The letter <r> becomes very bossy when it follows a vowel! This letter affects the sound a vowel makes, giving a vowel followed by an <r> the name “r-controlled vowel.”

Tricky R-Controlled Vowels: ‘er’, ‘ur’, and ‘ir’

In the Kendore Kingdom, we call these three r-controlled vowels “growling r” vowels because rather than letting the vowel say its sound or name, the <r> makes the vowel growl like a tiger.  Growling r vowels are vowel digraphs since they are two letters representing one sound.

Since <er>, <ur>, and <ir> all sound the same, spelling these digraphs can be tricky. It helps to know that <er> is the most common spelling of the /er/ sound (40%), <ur> is the second most common (26%), and <ir> is the least common (13%). When all else fails and the student does not know the proper spelling, knowing frequency will help students make an educated spelling guess.

‘ar’ and ‘or’

While <r> still controls the sound of /ar/ and /or/, these r-controlled vowels have unique sounds — making them easier for children to spell.

Teaching R-Controlled Vowels

The Kendore Kingdom features a memorable story about Growling ‘r’ tiger.  Poor Growling ‘r’ hasn’t learned his manners and he growls when introduced to new friends. Children remember the adventures of Growling ‘r’ tiger and translate this story into an understanding of r-controlled vowels. If you are a Kendore-trained teacher, be sure to refer to your manual for instructions on using Growling ‘r’ tiger to teach your students r-controlled vowels.

When writing/spelling a word with an r-controlled vowel, students will often incorrectly reverse the <r> and the vowel. In many words, reversing the two letters will still produce a real word (barn/bran, arm/ram). Dot and Jot (phoneme/grapheme mapping) can help students prevent these transpositions.

Tiger Trek Card Game

Tiger Trek card games are a fun, multisensory way to reinforce r-controlled vowels. Tiger Trek can be used to play many games, including War, Rummy, Memory, Go Fish and more! The Tiger Trek deck contains both real and nonsense words in order to assess concept knowledge and discourage rote memorization. Students should be able to decode nonsense words such as ‘fram’ and ‘terk’ as well as real words.

Watch a demonstration of Tiger Trek games.

Order a Tiger Trek card deck.

You probably have a good idea what goes on during your child’s time at Syllables. No doubt you’ve heard about the games we play, our trip through the Vowel Valley, and how cool it is to write in shaving cream. But do you know what goes on when your child is not at Syllables? We are guessing it’s more than you realize! Between your child’s sessions, we think about them, prepare for them, and monitor their progress. Our therapists are also continually deepening their knowledge and skills through collaboration and training.

By design, most of our students see more than one therapist. This is because experience has shown us that two heads are better than one! Behind the scenes, your child’s therapists compare notes — sharing strategies and brainstorming the best ways to work with your unique child. Our leadership team is involved in this process too. This collaboration leads to insights that result in more efficient and effective tutoring sessions.

Our program is diagnostic in nature. For instance, your child may think that they are simply trying to “beat the clock” with a fluency drill without realizing that we are actually tracking their progress and assessing their mastery of concepts. Though we are not able to formally re-screen students as frequently as parents would like (because too much familiarity with the screening invalidates the results), our ongoing in-session assessments are monitored by our leadership team and form the basis of the progress reports we send home each month. If we see that a child is not making the progress we expect, we put our heads together and pull new strategies from our extensive toolbox.

All Syllables therapists complete rigorous and ongoing training and observations. This professional development is led by our Founder and Executive Director, Jennifer Hasser, an internationally recognized expert in dyslexia who has trained thousands of teachers worldwide and is sought after as a speaker at reading and dyslexia conferences. Jennifer and her team at Syllables keep up with the latest research and teaching methods and pass this information along to our therapists. Our training program is accredited by the International Dyslexia Association and the Multisensory Structured Language Education Counsel, who set a very high standard for our teacher training.

We appreciate your trust in us and we are honored to be on your child’s team. If you have any questions about our program or your child’s progress, please don’t hesitate to give us a call.

All too often, we hear people say that the English language doesn’t make sense and that spelling and word meaning “just have to be memorized.” This couldn’t be further from the truth! Our language does make sense…if you know the rules.

Let’s stop telling our students that our language is illogical, and let’s teach them the tools they need to easily break the code to read and spell thousands of words.

Working memory is the brain’s system for temporarily storing and managing the information required to carry out complex tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension.

Children with poor working memory typically have difficulty remembering multi-step tasks and instructions. They also may have issues with impulse control, because their brain cannot hold the thought of both an action and its consequence at the same time.

Working memory has a profound impact on reading because sounding out words requires that a child hold each sound in working memory before putting those sounds together. For instance, a child with a working memory deficit may sound out /b/, /a/, /t/, and then go back to say the word, only to find that they have forgotten the sounds they just decoded. The child will then guess by saying “butter” or “bite.”

One of the best ways to help a struggling reader who has working memory deficits is to help reading become automatic. Teaching good decoding strategies creates automaticity, which frees up working memory space.

