Dear Student Guardians,
Here is a list of activities that we do during the course of the week. We are quite busy and the time goes very fast! Working with your student is a pleasure.
a. Rapid Naming: Some classes are given a chart to name all of the letters on the chart four or more times in under 1 minute. They generally do very well with this and move on to additional charts or additional activities fairly quickly. Advanced classes will start to replace these activities with word profiles, etymology (the study of words), etc. This activity helps prepare and build students up to improved fluency and accuracy.
b. Handwriting: We work on a letter at a time, naming the strokes, practicing by skywriting, tracing and copying and finally writing. Cursive handwriting has been studied and proven to be of great benefit to those who struggle with handwriting and due to the letter differences it resolves reversal issues that may persist. For those who don't struggle with handwriting, cursive handwriting proves to be far more efficient and with speed and legibility comes greater freedom to focus on content when writing and note taking. For more information on dyslexia and dysgraphia please visit the following presentation: https://www.neuhaus.org/document.doc?id=229

c. Reading Decks: Every time we learn a new concept, such as consonants, words, or syllables, we add a card behind the appropriate deck divider. Students usually enjoy watching their decks grow along with their obtained knowledge and skills in decoding words.
d. Spelling Deck: Students are taught the different ways that sounds can be spelled in the English language, such as c, k, and ck are all ways to spell the /k/ sound in the English language.
e. Word Part Deck: Teaches the students the concepts of base word, suffix, and derivative (base word + a suffix). Beginning classes are slowly just starting out this deck, while students who have spent a year or more in the program have a much more extensive deck of suffixes followed by prefixes from which to review and practice.
f. Concept: Most days a new concept is introduced. Our advanced classes cover fewer concepts and work on more comprehension, composition and fluency skills.
g. Reading Practice: During this time we review our regular word deck, sound out and code a reading practice page. Reading practice pages are kept in the student's notebook and can be reviewed at any time. When we code words on the reading practice sheets, we learn how to visually represent the sounds of words and what patterns to look for in words to tell us what coding is needing. This skill is of great value when one comes across a new word and may be unsure how to decide which sounds the vowels may make. As lessons advance, advance skills are taught in how to divide the syllables of a word. This skill allows a student to have the tools needed to decode unknown multiple syllable words which can be very intimidating to decode when reading.
h. Spelling Practice: We use the Scientific Spelling Method. Each student has their own spelling book where they list spelling patterns on the appropriate pages. Sometimes we revisit pages to add words as our knowledge base grows with each passing concept that is taught. During this section of the lesson we also may introduce a spelling rule and learn how to identify words using this spelling rule as well as how to apply the spelling rules.
i. Extended Reading and Writing: We use one page readers and MTA Readers to practice reading for accuracy, fluency, paying close attention to punctuation to affect meaning, and reading as we are talking to a friend. We use graphic organizers to summarize the story and practice retelling stories. A lot of work takes place in theses lessons, especially in the advanced classes. In the advanced classes this section of a lesson starts to take up majority of most lessons and will also include more writing of a variety of compositions as well as more in depth multi-sensory grammar lessons.
j. Oral Language: Each unit we work on consists of naming, describing, listening to a story, retelling the story, writing a story from a prompt and editing the story the next day. In the advanced classes this practice is interwoven into their comprehension and fluency passage and writing lessons as well as many other invaluable skills such as working on individual words/vocabulary building on graphic organizers.
All concepts, such as syllables, spelling rules, etc. are reviewed continuously to ensure mastery and retention. Each time we learn a new concept, we determine how it fits with our previous knowledge. Our lessons are all about multi-sensory self-discovery with academic language and literacy.
Time permitting, I also read aloud a story. We always start off recalling where we last left the story and discuss what might be developing with our characters in the story. We are currently reading a Newberry Medal Award book, A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. It is now a major motion picture.

Thank you for the opportunity to work with your amazing Gator!
Sincerely,