Sarah Major, M.Ed. is passionate about working in harmony with a child's immaculate design to support their learning strengths. As a Title 1 Program Director and Designer, Sarah earned awards for creating her own multisensory educational resources that have now been sold in all 50 states and over 150 countries. By design, Sarah’s materials encourage right-brained learners to see the big picture, fulfilling their need to understand why it matters and applying that knowledge to real life scenarios. 

Some children seem to take naturally to traditional reading instruction. They learn letter sounds, blend them into words, practice the words a few times, and steadily move forward.

Other children learn differently.

They may understand an idea quickly when they can see the whole concept, notice a pattern, connect it with a meaningful image, physically interact with it, or understand how the pieces fit together.

At Child1st, we have traditionally described many of these children as right-brained learners.

We don't mean that these children literally learn with only the right side of their brains. Reading involves interconnected processes throughout the brain. We use right-brained learner as a practical description for children who tend to respond especially well to visual patterns, meaningful associations, stories, movement, context, and whole-to-part learning.

Sarah Major developed many of Child1st's teaching strategies while working directly with children who struggled with conventional instruction.

Here are nine ways to bring those strategies into reading instruction while still teaching the essential skills of phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding, spelling, word recognition, fluency, and comprehension.

1. Show Children the Landscape Before Focusing on the Pieces

Some children want to know where they're going before they concentrate on each individual step.

Imagine handing someone a thousand puzzle pieces without showing them the picture on the box.

A highly sequential learner might happily begin sorting pieces by edges, colors, and shapes.

Another learner may immediately ask:

“What am I making?”

Once that child sees the whole picture, the individual pieces make more sense.

Reading can work the same way.

Children need explicit instruction in individual sounds and spellings, but it can help to show them how those pieces fit into the larger system.

For example, rather than teaching a spelling in complete isolation, show several words that use it:

rain
mail
paint
train

Ask:

“What do you notice?”

Now the child isn't just memorizing AI.

The child is seeing AI as part of a pattern across words.

That larger picture gives the detail somewhere to belong.

2. Help Children Discover Patterns in Words

One of the most powerful things we can teach children is that they don't have to approach every unfamiliar word as an entirely new problem.

Words have patterns.

Sarah found that arranging words according to common sound-spelling patterns could transform the way struggling readers looked at print.

Instead of seeing a huge collection of unrelated words, children began seeing families and relationships.

For example:

Long A spelled AI

rain
mail
paint
train
nail

Long A spelled AY

day
play
stay
tray
gray

Ask children:

What sound do all these words share?

How is that sound spelled in this group?

Where do you notice AI in these words?

Where does AY tend to appear?

Then let children physically sort the words.

When children discover a pattern themselves, they have something meaningful to attach the new information to.

This doesn't replace explicit phonics instruction.

It makes the phonics visible.

3. Let Children See the Sound-Spelling System

English contains many ways of spelling the same sound.

That can seem overwhelming when children encounter the spellings one at a time.

Sarah liked to give children a broader view—a landscape of sound spellings.

Consider long A.

Children might encounter:

A as in apron
A-E as in cake
AI as in rain
AY as in play
EA as in great
EI as in vein
EY as in they
EIGH as in eight

A beginning reader doesn't need to master all of these at once.

But as new spellings are introduced, a chart or sound display can help children understand:

“Oh! These are different ways we can spell the same sound.”

That changes the experience from:

“Why does English keep breaking the rules?”

to:

“I've found another spelling for a sound I already know.”

A classroom sound display or word wall can grow as children learn.

Add new spellings only after they've been explicitly taught. Place example words with them. Return to the display during reading and writing.

Over time, children build a visual map of the spelling system.

4. Let Children Sort, Compare, and Talk About What They Notice

Don't do all the noticing for them.

After explicitly introducing a concept, give children opportunities to examine examples and find relationships.

Suppose you're working with AI and AY.

Give children word cards:

rain
day
paint
play
mail
stay
train
tray

Ask:

“How could we sort these?”

Children may quickly discover that some words contain AI and others contain AY.

Then ask:

“What else do you notice?”

