BC TEAL is proud to present our 2025 Annual Conference: Disruptive Educational Practices: Strategies for Transformation.
Educators shine in times of change to face unexpected challenges. This is when creativity flourishes by combining proven practices with fresh and innovative ideas. These times call for transformation which can be rooted in tradition or experience, or it can arise through unexplored approaches. The synthesis of old and new ideas drives meaningful progress. Join other insightful and creative educators as we flourish within the power of our community.
As a former public-school psychologist, the presenter has worked in the field of education her entire professional career. A mid-career change found her teaching literacy to adults. Currently as an Accessibility Support Instructor, she works with students and teachers to overcome barriers to learning. Part of this role is to provide instructional support for students with reading challenges.
In this session, the presenter will share knowledge from the field of learning disabilities and why some students have trouble learning to decode phonetically.
Phonological awareness will be introduced as an essential skill for reading development and you will have opportunities to use some assessment activities designed to gauge your student’s proficiency in this area.
The presenter will demonstrate how she uses multisensory techniques adapted from the learning disabilities field and how they can be used to improve students reading. Time to practice these strategies and think about how to implement them in your own classroom, will be integrated throughout the session.
In this session, you will learn:
The reasons many students struggle with decoding.
Why explicitly teaching phonological awareness will help students become better readers.
How and why to use multisensory activities to support reading instruction in the EAL classroom.
Accessibility Support Instructor, Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia
Heidi is an Accessibility Support Instructor at ISANS who provides consultation and support for learning challenges. Her past roles include literacy instructor and public-school psychologist.
