I have some thrilling news to share with you! Learning Tools has relocated from the beloved Seattle location to a bright, sunny office in Bothell. This move marks an exciting new chapter for Learning Tools, and I can’t wait to welcome you to the new space.

Why the Move?

Seattle has been a fantastic home for Learning Tools, but I wanted a location that offers even more convenience for my clients. The new Bothell office is just off the 405, making it easily accessible for everyone on the east side and the North End. Whether you’re coming from Bellvue, Redmond, Woodinville or Mill Creek you’ll find that getting to to Learning Tools is now quicker and more straightforward.

The New Office

The new office space is a bright, sunny environment that’s perfect for learning and creativity. This is a positive and vibrant atmosphere which is crucial for effective learning, and the new location offers just that. I am confident that you’ll love the new space as much as I do.

Special Offer: 10% Discount

To celebrate the move, I am offering a special 10% discount on any first or second program you enroll in this summer or fall. Just mention this blog post when you sign up to take advantage of this limited-time offer. Whether you’re looking to enhance your reading or math skills or learning concepts for life, now is the perfect time to reach out and schedule yours or your child’s program.

Looking Forward

I are incredibly excited about this move and the opportunities it brings. My commitment to providing top-quality educational programs remains stronger than ever. The new location allows me to serve clients better and continue offering the exceptional learning experiences you’ve come to expect from a Davis Program.

Thank you for your support. I look forward to seeing you at the new Bothell office soon!

Warm regards,
Sophia Goebel
Owner & Facilitator at Learning Tools

P.S. Don’t forget to mention this blog post to receive your 10% discount on your next program!

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Spring News Letter 2020.

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My domain name has changed from Learning Tools Dyslexia to Learning Tools For Life.

I made this change for a number of reasons:

• The first reason is that I’m adding on the Davis Autism Programs and a Parenting Skills program to my services.  The “For life” addition to Learning Tools is broader and encompasses the new programs instead of just being known for Dyslexia services.
• I also feel that once you learn the “tools” in all of the programs I offer, you or your child will use them in everyday life, all the time.. and I’m going to imagine I will keep using them my whole life. 
• Lastly, one of the Davis programs for autism is called “Concepts for Life” so the “for Life” just seemed like the perfect fit. 

My email has changed as well, I am now using info@learningtoolsforlife.com, so please update your contacts/address book as needed. 

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I was recently asked by a parent, “why should I pay for a program for my son?”

She said she made it through school and in life without such a program and she believes she is dyslexic.  She knows grades are not everything….  she knows how smart her child is and that is all that matters.

Here was my answer to her.

1. If your son wants help and wants to improve

   If your son wants help and wants to improve, a program can offer him concrete ways to do that.

2. Helps with self-esteem

   For me, my son’s self-esteem was why I looked into doing a program.  It broke my heart to hear him call himself “stupid” and to see him compare himself with other kids. After the program, this rarely happened.  My son began to see his strengths and was proud of those, this is also what the majority of parents tell me when we do follow-up after the program.

3. Allows your child to be in control of his learning

   Being in control of your own learning so powerful! Students learn and are able to recognize when they are disoriented or confused and need to focus.

   Often students I work with are very good at concentrating, but heavy concentration without the mind focused just causes more confusion, more work, and can be painful. Dyslexics need to ensure they understand the difference of focus and concentration, when they know how to focus and stop just tyring to concentrate hard, learning becomes easier.

4. Possibilities

   When I see a student really embrace what they have learned and learn how their brain works, they get excited by all the possibilities available to them. Some might get excited about acknowledging their creative sides, or that their ability to see things from a different perspective and how this can help solve problems in the world.  They love that their imagination allows them to discover things that others don’t necessarily see and stop seeing themselves as dumb, slow, or challenged.

5. A faster result

   A Davis® program is working with thelearni ng and thinking style of the individual and teaching them to use this style to their advantage.

   With tutoring, often they are just being “retaught” material with the same methods used in school but at a slower pace.  These methods are for those who think with verbal conceptualization and taught with a lot of repetition, drill, and rote memorization.

   When tutors do teach with other methods and use multi-sensory learning it can be positive but also can often take a long time which makes for very slow progress and they end up having years and years of tutoring which ends up costing them close to the same amount or even more than having done the Davis program.

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Fall 2019 NewsLetter

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Spring News 2019

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English class has always been a nightmare for me, I was hopeless at writing text, or at least coherent paragraphs.  In grade school, it was spelling and grammar that I hated. Then middle school we were writing about books we read, and while that wasn’t quite as bad (because I could use sentences from books) it was the sequence and organization of what I wrote that challenged me. In high school, I soon had to formulate words to express my own feelings about what we were reading. Writing spilled over into other subjects and whenever I had to write an essay I felt sick. In college, we are supposed to be experts and remember all those things from English class to write intelligent thought-provoking papers for all classes.

