Reindeer Sighting

There was a recent reindeer sighting in our lobby!

Our Own Concert

We find that all of our students have many talents.  This is Marjani, who entertained us on one of her breaks recently.

The Dyslexic Advantage

Parents are often dismayed to find that their child is dyslexic.  Certainly, dyslexia can present challenges to overcome.  Yet some of the most successful people throughout history have been dyslexic.  Could it be that their dyslexia actually predisposes them to excel in other areas?  Check out this book excerpt for more on the hidden potential of dyslexia.

The Dyslexic Advantage, Book Excerpt | Hidden Potential of Dyslexia - NCLD

You Are Not Alone

Watching your child struggle with learning disabilities or ADHD can be heart-wrenching.  But you are not alone.  Reach out and get relief for both you and your child.  Get a support system in place.  Life WILL get easier.

Summer Library Fun!

Having trouble getting your kids to read this summer?  Make it fun for them by signing them up at the library to win cool stuff just by reading.  Bribery??  Maybe.   Call it an incentive if you like.  The fact is, everybody wins if it helps motivate your child to read more.

Click here to find out how to sign your kids up.

Cottonball comes to Langsford!

We always encourage family to show up for a client's last day celebration. Not only did Bode's
mom, dad, and brother show up, his pet hamster Cottonball also came along!  Congratulations, Bode, on a job well done!

How to Help Your child Succeed in a JCPS Classroom

7 Things Your Child's Teacher Wishes You Would Tell Them

While your child's teacher is an expert in educating children, no one knows your child as well as you do.  Students do best when parents and teachers work together as partners, with parents sharing any information about their child that might affect his or her school performance and teachers sharing what they are seeing in the classroom.

Emily Graham in School Family-your go-to guide for school success has come up with 7 things teachers wish you would tell them.

1. Health conditions: If your child is diabetic, uses an inhaler, is allergic to peanuts, or has a serious health condition, her teacher should know. It’s also helpful to let the teacher know whether your child has been diagnosed with conditions like ADHD, which may affect behavior and concentration.
2. Family issues: Fill in the teacher if your family is going through a major change that could affect your child, such as a divorce, a death in the family, or a move. Even if your child seems to have adjusted well, alert teachers so they can watch for behavioral changes.
3. Personality traits or behavior issues: Maybe your son is painfully shy and is worried about making friends at a new school. Or perhaps your kindergartner has been having tantrums at home and you’re concerned she’ll do the same at school. It’s best to make teachers aware of these issues before they become a problem at school.
   
4. Strengths and weaknesses: Your daughter is a star student in math but is embarrassed to read aloud. Your son loves language arts but struggles with science. If you tell teachers these things up front, they’ll have more time to help your children improve in the areas they need it most.
5. Learning style: You’ve spent years teaching your kids, from potty training to tying shoelaces, so you have a good idea of their learning styles. If your child learns better through hands-on activities than through listening to explanations, mention that to his teacher. Also share any teaching strategies that you’ve found work well with your child.
6. Study habits: Does your son speed through math homework but labor over reading assignments? Do your daughter’s grades suffer because she spends so much time at skating lessons? Tell teachers about your children’s study habits and any issues they face in completing the work. Teachers often can offer suggestions to make homework time go more smoothly.
7. Special interests: Knowing more about your child’s hobbies or interests can help the teacher forge connections in the classroom. Let the teacher know that your young son loves a particular comic book superhero and that your middle school daughter is a gifted painter.
   
   

Communicating With Your Child's School

"I thought everything was fine!"

Have you ever been surprised when report cards came home?  The sharing of information between teachers and parents is essential if you to want to have a complete picture of how your child is doing in school.  Communicating regularly with your child's teacher will also help everyone working with him or her at school to fully understand your child's particular strengths, weaknesses and personality.


To help forge this relationship between school and parents, the U.S. Department of Education has some tips for you.  Click here to read their article:  Working with Teachers and Schools -- Helping Your Child Succeed in School

Hmmmmmmmm........

Hmmmmmmm.......

I know you think you understand what you thought I said,

but I'm not sure that what you heard is what I actually meant!

Have you ever been on either end of this scenario? It is frustrating for both parties. Language comprehension is essential for one to communicate effectively with others. A person must be able to not only receptively understand language, but to also be able to use his or her expressive vocabulary to effectively convey that information to others.

Surprisingly, one can be highly intelligent and still have difficulty with language comprehension. At Langsford Learning Acceleration Centers, our experience in teaching reading over the last 19 years has been that many who are struggling to comprehend are simply lacking the foundational skills necessary for good comprehension.

Research indicates that people with good comprehension utilize concept imagery to facilitate understanding. Simply put, they make mental movies in their head when reading or listening.

