Join Bonnie Terry’s call and find out what you can do in just 20 minutes a day to boost your child’s reading, writing, and math skills and have fun at the same time.

I’m hosting a FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday July 14th at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, and 5 pm Pacific. Upon registering you will receive a FREE Handbook on the 5 steps you can take to help your child over the summer even if they have a learning problem, LD, dyslexia. The activities and steps are for all age students – kindergarten through adults.

Those that attend the Live Teleseminar will also receive a surprise FREE gift. And, of course, if you can’t make it live on the call, you will get access to the recording!

Mid-Summer Training Call
FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday July 14th at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, and 5 pm Pacific.
Space is limited. You can attend via phone or via internet!

Reserve your space for the Teleseminar now at:

Title: Searching for Summer Activities to Improve Your Child’s Learning Skills and Still Have Fun?
Time: Wednesday, July 14th at 5pm Pacific, 6 pm Mountain, 7 pm Central, 8 pm Eastern.
Listening method: Phone + Web Simulcast

To register, visit:
Mid-Summer Training Call

Learn About:
1. How to improve your child’s reading, writing, and math skills in just 20 minutes a day
2. 5 steps you can take to help your child
3. Activities to do at home, in the yard, or in your neighborhood

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Research has shown that when kids are not involved with learning activities over the summer, their skills don’t just stay where they were at the end of the school year. Instead, your kids lose ground and retention of what they learned over the prior school year. So, one thing you can do to prevent this learning slide, is to play learning games over the summer.
Here is a Review of Bonnie Terry’s learning grammar game The Sentence Zone written by Lori Seaborg of http://www.FreelyEducate.com:

We are having a great time learning grammar.

“What?!” you say, “You’re having great time in grammar class?”

Why, yes. That’s exactly what I meant. Thanks to The Sentence Zone, a grammar game designed by Bonnie Terry Learning, grammar can not only be bright and colorful, but as much fun as a game of Monopoly. Here is how it works, as described by Bonnie Terry:

If you’re looking for a fun way to improve writing and grammar skills, this game is for you! For 2 to 6 players, grades 1st and up. Rules are easily mastered. The Sentence Zone can be played at six levels – from Level 1 in which the player builds a subject and verb sentence, to Level 6 in which the player builds complex sentences with independent and dependent clauses. With over 500 color coded cards, students are sure to be unique and entertaining every time. A great reinforcing individual activity where a player keeps track of his score from day to day, trying to top his previous score, or a great group activity where competition drives creativity and learning.

It took me a little while to figure out The Sentence Zone. It wasn’t a game that we could play right out of the box. But after reading the directions, and realizing the many directions the game could go, we got started learning our grammar and – enjoying – it! Since enjoyment leads the way to a love of learning, The Sentence Zone is a success in our home.

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So, do yourself a favor, check out The Sentence Zone and Bonnie Terry’s other reading game and math game too!

Should you do your own summer learning program?

Fact: More than half of the achievement gap present in 9th grade between lower- and higher-income children can be explained by summer learning loss.

Make Learning Stick with learning games and reading fluency training over the summer. There are many things you can do at home to bridge that summer learning gap.

1. Reading Fluency using Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills…and Yes…it only takes 5 minutes to do. Sally Shawitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia states, “I urge parents to make fluency training their number one priority.”
2. Take a weekly trip …to the zoo, a local park, the pool, the river, a local factory…and afterwards as a family write down what you did and what your favorite part was…using the fill-in-the-blank forms from Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills and create a booklet to keep for all of your weekly trips.
3. Do some nature activities such as listening to outdoor sounds, nature rubbings, shape hike, incher hikes … again use the fill-in-the-blank forms from Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills to describe what you found or did.
4. Activities to do at home like making puppets and putting on a puppet show. Bake cookies together, have a backwards day where you eat dinner in the morning and breakfast in the evening, do add-on-stories. Again write down your favorite things or worse things about the activity.
5. Have a Game Night or a Game Day…choose learning games…they are fun as well as work on skills. Some great ones are The Sentence Zone (play & learn sentence building and grammar while having fun) , The Comprehension Zone (play & learn reading comprehension and listening comprehension), or the Math Zone (play & math calculation practice).
6. Read books together…and write a review or report on it, or have a review night where you all act as book reviewers of the book you read.

Check out the books, games, and guides here:

Reading

Writing

Math

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

Join Bonnie’s call and find out what you can do in just 20 minutes a day to boost your child’s reading, writing, and math skills and have fun at the same time.

I’m hosting a FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday June 2nd at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, and 5 pm Pacific.

Upon registering you will receive a FREE Handbook on the 5 things you can do to help your child over the summer.

Those that attend the Live Teleseminar will also receive a surprise FREE gift. And, of course, if you can’t make it live on the call, you will get access to the recording!

http://www.dyslexiahelpnow.com/summer-training-call/

FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday June 2nd at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, and 5 pm Pacific.
Space is limited. You can attend via phone or via internet!

