I want to tell you about an extraordinary man. His name is Fred and he won’t tell me how old he is.  I know about him because he writes passionate emails to me every week about the children and schools he is helping.  This is the story of a superhero, an amazing school volunteer. Fred is a retired...

The following statistics are taken from www.ed.gov,  the federal department of education site.  I thought it might be eye-opening to see how far we till have to go in teaching reading and writing.  Although these statistics are depressing, it is necessary to keep a goal in mind.  Our educational...

We were on port tack in the middle of the Atlantic, moving fairly smoothly toward landfall in the Azores. Our family of four was on the way from New Orleans to West Africa in our 31 foot sloop.  After some rough days, it was a relief to keep my food down and enjoy being at the helm. Melissa, 11, was...

The most common way to introduce children to the alphabet code is to link letters-to-sounds in order to decipher or “decode” words on a page—that is, to read.  Children are shown letters or clusters of letters and are told that those visual squiggles on a page represent sounds or words.  But...

Things People Have Said to Me That Changed My Life Pilgrim’s Rest, Mississippi, 1965 “First, I’m gonna learn to read and write.  Then I’m goin’ home an’ teach my daddy!” She was sitting alone on one of the church benches, watching some other five year olds play with the rocking...

Writing and reading are relative newcomers, answering a growing need to turn spoken communication into some kind of permanent record.  For small tribes of hunters and gatherers, oral traditions and histories served well enough.  But when people began to gather in larger numbers, and grow crops and...

Is there really anything new to say on the subject of reading and reading difficulties?  Indeed, there is!  Recent advances in medical imaging technology have made it possible for the first time to look at the brains of both skilled and dysfunctional readers while they are engaged in the act of reading...

At the SSSR meeting in Boston, I was fascinated to learn about a new study by Linnea Ehri and Nancy Boyer who taught pre-schoolers to look at themselves in a mirror while pronouncing a word, and then play with mouth pictures that represent the articulation of the same sounds.  When children associated...