Learning Specialist and Teacher Materials

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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...

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 ...

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 colo...

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...

The Difference between a Tutor, Learning Specialist and an Educational Therapist: Choosing Your Best Option

Is your child struggling in school? Are you considering outside help, but you just don’t know where to start? Finding the right individual to work with your child is often a difficult task. What’s more, it’s challenging to determine the type of professional that is required. To help you with the process, here is a breakdown of the responsibilities and expertise you should expect from these three professions. Tutor: A tutor is a private instructor that has an expertise in a specific school subject. They teach or re-teach classroom concepts, and they may or may not have formal experience or training in education. Many offer assistance with homework, and some can offer advice with time management or study skills. Learning Specialist: A learning specialist is a private instructor for students, parents, and teachers. They focus on metacognitive as well as compensatory learning strategies. Many also offer instruction, training and remediation in specific academic a...

5 Fun Ways to Teach the Vowel Combinations or Vowel Teams

1) Place the vowel combinations on a balloon with a permanent marker, or have the students do it themselves. Pass the balloon from student to student. They will then say the first vowel combination they see and then they share the sound that it makes. In a more advanced version, they can share a word that uses that vowel combination. 2) If you are looking for something more durable than a balloon, you can purchase playground balls and write the vowel combinations on them. 3) Use old scrabble tiles. Place two tiles together to make a vowel combination and then let the students come up with as many words as they can by adding additional tiles. Write all the words down that are created into a list for all the students to see. For added fun, they can add up all the numbers on the tiles to gain points. 4) If you don’t have scrabble tiles, you can purchase small kitchen or bathroom tiles and write the letters on them with permanent markers. If you get the sm...

Reading Assessment for Orton Gillingham and Phonics Based Reading Programs

I just wanted to announce my newest publication: GoodSensory Learning Reading Assessment . It was created for teachers, reading specialists, learning specialists and parents who need a simple but comprehensive reading evaluation instrument that can direct instruction so specific reading needs can be targeted. It works seamlessly with any phonics or Orton-Gillingham based reading program. Moreover, the evaluation can also be utilized post remedial intervention to define cognitive growth as well as areas that require continued attention and support. Twenty three, quick subtests are administered to a single student, and the test can be administered in one or more sitting(s). If you are interested in seeing more, feel free to click on the following link, where you can a few pages. If you like it, you can purchase the item too. http://goodsensorylearning.com/reading-assessment.html Cheers, Dr. Erica Warren Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illus...

Help for Struggling Readers

Many students struggle with the cognitive skills needed to be good readers. With weak abilities in the areas of visualization, tracking, visual processing, auditory processing and/or memory, the practice of reading can soon become, frustrating, tiresome and laborious. When kids pair negative associations and feelings with books, they may avoid picking up a book altogether. For the same reason that you would not build a sky scraper on a weak foundation, for these kids, it is important to strengthen the individual areas of cognition first. Many of these skills can be developed through game like activities that kids enjoy. Here are a few ideas that you might like to try: 1) When reading to your children have fun sharing your visualizations with one another by imagining what the settings and characters look like. You can even encourage your children to come up with their own illustrations for stories. 2) Pull out a newspaper and encourage your child...

Alphabet Cookies - Practical and Delicious

Now you can take your favorite cookie recipe and cut the dough into the alphabet! You can use it for learning the letters, spelling names, and even making words and sentences. Now you can take your favorite cookie recipe and cut the dough into the alphabet! You can use it for learning the letters, spelling names, and even making words and sentences. If you don't want to use them for cookies, you could use it to cut up a pan of jello! Finally, if you want to make it into something that is not edible, you could use the cutters to make the letters out of clay or play-dough See below for a link where you can buy them! Have fun! 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...

5 Strategies that Make Learning the Alphabet a lot of Fun

Learning the letters can be a lot of fun! Here are 5 Strategies that your children will be sure to love. 1) Fill a tray with a light coating of sand, ground coffee, flour, or rice. Make sure that the tray is a contrasting color so that when the kids make the letters, they can see the surface of the tray underneath. 2) Form the individual letters out of food that starts with that letter. For example, make the letter B out of sliced bananas, carve the letter O in the rind of an orange, or make the letter M out of mustard. 3) Have the children find the letters in the environment. For example, they might see that two intersecting branches make the letter T, a portion of a ladder makes the letter H, or an Allen wrench or hex key makes the letter L. 4) Boil spaghetti and cool it. While it is still pliable let the children form the different letters. Then let the letters dry and paint them. 5) Take pictures of the letters that the children made in the prior activities. Print th...

Inference Activities Ideas, Freebie and Workbook Link

Inferences are often tricky to teach and challenging for students to learn. They are abstract notions or concepts that are implied through language or images. Therefore, concrete ways of learning have to be placed aside and students have to learn to uncover hidden messages. Personally, I like to use advertisements for my lessons. Here are a number of strategies that can help you to teach this skill: 1) Magazine advertisements often have hidden messages to help entice buyers. Look at magazine ads and discuss the inferences. Consider the colors, backgrounds, expressions, layouts and more. 2) Likewise, billboards offer inferences. Look at all the details in the image and discuss what the billboards are trying to sell and what in the images makes you want to buy that product. 3) Similarly, television commercials can offer some wonderful oppo...

Alphabetizing Exercises Help to Develop Memory and Organizational Skills

Alphabetizing is an important skill to master. It helps develop organizational skills, executive functioning abilities and it even improves memory. Furthermore, if we sequence materials that we are encoding into our brains, it makes it easier to access at a later date. In addition, when we apply these principles to everyday life, it can help us to access our personal materials quicker and more efficiently. Moreover, it is a skill that is needed in many employment positions. The problem is that most alphabetizing activities are dull and boring. Alphabet Roundup is my newest product, and it makes the process both fun and memorable. Four different decks from beginners to advanced can be sorted and also played in a card game. Amusing images and names will keep all the players chuckling. Come Check it out!! http://goodsensorylearning.com/alphabetizing-games.html Cheers, Dr. Erica Warren Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator, and publisher of multisensory educati...

Learning Specialist and Teacher Materials - Good Sensory Learning

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