Looking for a place to start?

  1. Download the Identifying-Correcting-Blocked-Learning-Gates-Checklist-and-Explanation to informally assess your child’s characteristics of blocked learning gates. Watch Dianne Craft’s Identifying and Correcting Blocked Learning Gates Workshop at the bottom of this page.
  2. Using the checklist, check the symptoms in each Learning Gate that your child/teen is exhibiting. Carefully study the interventions that are used to correct each gate. (articles)
  3. If reading is a problem, click on “Quick Word Recognition Placement Test with Instructions”, and give the Quick Word Reading Test to determine present reading level.
  4.  Download the Lesson Plans for the Struggling Reader and Writer/Speller
  5. If your child/teen has a Reading problem: Instead of the present reading and phonics program you are using, follow each step in the Daily Lesson plan for a Struggling Reader. This is a 45 minute daily remedial teaching session that covers all parts of reading. It is exactly the plan I followed when working with my struggling readers or kids/teens with Dyslexia in my Resource Room in school (students 2nd -8 th grade), to achieve the 2 year growth in reading in one year. You can be your child’s own Resource Reading teacher at home. This replaces your present reading curriculum until your child tests one grade above reading level in the Quick Score Reading test. (Be brave…trust me) When this happens, you can then go back to your other reading curriculum, or any ‘regular’ reading curriculum.
  6. Test your child’s reading level using the Quick Word Recognition Placement Test with Instructions. If your child is reading at the 1st-3rd grade level, download the Craft Right Brain Reader Placement Test Instructions and the Craft Right Brain Student Reader Teacher Study Guide.
  7. If your child/teen has a Writing Glitch (which can accompany a reading problem, or can be all by itself, in a child/teen who actually reads way above grade level, or who writes or spells very primitively). Instead of the present Language Arts program (grammar, composition, handwriting, and spelling) you are using, follow each step in the Daily Lesson Plan for a Struggling Writer and Speller. This is a 45 minute daily remedial writing/spelling session that covers all parts of writing. It is exactly the plan I used when working with my struggling writers and spellers in my Resource Room in school to achieve the 2 year growth in writing and spelling in a year. Just be brave and put the ‘other’ curriculum you have been using on the shelf. After all, if that was working well, you wouldn’t be on this site, looking for alternative answers to teaching. You can go back to the other “typical” curriculum once your child/teen is spelling and writing easily for you. Use theInformal Writing Assessment to determine your child or teens current writing level.
  8. Many parents and teachers have seen their student blossom in math using right brain teaching strategies. We use the “whiteboard method” to teach to a child’s powerful photographic memory. Download our ““Instant Success Right Brain Math Strategies” Right Brain Math DVD to help your child tame the math monster. You can use our Math Computation Test to informally assess your child’s current math level.

In summary, your teaching/tutoring day for a child/teen who has a reading AND writing glitch, you would spend 45 minutes (may be longer when you first begin) doing all the steps in the Daily Reading Plan. Then, after a break, you would then have your other part of the Language Arts program…the Daily Writing/Spelling plan for about 45 minutes. The rest of the day, you can do the other subjects (Math, History, Science) in the way that has been working.