Mrs. Sara Garff
After seven years of being an elementary school classroom teacher, Sara Garff is pursuing a Masters of Education in Dyslexia Therapy from Mississippi College. In her Masters program, she provides dyslexia therapy using the Alphabetic Phonics curriculum to students who struggle with reading, writing, and spelling. It is her goal to become a Licensed Dyslexia Therapist (LDT) with the state of Texas and a Certified Academic Language Therapist (CALT) with Academic Language Therapy Association (ALTA).
Sara has a warm, compassionate manner of teaching, encouraging even the most insecure student and infusing him with a much-needed boost of self-confidence. Over the many years of teaching, Sara has discovered her passion for teaching reading to struggling readers. Her vast range of experience with fun, multisensory teaching methods have proven successful for those who other teachers deem unsuccessful and hopeless. Sara’s determination and persistence are demonstrated in the following parent testimonials:
"Mrs. Garff's hard work and dedication to my child's success have led to significantly higher grades."
"Your creativity and fun teaching style resulted in my son actually wanting to go to school! Thank you so much!"
"My son was struggling with self-confidence in his reading skills. With Mrs. Garff's enthusiasm and passion for teaching, he has made a complete turn-around. She has truly demonstrated a strong commitment to his academic and emotional success."
Sara is available during the day to provide therapy at private/charter schools or homeschool students. She is also available in the evenings.
Contact Sara today!
435-659-0876 or ReadWithSG@gmail.com
Curriculum
Dyslexia Therapy: Alphabetic Phonics Curriculum
Alphabetic Phonics was developed by Dr. Lucius Waite and Aylett Cox in the Language Laboratory, Neurology Division, in the interdisciplinary setting of the Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas, Texas over ten years (1965-1975). Experts in the departments of neurology, education, linguistics, psychology, sociology, research and evaluation, and in physical, occupational, and speech therapy contributed expert guidance for the compilation of structured techniques for multisensory teaching of language skills. The Language Research and Training Laboratory developed Alphabetic Phonics through organizing, structuring, and extending the Orton-Gillingham approach to remedial language training.
Alphabetic Phonics provides direct, explicit, and sequenced instruction. Teaching sequentially means that students learn language concepts in a logical order, from the simplest to the more complex. The ascending levels of complexity allow students to experience success while developing proficiency.
The curriculum is systematic, cumulative, and intensive. Systematic lessons adhere to a fixed plan or method and are easily depended on by the student. Each new piece of information is carefully and successively added over time and reinforced by practice and review.
Therapy sessions include these lesson components: alphabet/dictionary skills, phonics, reading, spelling, handwriting, phonological awareness, listening comprehension, phonemic awareness, fluency, oral and written expression, reading comprehension, and vocabulary skills. There is a validated reason for everything included in each lesson.
These Orton-Gillingham based teaching methods are integral to the Alphabetic Phonics instructional program:
- Multisensory techniques - presenting information visually, auditorily, and kinesthetically
- Guided discovery learning - a series of carefully structured questions to actively involve students in the learning process
- Ongoing progress monitoring - daily introduction of concepts, daily review of concepts learned and daily opportunity for practice of skill application to ensure mastery
Recently, other programs have been created from Alphabetic Phonics, such as Take Flight and Reading By Design, which are abridged, condensed versions of Alphabetic Phonics.
Alphabetic Phonics is a therapy-level program—not simply tutoring—therefore, prolonged time is needed with each student. In order for the therapy to be effective, the student needs to receive services 3-5 days/week, 1 hour/day, for 2-3 years. Over this period, the student will be taught concepts up to a 7th grade literacy level. This curriculum is designed to supplant the existing Language Arts program for the struggling student.
Alphabetic Phonics is designed for instructing students with dyslexia and weak decoding skills, although it meets the needs of every kind of learner. The ideal student is one who has average to above average intelligence and who has been diagnosed with dyslexia (and maybe ADD/ADHD), but no other special needs. This multisensory language arts curriculum is effective for the student with or without the official dyslexia diagnosis.
