Because so little attention is given to the teaching of handwriting, many children struggle to master this skill. Now the struggle is over. Through simple, but amazingly effective techniques, your child can learn to handwrite easily and effectively within a few weeks via the Letter Land by Hand program developed by Dr. Marion Blank.

Letter Land by Hand: The Handwriting Program of The Reading Kingdom

Education & Teaching

Blank, Dr. Marion

Schools & Teaching

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Story Smarts is the key to reading comprehension success. Reading comprehension is a skill that is vital to academic success. Yet it receives little, if any, systematic attention in the early years of school. Story Smarts changes all that. Even if your child has not yet learned to read, you can use the program to give him or her competence in this vital realm. Developed by world-renowned educators, Dr. Marion Blank and Laura Berlin, Story Smarts includes 30 attractive, full color picture stories, grouped into two levels of complexity. These stories are sophisticated, but easy for your child to read and they enable you to teach the key components of comprehension, including the “main idea.” The stories advance steadily from simple to more complex and are designed so that a child always experiences mastery and success.

Story Smarts Books 1-30

Children's Books

Berlin, Dr. Laura

Literature & Fiction

Story comprehension! For children with autism spectrum disorders, achievement of this skill is one of the most cherished dreams. Yet, it is a dream that seems to remain out of reach. Even when the children are able to speak or read with a fair degree of skill, comprehension seems to elude them. The loss is significant and goes far beyond what we usually think of as story comprehension. The ability to understand stories is central to the recounting of events such as talking about what happened during the day, or over the weekend, what is happening now and what is happening to others. Conversations of this type call upon the same skills as story comprehension. Consequently, story comprehension represents an overarching skill with major benefits for verbal communication. Steps to Stories is designed to give children—regardless of whether or not they can read—access to this critical ability. Using advances in linguistic and cognitive research, it offers parents and professionals a program that will start children on the path to story comprehension. Purchase includes license for personal use (one child) only. For multiple children, please purchase multiple licenses (contact us for volume discounts).

Steps to Stories: A Unique Program to Build Story Comprehension in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders - Personal Use License

Reading Kingdom Stage 2 is an incredibly effective reading and writing program for students in grades 3 to 5 as well as older students who are experiencing difficulties. It is the only program available that features Dr. Marion Blank’s Integrated Skills Method which uses innovative techniques to teach reading, writing and comprehension in an integrated fashion so that they complement and reinforce each other. The result is that students become successful readers and writers. The program has three levels that teach students to become adept at dealing with the higher level reading and writing skills required in key subjects such as literature, social studies and science. Level 4 is designed for students in 4th grade, though we advise using the Reading Kingdom Stage 2 placement assessment to determine the appropriate level at which to start. This manual requires the Random House Step-Into-Reading Book "Tut’s Mummy: Lost and Found," the story of the famous Egyptian king and his burial. Along with recounting the discovery in the 1800’s of Tut’s tomb, there is extensive information about mummies.

Reading Kingdom Stage 2 - Level 4 - Manual For Tut's Mummy

Reading Kingdom Stage 2 is an incredibly effective reading and writing program for students in grades 3 to 5 as well as older students who are experiencing difficulties. It is the only program available that features Dr. Marion Blank's Integrated Skills Method which uses innovative techniques to teach reading, writing and comprehension in an integrated fashion so that they complement and reinforce each other. The result is that students become successful readers and writers.The program has three levels that teach students to become adept at dealing with the higher level reading and writing skills required in key subjects such as literature, social studies and science. Level 5 is designed for students in 5th grade, though we advise using the Reading Kingdom Stage 2 placement assessment to determine the appropriate level at which to start.This manual requires the Random House Step-Into-Reading Book "Dinosaur Hunters." Starting with the initial discovery of dinosaurs in the 19th century, the book provides information about dinosaur digs and the science of paleontology.

Reading Kingdom Stage 2 - Level 5 - Manual For Dinosaur Hunters

What is ASD Unlocking Language and what can it accomplish? ASD Unlocking Language is a program designed to teach effective language and communication to children with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental conditions that affect language. Upon successful completion of the program, children are able to understand and talk about: past, present, and future events in their home life, such as eating, playing, bathing, and dressing past, present, and future events in the outside world, such as visits to the supermarket, a trip to the zoo, and activities at school simple stories and other early literacy skills Mastery of these skills enables children to become more active participants in the world around them. The program may be implemented by a parent, teacher, therapist, or other dedicated adult. Who is the program for? The program is for children who meet the following criteria: In language—the ability to say at least two words in sequence, either spontaneously or through imitation, such as “go home,” “bye bye,” “want cookie.” While behaviors like these are fragmentary, they are significant indicators that the child has the perceptual and motor base required for spoken language. In behavior—the willingness to respond effectively to adult guidance. To benefit from language instruction, a child must be able to cooperate in the teaching process. If a foundation of cooperation is not yet present, it can be established through the behavioral program outlined in Spectacular Bond: Reaching the Child with Autism by Dr. Marion Blank, Dr. Suzanne Goh, and Susan Deland. It is advisable to postpone ASD Unlocking Language until the Spectacular Bond program has been completed. How is the program organized? ASD Unlocking Language is organized into short daily sessions lasting about 20 to 30 minutes each. Sessions take place once per day, four or five days per week. Skills taught in the lessons are also practiced outside the session in real-world settings. Depending on the child’s skill and rate of progress, the full program takes from 6 to 18 months to complete. There are two components to the program: Pre-Language Skills and Language Skills.

