Author Archives: lauramacgrath

What is dyslexia? People with dyslexia have difficulty with reading and spelling, unrelated to overall intellectual ability.  Dyslexia refers specifically to difficulties with decoding words (or “sounding out”), spelling words, and accurately and quickly recognizing words. It cannot be due to hearing or vision problems or lack of appropriate instruction.  Is dyslexia the same thingContinue reading “Dyslexia: Q & A”

(This post contains a touch of profanity and potty humour… FYI.) When we pronounce words, the individual sounds are not actually produced in isolation. Speech sounds, or phonemes, run together and can influence each other significantly.  For example, the a in cat versus can.  The a takes on a nasal sound when it precedes theContinue reading “Profanity at family game night — a case study in coarticulation”

As mentioned in an earlier post, kids in the beginning stages of reading, as well as older readers experiencing difficulty, benefit from decodable texts. These are books or passages that use almost only sounds and letters that have already been learned. Children rely on sounding out, or decoding, the words. There are usually pictures, butContinue reading “Decodable Readers & Levelled Readers”

Why have I started every post with a question?  (See what I did there?) I didn’t even notice this until I looked at the little snippets of my first three entries compiled on one page.  I’m new to blogging, and I guess I thought that opening with a question was a good way to hookContinue reading “Happy New Year?!”

Why is this blog called 44to26?  To be honest, “doyoureadme” was taken on wordpress.  So I wracked my brain for a while thinking of other clever ideas to capture my obsession: relating oral language development to literacy, and all the possible bumps in the road that children may encounter as they learn to talk, read,Continue reading “44to26”

So how do we teach kids to read?  Ideally, it goes something like this: Talk a lot with children, read to them, from the time they are babies.  Expand their world knowledge, enrich their vocabulary and sentence structures.  When children learn to read, it’s easier to make sense of things they already know something about. Continue reading “How do we teach reading?”

Do you know what I love?  Seeing my 6-year-old and 4-year-old with books in their laps, sitting on the floor, legs sticking straight out, flipping through the pages.  Reading is an extraordinary process, and seeing my two little monkeys in the budding stages of reading development is really nifty.  They’re far from being proficient readersContinue reading “Sounds and letters and words and sentences”