Learn more about working memory by watching the video below:

In general, high-frequency words are considered to be the most frequently occurring words in text. Students need to be able to recognize these words instantly in order to read fluently!

High-Frequency Word Facts

• Only 100 words account for approximately 50% of the words in print. These words include the, of, to, was, for and if.
• The most frequent 300 words make up 65% of all printed text.
• Students should know the first 300 words by the 3rd grade.

Phonetic vs. Non-Phonetic “Discovery” Words

Many of the most frequent words are completely phonetic, allowing for students to decode the meaning efficiently and with ease. For example, that, with, and not are all phonetic words and can be decoded.

Other high-frequency words cannot be decoded or sounded-out. For example, of, was, and some are non-phonetic words requiring memorization. We call these words “Discovery Words”  since we must “keep digging” to discover which part of the word is not saying what we expect.

Some words must temporarily be treated as non-phonetic words requiring memorization until classroom instruction covers the rules they follow. For example, the word have follows the rule that English words should not end in ‘v’; therefore an ‘e’ is added. Most students will have to memorize have before that rule is introduced.

Most high-frequency word lists do not distinguish between phonetic and non-phonetic words. Students are required to memorize hundreds of high frequency words — even those that follow standard, decodable patterns. This can be overwhelming for any student, but it can be particularly daunting for a struggling reader or a student with dyslexia.

At Syllables and Kendore, we simplify things by dividing high-frequency words into two categories: phonetic and non-phonetic. This dramatically lessens required memorization because students who have learned phonics rules can decode phonetic words efficiently and with ease.

For non-phonetic “Discovery Words,” the color red is associated with memorization so that words can be easily discernable at the time of instruction. Students will come to know that they must memorize words that are written in red. Commonly confused words like ‘saw’ and ‘was’ are not as confusing when students see the phonetic pattern in ‘saw’ and learn ‘was’ as a “Discovery Word.”

Karen Huppertz serves as the Director of Training for Kendore Learning, the teacher training division of Syllables Learning Center. She is currently the President of the International Dyslexia Association, Georgia Branch, where she helps coordinate IDAGA’s advocacy efforts.

By now you may have heard that Senate Bill 48 has passed a final vote in the Georgia legislature. Governor Kemp is expected to sign the bill into law this month. While this is a great step in the right direction, don’t anticipate rapid change. SB48 states that local school systems will not be required to screen all kindergarten students for dyslexia until the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year.

What SB48 Will Do

In a nutshell, the new law will establish a standard definition of dyslexia, set forth a timeline for mandated dyslexia screening, and begin the process of educating teachers about dyslexia. It does not address intervention beyond that currently used in schools, and does not mandate particular reading curricula.

Definitions – SB48 will provide a legal definition of dyslexia based on the International Dyslexia Association’s definition and specifically acknowledges the importance of phonemic awareness (the ability to recognize that words are made up of a sequence of sounds and be able to manipulate them for reading, writing and speaking).

The bill further states that a ‘qualified dyslexia screening tool’ will need to measure phonological awareness skills, phonemic decoding efficiency, sight word reading skills, rapid automatic naming skills, and accuracy of word-reading of grade-level text. These are important steps toward educating teachers in Georgia and are exactly what we do when screening students here at Syllables.

Policies – Based on these steps, the new law will require the State Board of Education to develop policies for referring students in kindergarten through third grade for dyslexia screening “who have been identified through the RTI process” no later than July 1, 2020. These new policies will also include a list of approved dyslexia screening tools for schools, a process for letting parents know the results of the screening and a process for monitoring student progress after screening.

Teacher Training – SB48 also requires the Department of Education to collaborate with the Professional Standards Committee to improve and update professional development opportunities for teachers specifically relating to dyslexia. By Dec. 30, 2019, the Professional Standards Commission will create a ‘Dyslexia Endorsement for Teachers’ trained in dyslexia awareness and how to use a dyslexia screening tool. This is a step in the right direction but does not mean teachers will be trained in remediation for dyslexic students.

Pilot Program – The new law requires the State School Superintendent to establish a 3-year pilot program to “demonstrate and evaluate the effectiveness of early reading assistance programs for students with risks factors for dyslexia” beginning with the 2020-2021 school year.

Dyslexia Screening in all Schools – Beginning with the 2024-2025 school year, local school systems will be required to screen all kindergarten students for dyslexia. At the same time, students in grades one through three will be screened if they have been identified through the RTI process.

At the College Level – Finally, SB48 requires (but without a deadline) the Professional Standards Commission to include dyslexia awareness information in teacher preparation programs for elementary and secondary education instruction. New teachers coming out of colleges and universities will enter the classroom knowing the definition of dyslexia, how to spot the signs and screen students, and what kinds of instruction will help. This does not require teachers be trained in good instruction.