Eventually draw attention to where the spellings appear in the words.

Children can highlight the spelling, read the words, build some with letter tiles, write them, and use them in sentences.

They aren't merely hearing a rule.

They're seeing the pattern operate across words.

That type of comparison can be especially powerful for children who naturally look for visual similarities and differences.

5. Add Purposeful Movement

For some children, sitting still and repeating information is one of the least effective ways to make it memorable.

Give the child something meaningful to do with the information.

Sarah often incorporated body movement into sound-spelling instruction.

For example, after children have learned the AI spelling, they can body-spell it.

Say the sound.

Say the letters.

Use an agreed-upon movement while spelling:

A – I

Then read an AI word.

The important part isn't simply getting children out of their seats.

The movement should be tied directly to the concept they're learning.

Children can also:

• step once for each sound in a word
• finger-map phonemes
• move letter tiles to change one word into another
• physically sort word cards
• trace a spelling while saying its sound
• build letters with their bodies
• gesture to represent a word's meaning

Purposeful movement gives children another way to interact with the same information.

6. Connect New Information With Meaningful Visuals and Stories

Abstract symbols can be difficult to remember when they don't yet mean anything to a child.

Meaning changes that.

A visual or story can act as a temporary bridge between unfamiliar print and something the child already understands.

That's the principle behind many Child1st materials.

With SnapWords®, for example, the printed word is initially integrated with a meaningful image. A verbal cue and body motion reinforce the word and its meaning.

But the child doesn't remain dependent on the picture.

Once recognition develops, the card is flipped to the plain printed word.

The child retrieves the word without the visual.

Then the word is practiced in phrases, sentences, writing, and connected reading.

The sequence is:

meaningful support → retrieval → plain print → application

Visuals are most useful when they lead children back to the print rather than becoming a substitute for reading it.

7. Teach From Whole to Part—and Back to Whole

Some children understand details more easily after they see what those details are part of.

We often describe this as whole-to-part learning.

That doesn't mean skipping phonics and teaching children to memorize whole words.

Instead, begin with something meaningful, examine how it is constructed, and then put it back together.

Take:

neighborhood

At first glance, that's a lot of print.

But the child can learn to look inside the word for recognizable parts and sound-spelling chunks.

Do the same with words such as:

together

or:

through

Rather than saying:

“That's a big word. Just memorize it.”

show the child how to investigate it.

Say the word.

Listen to it.

Look for familiar spellings.

Mark meaningful chunks.

Read the parts.

Blend them back into the whole word.

Write the word.

Then use it in meaningful text.

The child moves:

whole → parts → whole

This preserves meaning while teaching the structure of the word.

8. Don't Limit Children's Language to the Words They Can Independently Decode

Beginning reading skill and a child's ability to understand language aren't the same thing.

A child may still be working through simple printed words while understanding sophisticated ideas when those ideas are spoken aloud.

That's why rich oral language remains so important.

Talk with children.

Read aloud.

Discuss interesting subjects.

Use real vocabulary.

Explain unfamiliar words.

Let children talk about science, animals, space, history, inventions, nature, art, and whatever else captures their interest.

Don't assume that because a child is reading simple text, the child's thinking must also remain simple.

Sarah saw repeatedly that children could understand and enjoy vocabulary far beyond what they could independently decode.

That knowledge matters when they eventually encounter those words in print.

The word isn't entirely new.

The child already knows what it means.

Now reading instruction can help connect that known spoken word with its written form.

9. Help Children See Reading as Meaning, Not Just Word Calling

A child can accurately pronounce every word on a page and still have very little idea what was read.

Reading has to remain connected to meaning.

Ask children to create a mental picture as they read.

After a sentence such as:

The little brown dog slept beneath the old wooden table.

ask:

“What do you see?”

The child can describe it or draw it.

Then compare the mental picture with the text.

Was the dog brown?

Was it under the table?

Was the table old?

Visualization gives children a reason to attend to the details in the sentence.

With longer text, ask children to:

• retell what happened
• draw a scene
• explain an idea
• predict what might happen next
• connect the text with prior knowledge
• identify the most important information

The ultimate purpose of reading isn't sounding out words.

