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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 Five Paragraph Essay Instruction

Many students struggle with writing and find the required steps both confusing and overwhelming. However, learning the "formula" behind an excellent essay can make the process of writing a relative breeze!  Engage Your Students in the Creative Process: Click This Image to Learn More I often help my students to develop metacognitive skills by asking them to create their own graphic organizers or manuals that can guide them through the sequence of steps required to complete an activity. What's more, when they are apart of the creative process, I find that they are more engaged as well as apt to use and share the resources. Prezi Makes Learning Fun and Memorable: Many of our students are masters on computers, and they love to learn about new technologies that can make learning both memorable and fun. Prezi is an online site that allows anyone to create engaging and dynamic presentations! They have some wonderful templates, or you can just create your own. I...
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10 Ways to Release Worries in the Classroom

With stringent common core demands, burdensome homework, and competition for high test grades, many students spend a lot of time worrying about school performance. However, many of these children do not know how to manage stress, and it can lead to sleepless nights, panic attacks, temper tantrums, health concerns, a case of learned helplessness, and even clinical levels of anxiety and depression. So, what can we do to help children manage the academic load while keeping a level head? Help your Students Understand the Negative Side Effects of Worrying: Worrying Interferes with Learning and Makes it Hard to Concentrate: If students are worrying, they are easily distracted and will likely miss important directions and academic content. Here is a great NY Times article on this: Click Here Worrying has a Negative Impact on Memory: Research suggests that stress and worries make it difficult for the brain to access memories. In fact, prolonged stress can cause an excessive amount o...
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Free, Multisensory, Learning Center Activity: How Many?

Making activities both game-like and multisensory helps to entice and engage young learners. There are simple facts that every student should commit to memory, and integrating color, tactile manipulatives and puzzle-like instructions can take these mundane tasks fabulously fun.  Free, Multisensory, Learning Center Activity: How Many? I created this free activity to help my students learn some important facts. Each piece can be printed and laminated, and then students can put the image together and fill in the “blanks” using a dry erase marker with the correct information. The free attachment offers all the materials for you to do this yourself. What’s more, this activity offers a great project or learning center idea that can be used time and time again. For a free copy of this activity, CLICK HERE . I would love to hear your thoughts. Cheers, Dr. Erica Warren Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator, and publisher of multisensory educational materials at...
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Fun Clothespin Orton Gillingham Remediation Ideas and More

Incorporating the fun factor can help to make any difficult lesson enjoyable. I found these cute, little, painted clothespins on Ebay, and I think it will take my lessons to a whole new level. I have color coded the vowels and consonants as well as the digraphs. There are so many ways I can use these clothespins to enhance my lessons! It will enhance my lessons for a number of reasons: Using these cute, colorful, mini clothespins that measure only 1 1/2 inches by 1/2 an inch will surely engage my learners. Opening and closing clothespins also helps to develop fine motor skills. Color-coding the letters can help the children differentiate between vowels and consonants. Color-coding the letters can also help students discriminate between the different types of syllables. If you look at the image above, the first two words are closed syllables, the third word is an open syllable, and the final word is a silent-e syllable. Placing digraphs on a single clothespin helps the kids ...
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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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How to Find the Right Graduate Program

It is always a difficult process to find the right graduate program. There are a plethora of options out there and locating the perfect place can be tricky and time consuming. I wanted to share my own personal anecdote as well as some recommendations. I hope that you find this helpful! What inspired this post was a question by one of my followers. Below you will find their question in blue and my answer in red. I am a special education teacher and have been for 20 years +. I also work as an adjunct professor for several Massachusetts colleges. I have my masters +60 additional graduate credits, but have yet to commit to a doctoral program because I cannot find one that really interests me. I really want to focus on the impact of movement and exercise, cross-body exercises and increased heart-rate on learning. How did you go about tailoring a degree program to meet your unique interests? I’m not sure where to even begin! Any help or advise you could give me would be so ap...
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Natural Strategies that Can Help Students Academic Abilities and Behaviors

More and more children are being medicated for school based problems related to attention and learning issues, and families are concerned about the short term and long term effects. In addition, most caregivers don’t want to mask the presenting symptoms. Instead, they want to get to the root cause of the problem.  What are Some Possible Causes that can be Addressed Naturally? There are three possible causes that can addressed without medications. First, there are increasing amounts of toxins and unhealthy, synthesized substances in our environment that have impacted our food chain and water supplies. For instance, toxic levels of mercury are often reported in many types of fish and professionals are continually warning us about the dangers of pesticides and genetically modified foods. Second, many available foods contain preservatives, additives and other chemicals that can negatively impact on our bodies and brains. A common additive, monosodium glutamate or MSG, is ...
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Word Collages and Wriggle Writing Make Writing Fun and Engaging

Bringing creative ideas and images into the writing process can make class work and homework assignments fun and memorable for students. I love teaching my students how to create word collages in the shape of an image. In addition, I find that my students love wriggle writing, too, which allows them to write their stories and poems in a nonlinear fashion. The Process of Creating a Word Collage: By Erica Warren Copyright 2013 1. Provide your students a theme, such as their favorite animal, a friend, a self-portrait, an event, a concept and so forth. 2. Share with them that they will be creating a word collage using phrases, sentences and/or words that they can type, write or cut out of magazines. 3. Indicate that they can place their words, phrases and sentences randomly, or they can organize them within a traced image on a piece of poster board. Then, show them some examples. 4. As an added option, students can be encouraged to add small objects ...
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DIY 5 Paragraph Essay Templates: A Creative, Metacognitive Tool

Although there is a common formula to writing a five-paragraph essay, students soon learn that each teacher has their own unique preferences. I can remember a teacher that didn’t allow students to use the transition, “on the other hand,” unless they had already used, “on the one hand.” Some insist on transitional sentences, others do not. Some want a student’s thesis statement in the middle of the introduction, while others want it at the beginning or even at the end. As a result, students have to adjust their writing to accommodate each new teacher. How can this be done? Help Your Students by Reviewing Your Expectations: At the beginning of the school year, it is important for each teacher to share his or her expectations, preferences and requirements so that each student can prepare for success from the very beginning. Provide a lesson and a handout that reviews the 5 paragraph essay. Make sure to discuss everything you want in your introduction, body paragraphs, and con...
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