1. Songs
People love music. It makes them smile, sing, and dance. I use songs as a source of authentic input to prime the brain for additional content. Note: I usually only “teach” the main chorus or a keyword to reduce the cognitive load and keep it more about acquiring and less about teaching. I use only the most listened to songs on youtube…. which entices moms and students to visit my website more.
2. Contextual Images
Visual stimulation – People with a sense of sight use vision to find meaning. They look at pictures and will attach their thoughts to infer meaning. We choose a less busy picture so students can focus on 1 or 2 things to avoid confusion.
3. Rebus
Our visual rebus strategy has worked wonderfully for students who have challenges decoding. It is a controlled-practice exercise that helps students express what they recall about the visual clues
4. Reading Patterns
Short reading patterns that reoccur through the materials. They focus on words that can be recognized or decoded (bottom-up reading strategies). The patterns are highly functional to help students overcome aural interactions both in and out of class.
5. Sentence Builders
We want our students to focus on the patterns 1 word at a time. we want them to read and see how the words fit together to build sentences. These sentence builders are self-correcting, which makes it better for homework.