For me writing was excruciating, it was also a barrier to my goal, graduating from college. I was at a small liberal arts college and I don’t’ know if we didn’t have tutors, or if I was just too humiliated to find out. But, because I was determined, I faced the humiliation of asking friends to help me correct my papers. Wow, what a blow to one’s self-esteem after you have rewritten a paper two, something three, times before you show it to someone and then have it come back to you a red marked up mess. I remember fearing what my classmates me thought of me, I had only a trusted few I would ask for help. Now that I am well into my 40’s, I am not quite so vulnerable, my skin has been thickened over the years.   Now it is easier to tell my stories and explain what a nightmare writing can before some, just like reading late can be for others.

Dyslexia: not just a Reading Problem

For me, my dyslexia didn’t show up as much with my reading, I was able to get by, I was really good at asking others what they thought, for listening to others and discuss topics. Understanding what I read could be hidden. What I couldn’t hide was my struggle with writing coherent sentences. I still struggle at times when I feel rushed or do not have a clear picture of what I want to say. When I was young I would procrastinate on the writing portion of homework, but it was because I would not know how to begin. I don’t know how many times I was told by teachers and friends to just start writing and then go back and correct it and make it readable. So much easier said than done. I tried out this method, and since I didn’t have a better solution, I used it, but it was not an efficient method for me.

Writing down anything that came to me actually gave me too many words to deal with. The problem with just putting whatever down on paper is I can ramble and ramble. The sequence of thought and/or the organization of ideas can be all over the place, but beyond that was getting the right words. I have really struggled with getting the right words for what I want to say, I say it so many times and in so many different ways that I confuse myself and my thoughts become muddied OR I don’t’ say enough of the right things because it is too obvious to me and I assume the reader would see it as being obvious as well.

I remember in college struggling and telling a friend that the words are just in a jumbled up in the sky and I can’t seem to pull the ones I want to use down to explain something. I understand this better now, I wasn’t seeing the words jumbled up, I was seeing what I wanted to express as a picture. Ever heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words?” There can be so much to see in a picture, especially one that is evolving and complex. Without a good understanding of the meaning of prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs describing those pictures I felt stumped. I just told my teachers I was stymied, their suggestion was to just write everything I thought and then clean it up – stream of consciousness writing.

Now I understand what the issue was with this method — I am not a verbal conceptualizer, I am not thinking with the sound of words, and this method was trying to help me get the words out. The actual issue I was having was not knowing which word to use because I didn’t have the meaning of high-frequency sight words that make up 75% of the words we use.

Meaning Based Program

The Davis methods are meaning based programs, they use symbol mastery to give meaning to words that cause dyslexics trouble – exactly what I needed.   I remember a moment during the program seeing what made up the trigger words list. I had an “ah ha” moment, I remembered being in German class in high school, getting a test back that was of German prepositions. I was looking at the test where you match a word with a picture. I had done poorly on it and I was confused as to why I got so many of them wrong because I knew the English equivalent. Back then I couldn’t figure it out, now it is clear as day to me, I didn’t have the right meanings of the English preposition to match with the picture on the test.

The Davis Dyslexia Correction Program has helped me move beyond my fears of words. I now understand the meaning of words at a much deeper level. I also have the ability to be focused enough to see my errors. I can clean up my writing to a place where I can be pretty sure it is understandable to others. Before I really thought I was broken when it came to expressing myself, now I see it for what it is.

Writing Text: My Method

My method to write text is a combination of methods.  I use outlining, mind mapping, as well as stream of consciousness depending on what I am writing.  Email start with bullet points.   This writing I started with bullets as well, he is what I had down:

• English class nightmare- Writing hard
• Experience
• Method not helpful
• Why – picture thinker
• Trigger words
• What Davis did

I put this on my page and then wrote a bit under each bullet.   I tried a bit of stream of consciousness, but I am constantly coming back to my bullets to be sure that this is what I wanted to express.  For this writing, I ended up deleting quite a bit because it wasn’t relevant. I then reread it very slowly making sure that each sentence is the picture I want to present. I then put it away until the next day, look at it with fresh eyes.  I still like to have someone else look at it to find things I might have missed.

This method isn’t too different then what some teachers tell you to do, but what is different is me, the wisdom, knowledge, and understanding I have gained through mastering trigger words allows me to see it, reread it, and be present to words in a way that wasn’t possible for me before.

The post My Dyslexic Challenge: Writing Text appeared first on Learning Tools.

My son is now in 8^th grade: he is doing very well in language arts, he writes beautifully, he reads well with excellent comprehension and in math, he has been getting high marks.  His math teacher even said to me that my son has a great mind for math; he just needs to believe in himself a little more.

Math Story Words Can Create Trouble

I thought he was on a great academic path and then last weeks’ homework happened. As he was doing homework, he asked his older brother some questions and his brother answered the questions with other questions to try and get him to think through the problem. I was having a proud mama moment; my older son was truly trying to help.

