About Us
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Reaching More Learners, Teachers, and School Leaders
Thanks to the generous support of visionary donors, we’re welcoming learners and their families, teachers and school leaders to a new Stern Center website that provides the information they need. Those we serve inspired this project, from initial vision to launch.
Types of Testing for Learning Disabilities
School psychologists draw on their backgrounds in education and psychology to help students succeed academically, socially, behaviorally, and emotionally.
When a child is struggling in school and hasn’t responded to the assistance we’ve provided, we may refer them for testing. This type of testing is sometimes called a psychoeducational evaluation.
What is Dylsexia?
Here’s a brief overview of dyslexia: what it is and how we help people who have it.
Dyslexia is not a disease or a problem with vision. It is not the result of laziness, lack of motivation, or limited intelligence. It’s not something you can cure with medication, diet, or visual aids.
Whole Language Vs Structured Language Approach to Teaching Reading
There are two main schools of thought on how to teach reading: The Whole Language Approach and the Structured Literacy Approach. Scientists and philosophers have been arguing for centuries about how children learn. The age-old nature-vs-nurture debate pits those who believe we learn by virtue of our biology—or nature—against those who believe we learn through experience—or nurture.
What’s the Best Way to Read With a Child?
Publishers often identify children’s books by their apparent level of difficulty. To determine reading levels, they consider things like the number of words on a page, the size of the print, the illustrations, the picture cues, or the number of sight words. Surprisingly, most of these factors aren’t important or helpful when it comes to early reading.
What is the Science of Reading?
Reading is not like talking. Talking comes naturally to humans. Most children learn how to speak without any special instruction. In the same way that fish swim and birds fly, humans talk and understand speech.
Phonological Awareness
Being aware of syllables helps us learn new vocabulary, sound out words, and spell.
Activities, Games, and Lessons for Social Learning: A Practical Guide
A terrific resource guide full of games and activities that will help kids learn important social-emotional skills, written by the Stern Center’s Director of Social Learning and Communication, Julie Erdelyi, M.A.
Terms and Conditions for Professional Learning Courses & Workshops
Learn more about our terms and conditions for courses and workshops, including policies concerning payments, graduate credits, attendance, and withdrawals.
Middle School Matters: Advancing Adolescent Reading
This paper will address what can be done in middle school for the adolescent literacy learner, identified in the research as beginning in grade 4, in order to benefit from the opportunities that literacy affords.
Terms and Conditions for Professional Learning Webinars
Learn more about our terms and conditions for webinars, including policies concerning payments, graduate credits, attendance, and withdrawals.
Terms & Conditions for the MindPlay Comprehensive Reading Course
Learn more about our terms and conditions for the MindPlay Comprehensive Reading Course, including policies concerning payments, graduate credits, and withdrawals.
Reading is Not a Guessing Game: Putting Research Into Practice So Kids Can Read
What do you think happens when a child can’t figure out how to pronounce that word? Take a moment to recall a time when you struggled with an activity and couldn’t figure it out, then imagine having the added stress of being watched closely by your teacher, parent or friends while the pressure builds for you to “just get it.” We get anxious. We then try to avoid it altogether.
The Power of the Orton-Gillingham Approach
The Orton-Gillingham Approach is a direct and explicit, language-based, and multisensory approach to teaching reading, writing, and spelling. Initially developed in the 1930s by Dr. Samuel T. Orton, a neuropsychiatrist and pathologist, and Anna Gillingham, an educator and psychologist, the Orton-Gillingham (OG) Approach is the underlying foundation of all multisensory structured language instruction, inspiring many creative OG-based programs such as Wilson Language Training®.
The Distinction & Differences of Digital Learning
Literacy, Financial literacy, Social literacy, Consumer literacy, Digital literacy – What is literacy? It seems we are encouraged to take any adjective and place “literacy” as the noun, thereby creating a new concept open to wide ranging definition, interpretation, and application.
VIDEO: "Executive Function – Organization and Possessions"
In this video, Michelle Szabo, Program Manager for Instruction at the Stern Center for Language and Learning, discusses executive function skills and what they mean for your child at home and for your student in the classroom.
How Teachers Can Help Struggling Readers Succeed
I know Charlie, and I bet you do also. He’s thirteen, carries a lacrosse stick pretty much everywhere. Wears one earbud umbilical to his phone. But he’s not a great student. He’s affable until threatened by reading or writing demands which will inevitably reveal weaknesses he spends too much energy concealing from teachers, family, and friends.
“Eye’ve” Got it!
I read a lot; always have. Fifty novels a year. Various weekly and monthly publications. Regular professional articles and occasional books. Encountering a new word used to lead me to the dictionary, which meant getting up and walking to my reference shelf, but now I just use my iPod to google the vocabulary interloper and then hope to claim it as my own
Word Games, Etymology, Jabberwocky, Diagramming, and Library Cards
Language matters to me. Among my earliest memories are playing word games with my parents and siblings on those interminable family vacation trips. Fast on the heels of that (thanks to the elasticity of memory to a 62-year-old) is my delight, thought suspect by my 7th grade peers, in the daily etymology lessons in middle school English classes.
Designing Success with a Dyslexia Advantage
What is a dream? A chance in life to pursue your passion, an opportunity to use your creativity to produce an aesthetic experience, an artistic journey to identify your purpose in life. On a recent visit with Andrew Pearce, we heard his story and learned about his entrepreneurial endeavor to create wooden bowls
Early Childhood – The Exciting Span of Merging Skills Birth to Eight
A lot happens for children from birth to age eight. We have all heard the amazing reports about how experiences early in life impact brain development. Babies’ brains make 700 neural connections every second during the first three years of life! By six months of age, babies encode the sounds of the language they hear and watch the mouths of people who talk to them so they can do likewise.
Dyslexia: Failure is Not an Option
I wish I would have known what was going on when my eldest daughter, Madeline, started learning to read. She hated it. She loved all of her other subjects but reading was painful. She used to hide under the table to avoid it. The most frustrating thing about this was that the school kept telling me that Madeline was fine.
How To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games (Part I)
How-To: “Help Get Your Child Ready to Read- Games”, is a four-part series of how-to videos for parents, and early child care providers and educators that shows you different games you can play with your children to help get them ready to read in kindergarten. This week’s How-To is all about rhyming and showcases a great game to play while driving in the car, sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office or while grocery shopping.
How To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games (Part II)
This week’s How-To is a strategy to teach kids about syllable awareness and how words are made up of different parts and sounds. Children progress from simpler to more complex tasks when working with syllables:
How to: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games (Part III)
This week’s How-To focuses on the sounds of letters. This is important because the ability to think about the individual sounds in a word is one of the strongest indicators of future reading success.
How To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games (Part IV)
This week’s “How-To” focuses on vocabulary. Did you know that children from middle to high-income families have heard 30-million more words than their peers from low-income families by the time they are four? Unfortunately, this gap keeps widening as kids move through school.
Unlocking Literacy for My Student
Have you ever had a student who did not know their letters and sounds coming into first grade? Who could not segment or blend sounds?
