have dyslexia - Explaining Symptoms and Myths for Kids

What do you do when you learn that your child has dyslexia? Should you hide this diagnosis to protect them from labels and misunderstandings, or should you tell them? If you do decide to tell them, how do you do this? Can you help them to overcome any potential fears or misunderstandings? These are the questions that I will answer in this blog that includes kid-friendly graphics. What are the Benefits of Telling Your Child That He or She Has Dyslexia? Educating your child with dyslexia about the common signs and misconceptions can help them to: understand that they learn in a different way than other kids that don’t have dyslexia.  shed negative labels such as stupid, careless, unmotivated and lazy. correct any misunderstandings. identify with other successful people that have or had dyslexia. acquire the needed intervention and instruction in school. learn that many people with dyslexia have strengths that others do not have. Individuals with dyslexia are often: great