Michael Hunter
Michael Hunter, M.Ed., is a founding partner of Readsters, a small company dedicated to supporting and developing excellent reading instruction so all students learn to read. Michael found his passion for teaching struggling readers as a volunteer, teaching adult non-readers. He is now dedicated to helping teachers teach every student to read. Michael has co-authored instructional materials with his business partner, Linda Farrell, including Phonics Plug-In ONE & TWO, Practice Packets for Fixing Common Confusions, and Teaching Vowel Sounds. Michael delivers professional development and advises schools nationally. Some of his favorite work with schools includes coaching and modeling in the classroom. This work with students and teachers keeps Michael’s skills fresh. This work also continues to inform the creation of additional instructional materials for beginning and struggling readers of all ages. Michael’s work at Readsters has even taken him to Africa to consult on early reading instruction in tribal languages.
Help! My Student is Stuck at Sound-by-Sound
Teachers are often puzzled by their students who can orally segment and blend phonemes and know letter names and sounds yet continue to read many words by first sounding out each letter and then blending the sounds into a word. Most of these students are in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grades, with a few in 4th grade or higher. The core problem with most of these students is that they have not mastered complete phonemic awareness, which David Kilpatrick explains so well in his book, Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Participants will (1) learn why these students don’t progress to whole word reading, (2) learn steps to help these students move to whole word reading, (3) practice activities to help students progress, and (4) receive some materials they can use with these students.
Topics: Reading Fluency & Dyslexia, Science of Reading and Dyslexia