Please keep in mind that I am in EST when requesting times. 

I have some sliding scale slots available every week - it is my mission to ensure as many students as possible get the services they need. Please contact me if you are interested to see if any of those are open.

This is an individual class to ensure that your child receives proper attention for this fundamentally important skill. During this 20 minute class (optimized to keep the attention of young students) learners will be able to practice important phonemic awareness skills with many hands-on activities. Phonemic awareness is the ability to work with sounds (not written letters) and these skills are the building blocks for all the reading skills that students learn later. Research has shown that students with strong phonemic awareness learn to read and write easier and quicker. There are many types of skills included in this category and in this class we will focus on two skills: blending and segmenting. 

Blending is the ability to put sounds together verbally to make a word. When you tell a child the sounds m-a-p separately if their blending skills are good they will tell you the word is map. Segmenting is the ability to take apart a word into its component sounds. In that case if you tell the child map they should be able to give you the individual sounds in the word. Blending is very important for reading while segmenting is a key skill for writing. They are two sides of the same coin and the ability to do one strengthens the other at the same time. 

This is a fun, interactive class. students will use their bodies to help them blend and segment, thereby helping them remember the skills more easily. We will blend real words and what I call 'silly' words (words that are not real such as fis or tog that help students practice these skills without relying on memorized knowledge). Students will get to play games and have lots of fun along the way. Depending on the skill your child already has we might start with blending compound words together instead of sounds to make sure the concept is clear and will then move into 2-sound and 3-sound words for both blending and segmenting practice. 

I recommend this class for: 
- Students who are entering pre-kindergarten but seem very aware of sounds and words
- Students who are entering kindergarten
- Students who are entering first-grade
- Students who have already completed the first or second grade, but continue to struggle with reading - many students in these grades who struggle with reading also display low phonemic awareness skills (in addition to challenges with letters and sounds)

I look forward to seeing your child in my class!