Welcome
Information and resources you need to deal with learning problems.
What do I do now?
After much struggle, hard work and many tears my 7 year old child was still having trouble learning to read. We were both becoming frustrated and discouraged.
That was the beginning of my journey and search for ways to help children, teens and adults who are struggling to learn the basics of reading and math.
There were so many plans, programs, books and opinions! I didn't know where to turn!
I bought many items and spent a lot of money searching for the perfect program to help my child.
What did I find?
There is no perfect program!
Every child
and
Every situation
is different.
ONE program or method does NOT fit all.
The KEY?
You must have the ability to evaluate the situation:
"What is going on here?"
And then...
You must have an understanding and knowledge of what to do about it.
I've only just begun to list some of the information and resources that have helped me. It is a broad subject and I hope to eventually cover a lot of territory. This is just a beginning. If you'd like to be notified when new information is posted, just send me an email and I'll let you know.
Jan
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Overcoming Learning Problems
What to do when you discover that your child is struggling with schoolwork.
When we come to realize that our child is falling behind or not able to learn what most of his or her schoolmates are currently learning it is only natural to start asking questions. Why is this happening? Is my child at fault? Could I have prevented this? Or, why hasn't the teacher done something?
Vowels
One of the most important foundational aspects of teaching phonics is an understanding of the vowel sounds. Many times, even as adults, we have difficulty knowing exactly how to pronounce a new word if we don’t know the vowel sounds.
Teaching the vowel sounds should come after teaching a few of the consonant sounds. So, after your student has a good grasp of a few consonants then we can teach the vowels.
Short Vowels
I like to teach the short vowels using simple words, especially for my adult students. I make them a “cheat sheet” using the following:
at
egg
it
odd
up
As you can see, most adult readers can easily recognize these words and they are easily taught to beginning readers. We can also easily over accentuate the vowel at the beginning of the word “aaaaat” to put emphasis on the vowel sound.
I prefer this method to model the vowels, instead of putting emphasis on the vowel at the end of a consonant combination, which sometimes leads to mispronunciations. For instance, look at “m-a” (as in man) – we can stretch out the “a” sound by saying “maaaan” - but, just be aware that there is an inclination for some parents, when trying to say the individual sounds slowly, to say something like this: “muh - aaaa”
It should sound more like this: “mmmaaaa” – the sounds blending seamlessly together.
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