Then all of a sudden, I hear a loud, forceful voice say, “I already told you”.  I gently asked if he was using his tools, which was returned with a glare of an irate teenager full of disgust. Okay, I see that mom needs to stay out of it! I tried, I truly did, but as he was reading the story problem question back to his brother and telling him what equation he made out of it, it was obvious to me that the confusion was due to trigger words, so naturally I had to butt in.

He ended up working through the problems with me making sure he had a clear picture of what the meaning of each of the words were and to be sure he knew what was being asked for in each question. Then I told him we could fix his frustrations by modeling in clay the words that were causing confusion, just like we used to. He was up to it and we spent the weekend playing with clay and cutting up circles of clay into fractions.

Learn the Meaning of Words Through Pictures

Do you know “by” in math can mean to multiply, but it can also mean divide?   During the homework fiasco, it was clear that my son didn’t know the second meaning of “by” meaning divide, which was needed to get the equation correct. The other word that was causing confusion was “of” when working with fractions.

I hadn’t seen him break down into this “self-hate” in a long time; he kept saying how stupid he was under his breath. He could do the math, but translating words into a math problem requires one to have a clear meaning/picture of each word. That is what the symbol mastery does, it gives meaning to words.   So learning the meaning of words that don’t produce a mental picture is extremely important to picture thinkers.

Math has a language of its own, but it is more than just numerals and function symbols, the words we use for math to describe functions are just as important.  By using clay to mold and create the meaning of the word, we get to understand, know and master a word at a very deep level. After doing this work, that word no longer causes a problem.

“by” in math can mean divide

“of” in math can mean a portion or fraction taken from

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In school, I had “coping methods” that would at times get me to pass a spelling test. For me, the trick was, don’t study until 5-10 minutes before you walk into class, then cram like crazy.  I couldn’t think of anything before the test, couldn’t talk to anyone, just keep those letter in my head. One problem would be getting interrupted by friends or the teacher before the test; ignoring or pretending to daydream worked pretty well for that.

Another problem was when the teacher wanted you to write a sentence with the word, those teachers were so frustrating, and picky. The sentence piece always got me, I would end up losing the other words that I was trying to keep straight by concentrating on the sentence. I mean really, why can’t I write, “He was tantalized” for the word tantalize? Nope, that was never enough, teachers wanted something more.  For my sentences I would be lucky to get even partial credit.

If I tried to study the words well before the test like at home the night before, that made me more confused then ever. I remember my mom trying to get me to learn how to spell the word February. I would get the “ru” order messed up or forget the “r” altogether.   She would say remember the “r” is for your sister and she was born first, and then “u” came along. When that still didn’t work she added in “a ‘r’ is for right BUT it isn’t on the right side, it is in the same order as the alphabet, ‘r’ comes first before ‘u’”. Well… in theory that seems great, and now that I know how to spell February it seems like something I would remember. Yet, I remember, on numerous occasions being at school at my desk trying to remember what my mom told me. I wasn’t remembering the ‘r’ and ‘u’ in the order of the alphabet because I then thought of ‘r’ on the right. If I tried thinking of my sister, I would end up messing it up with thinking surely she said to think of me first and that is ‘u’. Why would I think of my sister first? I would second guess each thing, and then with my stress of taking to long on that word it would require me to sing the alphabet in order to figure out which was first. I had to sing it out loud, but that would get me in trouble so I would try to whisper it. As you can see from my retelling of the story, my inner dialog had me in much confusion and I would end up missing much of what was happening in the classroom.

Fast forward to being an adult. I stopped thinking of spelling, one of the joys of being out of school. But one day, I remember overhearing an employee talking about how annoying it was when she would get emails from her boss (me) that had words misspelled all the time, she couldn’t figure out how I became the head of the department she worked in. I suddenly felt shame and embarrassment.

I knew I was not a good speller. I thought about a few incidents when I had someone ask me what I meant in my email because they couldn’t understand it. I think I explained to them what I meant and then said, “I was typing so fast I made the errors” but really, I just hadn’t seen them. It was really at that moment, feeling shamed by my inability to spell that I started paying more attention to my emails. I would make sure my spell checker was on, and that helped, but it still didn’t fix the problem.

My training to become a Davis® dyslexia facilitator is what helped me overcome my greatest problems with spelling. When I was “the student” for a dyslexia correction program for a facilitator in training, I started to really see symbols and words for the first time. Wow, it was AMAZING, the focusing tools helped me to see my errors in spelling and then the method of writing the word in clay and taking a mental picture of it was profound. Before I honestly just didn’t know if something was spelled wrong at least half the time. I didn’t see it, sometimes I would have an inkling that it wasn’t right, but most of the time proofreading was a joke to me. I wasn’t focused enough to even find all the errors.

I know I now have the ability to learn how to spell any word I want to.   I have worked on the words that used to cause me so many issues, like character, definitely, and business. At times, I still have to think a moment about them, but if I look inside my mind’s eye and trust my gut, I get it right every time.

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