This is my twenty-sixth year teaching in Hamilton. Before that I taught in Ohio and Massachusetts. I have been a reading specialist, as well as a classroom teacher. I have a B.S. in Elementary Education and a M.Ed. in Reading Specialization as well as additional graduate training in Reading Recovery. This summer I completed a 70-hour course in the Orton-Gillingham Approach. Hamilton has been my home for 25 years and is where I raised my daughter who was also in my second grade class. Through her eyes I was able to see school life in a special way. This perception allowed me to see each student as "someone's baby".
The goal of Reading Discovery is to reduce the number of first-grade students who have difficulty learning to read and write and to accelerate their learning so that they can work adequately alongside the average learners in first grade.
Reading Discovery is a short-term intervention of one-to-one tutoring for first graders. The intervention is most effective when it is used as a supplement to good classroom teaching. Individual students receive a half-hour lesson each school day for 12 to 20 weeks with a trained Reading Recovery teacher. As soon as students can meet grade-level expectations and demonstrate that they can continue to work independently in the classroom, their lessons are discontinued, and new students begin individual instruction. The Orton-Gillingham Approach is language-based; multi-sensory; structured; cumulative, but flexible; cognitive;direct and explicit, emotionally sound, diagnostic and prescriptive. Its breadth, perspective, and flexibility prompt the use of the term approach instead of method. | 