ASD Unlocking Language: A Program to Teach Language and Communication for Children on the Spectrum

Goh, Dr. Suzanne

ASD Pre-Speaking Program is designed to teach a range of cognitive and linguistic skills to non-verbal children with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental conditions that interfere with language development. (Note: The term “non-verbal” is often misleading since many of the children can comprehend and incorporate language. A more accurate term would be “non-speaking.”) Upon successful completion of the program, children are able to attend to directions, guidance, and input from adults; sustain attention to cognitive demands for periods up to 15 to 20 minutes; gain the ability to retain increasingly complex sequences of visual information; comprehend and respond to increasingly complex language-based demands. ASD Pre-Speaking may be implemented by a parent, teacher, therapist, or other dedicated adult. ASD Pre-Speaking is organized into short daily sessions lasting about 15 to 20 minutes each. Sessions take place once per day, four or fi ve days per week. Skills taught in the lessons are also practiced outside the session in real-world settings. Depending on the child’s skill and rate of progress, the full program takes from 2 to 6 months to complete. Four activities are used, with each aimed at fostering attention, sequencing, memory and language. Each activity starts with processing “one piece” of information (e.g., matching one picture to another) and then moves steadily so that the child is incorporating, reviewing, and acting upon “four pieces” of information (e.g. having seen four pictures that are no longer in view, the child selects, via memory, four pictures that match the originals.) NOTE: This program is also included as part of ASD Unlocking Language.

ASD Pre-Speaking Program: A Program to Teach the Foundations of Language to Nonverbal Children

Music has amazing appeal for children on the autism spectrum as well as those with other neurodevelopmental disorders. Many also display remarkable abilities to play musical instruments. Music not only provides a source of great pleasure, it also provides a route for building skills to foster a range of cognitive abilities, including attention, memory and sequencing. The activities in ASD Piano Play teach children some basic skills in this domain by having them produce musical sequences by playing notes on a keyboard.

ASD Piano Play: A Program to Teach Early Music

ASD Speaking Sounds is a program designed to teach the foundation underlying the production of meaningful speech in children with ASD and other developmental conditions that interfere with speech production. Central to the program is the issue of sequencing. A basic fact of language life is that single words do not represent a meaningful language system. “Real” messages, even simple ones such as “want cookie, dog eats, no walk,” etc. require that sounds be chained together to form combinations of words. That, in turn, requires complex, intricate mouth movements that can be extremely challenging. The problems are akin to the fi ne motor diffi culties that the children display in activities such as handwriting and pulling up zippers. While the fi ne motor diffi culties in those areas have been well recognized, the importance of comparable fi ne motor movements of the mouth, lips and tongue in the production of speech has often received insuffi cient attention. Nevertheless, the area is critical. It’s why the children’s ability and willingness to produce two sequenced sounds are such important indicators of their ability to benefi t from the program. In producing two sounds in succession, they are showing that they have achieved the necessary base for “interweaving” sounds and moving onto increasingly complex speech production. Using sounds that the children can produce (so the input is adapted to the abilities of the individual child), the program starts by requesting one sound at a time (e.g., say “bah”). The lessons then expand to include increasing numbers of sounds—so that by the end of the program, the children are producing sequences of four speech sounds such as “mee, bah, koo, koo”. As indicated by the examples, the program focuses on speech sounds but not on actual words— although occasionally word-like sounds appear. The sounds are always ones that can be used in words but they themselves are rarely words. This technique serves to simplify the situation for the child. With meaning “out of the way,” the child learns to focus on the production of the sounds themselves and on the movements in the mouth area needed to create the sounds. With the attainment of four sequenced speech sounds, the child can then transition to ASD Unlocking Language which teaches the skills of actual language including expressing ideas, answering questions, summarizing observations, etc. ASD Speaking Sounds may be implemented by a parent, teacher, therapist, or other adult.

ASD Speaking Sounds: A Program to Foster the Sounds of Language

ASD Typing is a program that teaches children, within a few weeks, to become proficient with the keyboard so that they have a route for producing expressive language. Typing is an ideal route to expressive language for children with oral-motor apraxia, auditory processing disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and a range of other conditions.

ASD Typing: A Program to Build Language Through Typing

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