Cozy chats about speech, language and learning

Reading

Unlock Your Student’s Learning Potential with Story Grammar & Graphic Organizers

Unlock Your Student’s Learning Potential with Story Grammar & Graphic Organizers

Story grammar plays a crucial role in enhancing children’s listening and reading comprehension for several reasons: Incorporating graphic organizers is particularly helpful in this process: Overall, understanding story grammar and using graphic organizers are essential tools in developing children’s listening and reading comprehension skills. They…

Mastering the ABCs: A Journey through Lowercase Letters

Mastering the ABCs: A Journey through Lowercase Letters

Useful information on why lowercase letters are important for literacy development and effective ways to teach and master lower-case-letters

Unlock the Power of Rhyming with Word Families

Unlock the Power of Rhyming with Word Families

Do you want to teach your student, child, or client valuable literacy skills? Rhyming is an important skill for children to learn in order to help them become better readers and writers. It can also be a difficult concept for some children to understand. Learning…

Rhyming is an Important Part of Learning to Read

Rhyming is an Important Part of Learning to Read

Learning to read can be a daunting task for any child. While it may seem like an insurmountable goal, rhyming can be a helpful tool to help your child become a successful reader. Research shows that the ability to recognize and produce rhyming words is…

What are the Five Essential Components of Reading?

What are the Five Essential Components of Reading?

In 2000, the National Reading Panel (NRP) submitted their final report on the most effective methods for teaching children to read. The NRP’s findings are still used today as the basis for federal literacy policy, including “No Child Left Behind.” So what exactly are the…

Promoting Literacy Development in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Promoting Literacy Development in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a lifelong developmental disorder that can impact an individual’s ability to communicate, interact socially, and develop literacy skills. People with ASD may have difficulty understanding the spoken word, producing language, and reading or writing words. Fortunately, there are many strategies…

How to Teach Narrative Structure

How to Teach Narrative Structure

“Once upon a time” we begin telling stories to our children even before they are born. Nighttime storytelling is part of our culture but do children understand the story structure? Understanding text structure aids in comprehension. It assists in anticipating and determining the information that…

How to Build Background Knowledge for Comprehension

How to Build Background Knowledge for Comprehension

Reading requires us to decode the words, understand the surface code of the words and sentence construction and then use our background knowledge to fill in the picture. But what happens if you don’t know anything about what you are reading? As an adult you…

Why Learning These 6 Essential Spelling Rules is Important

Why Learning These 6 Essential Spelling Rules is Important

I am a horrible speller. I feel that I have been born at the right time with the ability to use spell check and Grammarly when I write. When I was a beginner reader/speller I was instructed to memorize a spelling list for the week…

Why Learning the Alphabet is Important for Beginning Literacy

Why Learning the Alphabet is Important for Beginning Literacy

How many of us teach our young children the Alphabet Song? The ending of the song which children sing proudly is ” Now I know my ABC’s next time won’t you sing with me!” Why do we do this? Learning the alphabet is important for…