Hey Rocking Dan fans, my Science of Reading/Orton Gillingham YouTube playlist now includes animated music videos for 6 syllable types, 3 types of syllable division, single vowels, y as a vowel, schwa, the doubling rule, digraphs and Sound it Out (The Orthographic Mapping Song). Go and check it out now! The Science of Reading never sounded so good! Your students/ children will be singing and dancing along to these catchy tunes as they are learning and reinforcing important structured literacy concepts at the same time! It's a win-win that is for sure. I've had lots of great feedback from teachers, parents and Orton Gillingham/Structured literacy therapists about the songs and videos which is amazing! My class loves the rockin' tunes too! It is so wonderful to know that my music is helping dyslexic and non dyslexic children all around the world with their literacy learning. Make sure you subscribe to my channel too! I have a number of songs and videos I am currently working on.
In other news, I've had the great pleasure to represent The Code Read Dyslexia Network at a number of Learning Best Practice Conferences over the last two school terms. It's been wonderful to talk to so many parents and educators about dyslexia and what can be done to help dyslexic children in school and in life in general! I have really enjoyed talking to people about Code Read's report Saving Money by Spending: Solving Illiteracy in Australia. It's an important document! If we help dyslexic children we are in fact helping all children as we know " Explicit teaching of alphabetic decoding skills is helpful for all children, harmful for none and crucial for some." (Snow/Juel, 2005). It's vital for children that they become literate in order to give them choices and opportunities in life. We know what the cognitive science tells us about how the brain learns to read and what the evidence tells us about the most effective way to teach reading for everyone is.
If you would like to know more about dyslexia or my personal experience as a dyslexic person and dyslexic therapist or my advocacy for dyslexics and for evidence based reading instruction then you can check out my most viewed blog post from 2017 My Dyslexic Journey
Here is a short video I a made about dyslexia for Distinct Magazine!
I have to say it is wonderful to be an Accredited Member of the Australia Dyslexia Association. It's great to be able to work with dyslexic children and help them with their learning!
It was also a great honour to be interview by Jocelyn Seamer and be featured in her book Reading Success in the Early Primary Years. It was wonderful to be able how to plan and teach a structured literacy block in the early years.
My Virtual World Tour wrapped up a few months ago! What an amazing experience it was to play 571 virtual shows to classrooms across 14 different countries over two and half years! It was great to play so many of my structured literacy songs during the concerts and to promote evidence based teaching while entertaining the children and the teachers at the same time! Of course I had the chance to discuss the Science of Reading and dyslexia with the teachers after the shows! It truly was privileged to be able to share my music with the world!
That's about it for now! If you haven't done so yet, go and check out my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man! Make sure you subscribe! Until next time Rock on!
It was also a great honour to be interview by Jocelyn Seamer and be featured in her book Reading Success in the Early Primary Years. It was wonderful to be able how to plan and teach a structured literacy block in the early years.