Many parents will say this is not enough, and not soon enough. While we agree, we have watched other states attempt aggressive legislation just to see it fail. Dyslexia advocates like those at the International Dyslexia Association Georgia and Decoding Dyslexia Georgia will continue to work toward strengthening dyslexia legislation in Georgia.

At Syllables Learning Center, our greatest hope is that one day all teachers will be trained to identify students with dyslexia in kindergarten. Our teacher training division,  Kendore Learning, dreams of a day when all teachers are equipped with the training they need to help struggling readers in the classroom. This new law is an exciting step in the right direction. We are carefully following this legislation and will keep you updated.

Read the final draft of SB48 and don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.

Learn about the signs and symptoms of dyslexia.

Let’s talk nonsense!

We are frequently asked why we use nonsense words with students. Parents and teachers worry that nonsense words will confuse their children and will interfere with learning new words. While we wholeheartedly agree that students need to work with real words, we also know that nonsense words play an important role in effectively teaching students how to read and spell.

Many young children have excellent memories and are able to memorize one syllable words without understanding how the words’ sounds connect with their letters. When these students eventually are introduced to multisyllabic words that do not contain memorized words, the child is lost.

If a student has been given a strong foundation in the alphabetic principle (connecting sounds with letters) through real and nonsense words, more advanced words won’t deter them in the future. For example, if we ask a student to sound out the nonsense word “lat,” we are reinforcing the sounds /l/, /a/, and /t/. Students who have learned to decode (read) and encode (spell) using letter sounds will not be deterred if the words they encounter are unfamiliar or as they increase in difficulty. They will not have to resort to memorization of large words because they will possess the tools they need to decode. Later, as the child is exposed to more advanced words, they will see words like “latitude” and “bilateral.”  They will learn that roots like “lat” are not necessarily nonsense after all —  “lat” is a Latin root that means “side.”

Working with nonsense words will not confuse a child in terms of vocabulary because if a word is not assigned a meaning, the child will not use it. For instance, the student who decoded the word “lat,” in school will not come home and say, “Mom, can we have lat for dinner?” or “I really would like a new pet lat.” Since the word has no meaning, it will not interfere with the child’s growing vocabulary. On the other hand, it will help with their reading and spelling for years to come.

Watch Video

Phonics is the pairing of a language sound with a symbol (letter). When teaching phonics (i.e., the letter ‘b’ says /b/) it is very important that students are taught the correct pronunciation of the most frequent sound of that letter. That is why the Kendore/Syllables curriculum emphasizes correct sound pronunciation before moving on to more advanced reading concepts.

We cannot stress this enough: it is crucial that teachers and parents form sounds correctly! However, many of us make the common mistake of saying “muh” for /m/ and “buh” for /b/, etc. This is because of the way many of us were taught years ago — old habits are hard to break!

After viewing the Correct Sound Production video, listen to yourself make the sounds to ensure that you are saying them properly. This will pay off when you start blending sounds to make words.

As teachers and parents, we hear “why” all day, every day! It can get frustrating, but it’s crucial that you answer the “why” when you teach reading. Why? Because teaching kids the reason behind the rule helps them to memorize less and internalize more. If you don’t know “why,” explore with your students and figure it out.

Watch this compelling video to hear Jennifer Hasser discuss WHY it’s important to teach kids the WHY!

We have fantastic news! Our training program and curriculum have been officially accredited by the International Multisensory Structured Language Education Council (IMSLEC) and the International Dyslexia Association (IDA). With these important seals of approval, Kendore Learning and Syllables Learning Center join the elite ranks of programs across the country recognized to help students overcome dyslexia and related issues.

The IMSLEC and IDA Accreditation Process

The IMSLEC Accreditation team hard at work on site at Syllables/Kendore.

During the accreditation process, IMSLEC and IDA conducted an in-depth review of Kendore Learning’s Orton-Gillingham based structured language curriculum, which is used one-on-one at Syllables Learning Center and in classrooms across the nation through our Kendore teacher training program. In addition to scrutinizing all curriculum content for completeness and efficacy, the governing bodies examined our staff credentials, facilities, and operational procedures.

The two-year accreditation process was capped off by an onsite visit by members of the IMSLEC team, who spent several days with us to observe how we work with students and train teachers. Since the review team consisted of professionals who work for other IMSLEC/IDA certified programs, it provided us with an excellent opportunity to exchange information, receive validation about the quality of our program, and to form lasting relationships with like-minded colleagues from other well-respected programs.

What IMSLEC and IDA Accreditation Means for our Students and Teachers

We enjoyed working with the IMSLEC team and were so impressed by their knowledge and dedication.

Parents who send their children to Syllables Learning Center can rest assured that their child is receiving the highest level of reading therapy available. Teachers who are training by Kendore Learning know that our training and curriculum meet well-defined educational standards. Our curriculum, staff, and facilities have been rigorously examined throughout the two-year IMSLEC and IDA Accreditation process and we are thrilled that we have passed with flying colors and high accolades!

Learn More About IMSLEC

Learn More About IDA