“Miss Kim” (as her students call her), a substitute teacher in Wisconsin, recently participated in a Tucker Signing Strategies workshop for teachers sponsored by her school district. Midway through the morning, her excitement got the best of her. “I can remember these!” she said out loud, apparently surprised and delighted.
“I am LD, severely ADHD, and mildly dyslexic,” Kim shared with others in the workshop. “I also have trouble with short-term memory, and that is why I was so surprised that I could retain the signs! I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to remember them, but I can! The signs are making sense to me and helping me to keep everything straight in my mind. I wish I’d know about this strategy years ago.”
In addition to using Tucker Signing Strategies when she teaches in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, Kim plans to teach the signs to her adult son and daughter, who also experience challenges with reading. Further, she has generously offered to take notes and send feedback to aha! Process describing her experiences. “If it helps one person to avoid the same struggle my children and I have faced all of our lives, it will be well worth the effort,” she said.
We’ll keep you posted. Good luck, Kim!
– Bethanie Tucker,Ed.D., Author and Consultant, of Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, has been a professional educator since 1972. She has served as a classroom teacher, a resource teacher, a teacher of gifted students, and is currently a professor of education at Averett University in Danville, Virginia. While teaching at Averett, she researched and developed the Tucker Signing Strategies for Reading – a decoding method using sight, sound and movement, which has been highly successful with struggling readers. Through aha! Process, Inc. Bethanie provides training and consulting services for this method.
