SOI LOCAN: Reaching Out to Malawi, Africa

LOCAN is a reading program for non-readers - primarily those that are figural learners. All children who are preliterate or non-literate will benefit from this program. It uses picture-characters (glyphs) to represent words, so every word in the LOCAN language has its own glyph. Almost exactly a year ago, my husband and I were sitting in the living room of a dear friend, visiting with two recent acquaintances. One of our new friends, a lady from Kentucky, is the director of a mission in Malawi, Africa. The other new friend is a pastor and leader of the community, church, and…

Summer School or Summer Camp?

It happens every spring. I get a frantic call from a parent of a child who is about to be held back a grade in school if the child does not attend summer school. Sometimes, the child is in public school and struggled with math, reading, or everything, and has the state testing results to “prove” it. Other times, the child is in private school and is not able to keep up with the private school’s accelerated program. This year I received a call from Leo’s mother, Nina. Leo is a small, 12-year-old handsome Mexican-American boy with a smile that…

Summer Means Smarter

As a teacher and SOI Practitioner, summer is a time of relaxation, recreation, and connecting with friends and family. However, I have found it’s also a time to work on needed foundational learning abilities with students in my school and other schools in our area. Parents have more free time to bring their children to our center, and some parents are looking for ways to keep their children’s minds and bodies engaged in learning. Juggling sessions around kids’ vacations and other summer activities can be challenging! We created a Summer Punch Card where parents could buy 16, 12, or 8…

Building a Real Student Support Team

YOUR SCHOOL CAN DEVELOP A VERY PROVEN WAY OF ADDRESSING RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION (RTI) THROUGH YOUR STUDENT SUPPORT TEAM AND HAVE STRATEGICALLY TAILORED INTERVENTIONS TO MEET INDIVIDUAL STUDENT NEEDS. What if you were able to... anticipate, identify, and intervene with ninety percent of your “at-risk” students in kindergarten or first grade help eliminate students’ self-esteem issues related to failure in school bypass reliance on the observations of overextended classroom teachers for most intervention referrals develop an individual and developmentally appropriate plan to effectively intervene with students by the first semester of kindergarten develop an efficient, systematic, easily documentable Student Support…

SOI Basic Reader

Do you have students who have trouble reading? This program could be your answer! Basic Reader is a complete reading program designed for elementary age students who are struggling with reading. There are three major causes of reading difficulties: students do not have the necessary perceptual skills; students are not ready cognitively; or the teaching method does not match the students learning style. Basic Reader addresses all of these causes and helps students read better in five easy steps. The goal of this program is to enable students to read. To reach that goal, we need to achieve these enabling…

The Two Most Important Variables in Education

The entire movement toward teaching-to-the-test can be boiled down to two achievement variables: comprehension and time – how much is learned and how long it took. In almost every achievement metric, one of these variables is held constant – and the other is the variable of measure. So, the prevailing paradigm in almost all formal education is to hold time constant and have comprehension be the variable. An important corollary to the achievement axiom often goes unnoticed; namely, if the established education has opted for lock-step instruction, then it has already opted for the paradigm of holding time constant and…

The Effectiveness of IPP Remediation

The effectiveness of IPP remediation is linked to the order in which abilities are remediated and to the completeness of the program. Over a two and a half year period, I worked closely with a school that described itself as offering an alternative school experience for students who were both gifted and had learning issues. As you are aware, there is a profile for the gifted/learning disabled student which Mary Meeker described as ‘mountains and valleys.' In the school where I was assisting, many of the students did not have a lot of gifted cognitive abilities. However, all the students…

Opening the Venetian Blinds

I read with dismay an article in the Washington Post about the Obama administration’s new plans to tighten oversight of states’ special education programs by applying “more stringent criteria” for outcomes. Unfortunately, this means the standards will be based on standardized tests. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday that for the first time his department will also consider outcomes such as: how well special-education students score on standardized tests, the gap in test scores between students with and without disabilities, the high school graduation rate for disabled students, and other measures of achievement. “Every child, regardless of income, race, background,…

If Teaching Were the Problem

If teaching was the problem, tutoring would be the answer. When school starts, it is a positive thing for many children. With new shoes, colorful backpacks, high hopes and aspirations, they climb onto buses, exit automobiles, and walk expectantly into schools to begin learning! For other students, it is a dreaded event. For them, little positivity is associated with this yearly ritual. The above expectation seems to not be available to them. Year after year they are held in, held over, and held back because they are not successful, despite the best and most extensive efforts and expenditures of teacher…

Should Eye Tests be a School Requirement?

I brace myself each morning to look at the headlines in the newspaper. This morning was another shock, but in a profound way. The article on the top front page said, “Eye tests now a school requirement.” Quoted: “Eighty percent of learning happens through the visual system.” This is near/far vision screening. It will test for lazy eye, the need for glasses for reading or distance, and any other issues that hamper a student from learning to read successfully. Parents, do you realize that most public schools only test for distance? We simply do not read a book twenty feet…

SOI LOCAN: Reaching Out to Malawi, Africa

Summer School or Summer Camp?

Summer Means Smarter

Building a Real Student Support Team

SOI Basic Reader

The Two Most Important Variables in Education

The Effectiveness of IPP Remediation

Opening the Venetian Blinds

If Teaching Were the Problem

Should Eye Tests be a School Requirement?

Support Request

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