Have you ever tried to put together a bookcase or a child's bicycle? Did you find the diagrams that accompanied the directions to be of more help than the written directions? That's because the diagrams helped your brain to see the relationships between the pieces and how they would work together as a whole. Concept imagery is very much like this.

Clients who we tutor in comprehension at Langsford do systematic work to develop their imaging skills, starting with a simple sentence and building up to multi-page units of material. Once they have the information pictured in their minds, they practice recalling and verbalizing it in a clear and concise manner. Emphasis is also placed on determining the main idea and important details, as well as on developing higher order thinking skills (such as making inferences, drawing conclusions, or making evaluations of material).

Many people make mental movies in their minds naturally and without prompting. For those that don't or those who do not do it efficiently, structured practice to develop their concept imagery and verbalizing skills can make both school and interaction with others easier and less frustrating.

In conclusion,

I hope that what you read and what you think I said

matches what I actually said and what I meant to say!

Langsford Learning Acceleration Centers

2520 Bardstown Road

Louisville, Kentucky

(502) 473-7000

We teach reading and learning skills for life. Spread the word!

Reading Problem or Comprehension Problem??

"Why Can't I get this?"

Oftentimes there is some confusion about the underlying cause of a student's academic problems. They are often associated with reading, but reading is not a single process and, when we talk about reading, we could be meaning different things. The end goal of reading is, of course, comprehension of the material. But poor reading comprehension is not necessarily the result of a weakness in one's language comprehension skills.

Reading comprehension can only occur when other factors related to the reading process are in place. It is dependent on a student's phonemic awareness skills, knowledge of phonics, word attack skills, and the fluency of their reading being efficient and automatic.

When a reader is struggling or unable to decode words in a text, or he or she is just inefficient in doing so, the result is that they are putting most of their energy into the process of decoding and are not as focused on determining what the text is actually saying.

It is also hard to understand what you are reading when you are not a fluent reader. When your reading is slow and choppy, perhaps lacking in expression, it is more difficult to glean meaning from what you have read.

Parents frequently think or are told by their child's teacher or tutor that they have a comprehension problem, when, in fact, it is actually a problem within the mechanics of their reading. This is related to people erroneously believing that if a student cannot answer questions about what he or she has read that it must be due to a weakness in their basic comprehension skills.

Conversely, some students are perceived to be poor readers because they are unable to answer questions about what they read. In this instance, the false assumption is that if a student is a good reader they will be able to answer questions about a text, and precludes the possibility that the incorrect responses were due to under-developed or inefficient language comprehension strategies.

The confusion around these areas is why we, at Langsford Learning Acceleration Centers, do a comprehensive evaluation of all areas of the reading process to determine the precise needs of any given student. We want the family to have clarity on what underpinnings are not in place and what area or areas need to be addressed for their child to perform optimally academically.

So remember: Reading and reading comprehension are two different, but related, entities. Both areas should be evaluated and considered when looking into whether a student has a "reading problem."

Langsford Learning Acceleration Centers

2520 Bardstown Road

Louisville, Kentucky

(502) 473-7000

We teach reading and learning skills for life. Spread the word!

Vocabulary and Reading

Just read a fascinating article printed in the Atlantic on the connection between vocabulary, reading skills, and comprehension!

Here's an excerpt:

It's when we drill down to the individual family level that we see why higher-income families have such a substantial advantage in giving their kids the sorts of opportunities that really make a difference for learning. Poorer families devote the vast majority of their incomes (and, in many cases, their time) to meeting basic human needs of food and shelter. Richer families are in the fortunate position to use disposable income and time to expose their children to reading materials, conversation, and life experiences that enrich their vocabularies and teach them about the world that surrounds them.

That matters a lot. Not only does a weak vocabulary lead to poor reading comprehension, so does a lack of knowledge about basic social, economic, political, and scientific realities -- in short, "real-world" knowledge. This is different from "street smarts," which can be enormously advantageous, but which don't translate into learning advantages in school.

With respect to that general knowledge base, Daniel Willingham has explained that after young students have developed the decoding skills associated with learning to read, the difference between good readers and poor readers largely has to do with "differences in the knowledge that kids bring to the reading. It's easy to read something when you already know something about the topic. And if you don't know about the topic, it's utterly opaque to you." 

To read this article in it's entirety, click here.

Exciting new research study on Brain Scans and Reading

Did you know that...?  New research can identify the neural structures associated with poor reading skills in young children, and could lead to an early warning system for struggling students.

New research from Stanford University shows that brain scans can identify neural differences in the brain that are indicative of whether a child will likely become a strong reader or not.   At an early age the brain is still plastic, and genes, environment and experiences can affect the rate of development in the white matter regions of the brain which are associated with learning to read.  Early identification of children at risk for having reading problems could allow for early interventions designed to maximize development of reading skills while the brain is still malleable. 

To view the Stanford Report article detailing this information, click here.