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Why We Love Hearing Before Seeing
One concept that Orton-Gillingham tutors believe is the importance of developing phonological awareness skill sets together with phonics development, especially in students who are struggling. What are phonemes? Phonemes are the smallest part of spoken language that make a sound. They can be as small as one letter, for example “t”, “b”, “l”. Phonemes are…
Read MoreSummer 2017 Registration
The school year and this term at Symbols may be coming to an end, but our summer term is right around the corner. This year, the summer sessions begin on Tuesday, July 4th and end on Friday, September 1st. We have announced the registration dates for each location, which are as follows: VANCOUVER: Monday, May 8th at…
Read MoreWhy we Love Word History
If you saw the word “ghoti”, how would you pronounce it? What if I told you that this word read aloud sounded like “fish”? If we didn’t know how “fish” was spelled, this could very likely be the spelling! The gh, is pronounced [f] as in enough, the o, pronounced [ɪ] as in women, and the ti pronounced…
Read MoreWhy We Love Fingers in Dirt
At Symbols, we believe in a multisensory approach. This is in part because different children learn differently. One way that a child can learn is by being a tactile learner. What is a tactile learner? Tactile learners are closely related to kinesthetic learners. The main difference is that the tactile style is more moderate, involving…
Read MoreWhy We Love Rapping Words: Word Beats as a Reading Strategy
When you drop your child off for their lesson at Symbols, and wonder what they may be learning that day, your first thought probably isn’t that they will spend time rapping with their tutor. But this may actually be the case! Using “word beats” can actually be a very helpful reading strategy. This method involves ‘chunking’…
Read MoreCommonly Asked Questions at Symbols
As a parent trying to keep track of your child’s busy schedule, it can be difficult having questions that you don’t know the answers to. Below is a list of commonly asked questions or concerns that we often receive from parents. Some of these topics have been covered in previous blogs, but still come up…
Read MoreIs an Orton-Gillingham tutor at Symbols right for your child?
With so many different tutoring options, it can feel overwhelming to decide where to go to get your child help. At Symbols, we use the Orton-Gillingham approach, which we believe is the most effective way to tutor children with – and without – learning differences. What makes Orton-Gillingham effective? Orton-Gillingham is an approach that was initially intended…
Read MoreMathematical Difficulties Tutoring Vancouver, Richmond & Coquitlam
At Symbols, we are able to tutor students in the areas of language arts and math. If a child is struggling with both areas, language arts is addressed first, because it is imperative that a child can read and write at grade level, but math is also addressed after they are steady in those areas.…
Read MoreTeaching Sight Words in Vancouver, Richmond & Coquitlam
The last blog post on our website was on what sight words are, and how important they are. This naturally leads to the next question- how do we actually teach sight words? Exercises We Use To Teach Sight Words Sight words are almost always taught with the aid of a mnemonic. Mnemonics are a memory…
Read MoreSight Words and Dolce Words
At Symbols, we talk a lot about sight words. When you pick your child up from a lesson, you may hear them talking about the “sight word” they learned this lesson. But what are sight words? You may have also heard of dolce words, and be wondering, what’s the difference? Sight Words A sight word…
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