What to expect for lessons:

• Two to three lessons are scheduled per week.

• Each lesson is one hour in length.

• Lessons review previously taught concepts with practice in both reading and writing.

• Skills are practiced to build automaticity and improve recall speed.

• Lessons simultaneously engage multiple senses for enhanced learning, memory, and understanding.

• Introduction of new material is paced at the student's level and ability.

• Games and activities are used to pique the student's interest and focus.

• There is no homework sent home, but review of concepts that have been taught is helpful. Suggestions can be given for how to do this and for extra practice, if desired.

About your teacher

Vickie Hollands BSc/BEd

An experienced teacher and mother, she connects well with each of her students, and is kind and compassionate with those who struggle. She has successfully completed a number of Orton-Gillingham courses and is currently working toward getting her accreditation as an Associate with the Orton-Gillingham Academy.

A few fun facts about Vickie:

• Family: She is married and has two young adult children.

• Pets: A mini-labradoodle dog with a ton of personality!

• Free Time: She loves spending time with family while enjoying a nice meal, game, or movie together. She also enjoys spending time with friends, hiking in the mountains, making things with her hands, and relaxing with a good cup of coffee.

A little more information...

Spoken words are made up of a sequence of individual sounds, just like a song is made up of individual notes. Phonemic Awareness is the ability to recognize and play with those individual sounds.

Phonemes are the individual sounds that make up our words. For example, the word cat, is made up of 3 sounds, /c/ /a/ /t/.

Graphemes are the individual letters, or groups of letters that represent each sound, or phoneme. For example, the first sound we hear in the word apple, is /a/, and it is spelled with an a. You could think of graphemes as the way we spell the sounds we say.

Correct pencil grip and penmanship are beneficial tools for writing fluently and preventing muscle fatigue.

Morphology in language is the study of how words are formed from their parts, such as prefixes, roots, and suffixes. Each of these parts have meaning of their own, and therefore they influence the meaning of the words they are part of. As students learn about these parts, they gain ability to discover meaning of many words.

The ability to put together sentences, paragraphs, and beyond is what we call composition. As students learn to compose, they also learn how grammar and punctuation influence meaning and improve writing quality.

Automaticity in being able to write letters in our a alphabet, as well as fluency in reading greatly help comprehension and the ability to learn more in all areas.