It's constructing meaning from print.

What This Can Look Like in a Reading Lesson

These strategies don't have to become nine separate activities.

They can work together.

Suppose you're teaching AI and AY as spellings for long A.

1. Introduce the sound and spellings explicitly

Show children:

AI → /ā/
AY → /ā/

Read several examples together.

2. Show the pattern

Use:

rain – mail – train – paint

and:

day – play – stay – tray

3. Compare

Ask children what they notice about the location of AI and AY.

4. Sort

Mix the words and let children sort them into AI and AY groups.

5. Move

Use body spelling or another meaningful motion as children say the sound and spelling.

6. Build and write

Build several words with letters or tiles and then write them.

7. Read

Find AI and AY words in appropriate connected text.

8. Use the words

Write a sentence containing one or more of the words.

9. Review later

Mix AI and AY with previously learned patterns so children have to retrieve what they know.

Now the child has heard, seen, compared, moved, built, written, read, and applied the spelling pattern.

That's multisensory instruction with a clear literacy purpose.

What If a Child Still Struggles?

Right-brained and multisensory strategies aren't substitutes for identifying the specific reading skill that's causing difficulty.

If a child continues to struggle, look closely at the reading process.

Can the child:

• hear and manipulate sounds?
• recall letter sounds?
• blend sounds?
• segment words for spelling?
• recognize familiar sound-spelling patterns?
• decode unfamiliar words?
• remember previously decoded words?
• read with reasonable fluency?
• understand what was read?

Once you know where the difficulty occurs, you can combine explicit instruction in that skill with the visual, tactile, kinesthetic, and pattern-based supports that help the child engage with and remember the learning.

Read more: Signs of a Struggling Reader: 10 Characteristics to Look For

If the child is already significantly behind, see:

How to Help a Struggling Reader Catch Up

A Note About “Right-Brained” Reading

Child1st has used the term right-brained learner for many years because it describes a teaching philosophy that has resonated with parents, teachers, and children.

Today, we use the term as a practical description rather than a literal neurological classification.

A child isn't reading with one hemisphere while another child reads with the other.

What remains useful is the teaching insight behind the term:

Some children respond especially well when learning is:

visual
meaningful
pattern-based
active
hands-on
connected with stories and context
presented as a whole as well as in parts

Those strengths can work alongside explicit, systematic reading instruction.

We don't have to choose between teaching phonics and making learning visual.

We don't have to choose between systematic instruction and movement.

And we don't have to choose between teaching children to decode and helping them understand the whole word, sentence, or story.

The strongest instruction brings those elements together.

How Child1st Supports Right-Brained and Visual Learners

Child1st resources were developed to make abstract reading concepts more concrete, meaningful, and memorable.

SnapWords®

SnapWords® provide multisensory reinforcement for high-frequency word recognition. Meaningful visuals, verbal cues, and body motions support initial learning before children transition to recognizing the plain printed word independently.

Right-Brained Phonics & Spelling

Right-Brained Phonics & Spelling helps children see sound-spelling relationships and patterns across words rather than encountering every spelling as an isolated fact.

The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns

The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns gives children and teachers a broader view of the sound-spelling system so individual spellings can be understood as part of a larger pattern.

Easy-for-Me™ Reading

Easy-for-Me™ Reading brings phonemic awareness, phonics, word recognition, spelling, writing, and connected reading together in a systematic progression while incorporating Child1st's visual, tactile, and kinesthetic teaching approach.

The Goal Is Independent Reading

Visuals, stories, motions, manipulatives, charts, and patterns can make learning more accessible and memorable.

But none of them is the final goal.

The goal is for a child to look at ordinary print and independently use what has been learned to read it.

The supports are bridges.

We use them to make an abstract concept clear, practice it in meaningful ways, and strengthen retrieval.

Then, as the child becomes secure, we gradually remove the support.

What remains is the child's own knowledge:

I know that sound.

I recognize that spelling.

I've seen that pattern before.

I can work through this word.

I understand what I'm reading.

That's where visual, pattern-based, and multisensory instruction is ultimately meant to lead.