TEACH CT - The Education Association of Christian Homeschoolers

Faith Berens

Speaker Bio

Faith Berens lives in Fauquier County, VA, with her husband Matthew, daughter Hailey, and son Hayden. Faith joined the HSLDA team of special needs consultants in 2008 and homeschools her children. She also works as a private educational consultant and evaluator. Some of her passions include reading for pleasure, singing, traveling, nature/science, leading Bible studies, and teaching reading to struggling students. Faith holds a master’s degree in reading from Shenandoah University. She has over 15 years of teaching experience that includes serving as a classroom teacher in public and private Christian schools, Reading Recovery teacher, reading specialist, NILD educational therapist, home educator, co-op instructor, and tutor. Her areas of expertise are early childhood literacy, reading assessment, and the identification and remediation of reading difficulties and disabilities.

Workshops

Laying a Foundation for Reading in the Preschool Years
Faith discusses the ultimate goal of reading instruction: comprehension. She also explores various types of thinking and processing skills required for proficient comprehension. Faith shares tips, techniques, and strategies for developing the vocabulary of the very young, as well as good habits of mind in order to lay a solid foundation for comprehension with our wee ones (up to age 5).

“HLEP!” My Kid Can’t Spell!
Faith addresses the importance of spelling and presents the developmental stages of spelling. She also share various strategies, techniques, and fun, hands-on, multisensory methods for spelling practice, as well as specialized spelling programs and strategies to help you transform “I am a terrible speller” to “I am a good speller!”

Reading Difficulties: Remediation Strategies and Techniques (Part 1)
Do you have a student who is having reading difficulties? This session introduces the 5 Pillars of Reading: phonemic awareness, phonics (decoding and word recognition), fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Faith offers guidance for identifying the area and the level of your child’s reading difficulty, and she also shares practical teaching tools, strategies, and techniques for remediating your child’s reading struggles. Session 1 will address decoding and fluency problems.

Reading Difficulties: Remediation Strategies and Techniques (Part 2)
Do you have a student who is having reading difficulties? This session introduces the 5 Pillars of Reading: phonemic awareness, phonics (decoding and word recognition), fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Faith offers guidance for identifying the area and the level of your child’s reading difficulty, and she also shares practical teaching tools, strategies, and techniques for remediating your child’s reading struggles. Session 2 will cover reading comprehension.