Reserve your space for the Teleseminar now at:

Title: Searching for Summer Activities to Improve Your Child’s Skills and Still Have Fun?
Time: Wednesday, June 2nd at 5pm Pacific, 6 pm Mountain, 7 pm Central, 8 pm Eastern.
Listening method: Phone + Web Simulcast

To register, visit:
http://www.dyslexiahelpnow.com/summer-training-call/

Learn:
1. How to improve your child’s reading, writing, and math skills in just 20 minutes a day
2. 5 things you can do to help your child
3. Activities to do at home, in the yard, or in your neighborhood

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

However, writing poetry doesn’t have to be so-o-o hard! There are many different types of poems, and I’ve found one of the easiest types of poetry to teach my kids is the Haiku, specifically the Cinquain type of Haiku Poem. Learn how to use the Sentence Zone for writing poems.  This is made really easy using The Sentence Zone game because you can write the poem with colors.

Using The Sentence Zone game makes writing poetry easy for kids with LD, dyslexia, ADHD, or even gifted.

Hope this is helpful! Don’t forget to sign up for the FREE teaching and homework tips!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

I have always told everyone that it was used at multiple ages, because it is, but I didn’t think of using the game for SAT prep until Patricia Lara stopped by my office a few weeks ago. She was telling me how useful the game was in her work with SAT prep with her juniors and seniors in high school.

In addition to helping them with the grammar portion of the exam, she told me how it really ‘broke up’ the prep sessions. Her students were able to get a break from the intensity of preparing for the exam but still learn at the same time. So, I asked her to show me how she was using the game. I think you’ll enjoy this additional use. Watch and see for yourself how easy it is to learn with The Sentence Zone. It is a great test prep tool for tutors, families, homeschoolers, and teachers. 

Hope this has been helpful. Don’t forget to sign up for the FREE Teaching and Homework Tips! And, PLEASE, Pass this post along to others!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

The following activities work well with all kids, whether they have dyslexia, LD, ADHD, are falling through the cracks, or are gifted. I have done the activities successfully with all of them!

I have two favorite things to do to not only help my kids, but to stay motivated doing it too. The first thing is to have more frequent game nights, playing educational games – learning games like The Sentence Zone, The Comprehension Zone, or The Math Zone. When you play games with your kids, they build skills while having fun and get a lot of modeling from you too. At the same time you get to have quality family time, so it is a double win situation.

The other activity I like to do is to have an evening where I might turn the heat up a degree or two, and everyone gets dressed in ‘summer’ clothes, and we have a ‘picnic’ on the floor of the living room. Afterwards, we might tell stories to each other – what I call ‘add-on stories.’ In these stories one person starts off and then the next person adds on to the story. We keep going round and round and the story gets longer and longer. The only thing is, the kids have to pay attention and so do you, so what you add on makes sense to the story. This builds listening comprehension and memory as well as a really good time.

Hope this is helpful!

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

You would be amazed at the number of children I’ve seen over the years that have needed reading help that didn’t have a solid foundation of reading readiness skills.  This goes for children that are in kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th grade. So, when I received the following question from Karen, I thought it would be a good idea to shed some light on reading help and reading readiness.

I just received a letter from Karen regarding activities for teaching her triplets.

Karen writes:

“My triplets are 5 yrs. old and in kindergarten this year.  One is a special needs child.  I could use ideas for teaching multiples.  There is no older sibling to model.  Also, trying to work with our special needs daughter and the others creates many challenges.”

Hi Karen,

I know what you mean about challenges – working with 3 kids at the same time and one of them being a special needs child can be difficult.

Here are some tips for working with  kids at the same time – whether they are in kindergarten or any of the primary grades.

I would pick a time to work with each of the kids individually – for 10 to 15 minutes so they get some individual time with you. While working with one of them the other two can be doing something like coloring or listening to a book on tape.

In fact, you can even read their favorite books into a tape – at a speed that is comfortable for them to listen to and then they can listen to you reading to them – following along with your voice – while you are doing some individual work/activity with the others. Then you are still being ‘present’ to the one/s you aren’t working with.

You might even set up a special spot with their stuffed animals and a large pillow where they get to listen to the books. So it winds up being the ‘special place’ where they get to listen to stories.

Also, I would do things like playing Simon Says, bean- bag toss, hop-scotch, or red light green light – games that are relatively easy to do with all 3 that would also work on listening skills and following directions.

You are at the perfect time for doing reading readiness activities with your kids. Remember, all kids need the following readiness skills in order to do well with school tasks. These specific readiness skills  are critical to being a successful learner. Reading help is lessened when these readiness skills are in place.

