In my experience, many students who struggle with reading rely heavily on their brain’s tendency to look for patterns or reasons why in what they are learning. So if we group like elements together and teach them at one time, it goes a long way towards demystifying spelling patterns for them.
Orton Gillingham has his list of red words: words that cannot be decoded. He also designates some high-frequency words as green words or those you can go ahead and decode. You can find 643 words in our inventory which are colorfully stylized to make learning them easy for your children.
There are specific strategies we can employ when we teach that will help create a rich and supportive environment for the right-brained learners in our classrooms. The strategies are not difficult to execute but for the children who benefit from them, they can be game changers.
I've come to believe that if a child is struggling with memorizing spelling words, she might also have difficulty with reading – and vice versa. The figure below shows the process of sound-spelling pattern acquisition and how a child uses it to advance in reading.
I have worked extensively with children who struggle with reading. If there is a gap in understanding, that gap might as well be a mile wide. Many gaps arise from teaching reading in a sequential, left-brained manner. Right-brained kids will not learn material that is presented verbally, sequentially, and abstractly.