Readiness skills can be categorized into the following areas:

1. Matching – objects and or sounds
2. Size – small-medium-large; big-little; long-short; fat-thin
3. Shape – circles, squares, and triangles
4. Action – start – stop; slow-fast
5. Position – top – bottom; under-over; forward-backward; up-down; inside-outside
6. Relationships – same-different; parts-whole
7. Configurations – patterns & sequencing
8. Classifications – sorting objects into categories or arrange them into groups – by size, shape, or color
9. Combination Concepts and Time – positions & shapes or positions and matching and time
10. Listening & following directions (These skills are utilized in all of the above activities.)

Hope this helps.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

P.S. Be sure to ask your questions by clicking on the Ask Me a Question Button.

One of the best ways I’ve found to help my LD, dyslexic, or ADHD kids learn to like learning is to play games. Game playing helps reduce the fears kids have. Games put your kids into a relaxed state when learning. Kids often make greater gains in their skills when they are in a relaxed state. Watch how this family plays the Math Zone. They have fun and learn at the same time.

Don’t forget to sign up for the FREE Teaching Tips to your right.

Hope this is helpful,

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET

P.S.: Be sure to leave a comment below and ask your questions to the right.

Remember, I work with students from 1st grade through adults. Some have been identified with dyslexia, or a learning disability. Some of my students are falling through the cracks. Some are even gifted. Even my wiggly ADHD students do well with it since it’s hand-on. But, it doesn’t matter. When I can improve a student’s retention with using a color coded game I’m going to do it.

I like to have my students sort out the cards so they start to get a feel for the types of words that are in each category. For instance, they might not realize that the word about is an adverb. When they initially sort out the word cards by color, they get an idea of what types of words are in each part of speech.

Then I have them look at the cover of the box so they see how to set up the game and that  the game strip is just there so they will have an easy reference point for placing the cards. It is NOT a game board, it is not used for making sentences. It is just used as a reference for placing the cards. They know they will be making their sentence in front of themselves while I make mine in front of me.

I use this game with students from 1st grade on up – even high school students and adults. With my advanced students (any age) we do more sophisticated sentences and grammar work. But, back to the basics…

My younger students soon realize they need to have a gray card (capital letter), a blue card (noun), a red card (verb), and a buff card (punctuation) in order to have a sentence.
They learn they can add adjectives, adverbs, or prepositional phrases to their base sentence to make it more interesting, but they need to only have one subject and one verb for the first round of the game.

For example, the following are all legal 1st round sentences.

The dog barks.            The dog barks loudly.               The dog barks loudly at the park.

When a student makes a 3-word sentence I often start asking questions to encourage them to make more interesting sentences. This helps them to see how to improve and expand their sentence.

Example with prompts:

The dog barks.

(What kind of dog is he? Let’s use these adjective cards to find out. How does he bark? Let’s use an adverb to tell us how.)

The big dog barks loudly.

(What color is the dog? Use another adjective to tell us. Where does he bark? Use a preposition, article, and a noun to tell us.)

The big brown dog barks loudly at the park.

This type of conversation helps to equalize the game with more proficient learners and helps that younger student to become proficient more quickly.

(Sometimes making funny sentences makes the game even more fun and sentence writing is no longer work.)

The long hairy dog barks loudly at the tiny ant.

Then the magic happens! I have my students go to their bookwork where they are supposed to underline the subject once and verb twice. Instead I have them use colored pencils (blue and red) and underline their subjects with the blue pencil and underline the verb with the red pencil. (They are able to identify the subjects and verbs more readily because they have been playing with blue nouns and red verbs.)

Nouns and verbs start to almost jump out at them as a result of playing the game. Additionally, they are much better at not confusing the assignment. For example, when the assignment was to underline the subject one and verb twice, I can’t tell you how many times my students used to underline the subjects twice and the verbs once. They say to me, “Well, I underlined them, what more do you want?”

When I have them use a colored pencil it takes that away and impresses on their brains which word is the noun (subject) and which is the verb. We even color code whole sentences according to the colors in The Sentence Zone, identifying the prepositional phrases or dependent and independent clauses.

I find that students who are just beginning to write sentences soon find that they can write more interesting sentences after playing the game because they start to make sentences that are worth more points. They often compete against themselves, keeping a running tally from turn to turn or day to day.

Also, when a student has a writing assignment and his sentences are all about the same length, I just have to say, “You need to have some small point sentences and some big point sentences to be a good writer. Remember, good writers vary the length and type of sentences they write.” They know what I’m talking about because they have seen small point sentences and big point sentences.

Students who are proficient with basic sentences start to learn more complex grammar nuances such as subject – verb agreement, or needing to compose a sentence with a direct object and an indirect object in it etc. In fact I also use it for SAT prep.

Hope this gives you some new ideas for teaching and improving sentence writing and grammar. Learn more about The Sentence Zone.

Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET