Hi! I’m Dr. Marnie Ginsberg, founder of Reading Simplified™. If you’ve ever pondered these questions:
You’re in the right place!
Marnie uncovers that her 6th grade language arts students, on average, are reading 2 years below grade level. And despite her master’s degree and enthusiasm, she has no idea how to remediate their word-reading difficulties.
Marnie searches high and low for answers to her question, “How do you teach reading quickly?” and finds lots of conflicting advice and theories. Overwhelming! She finally runs across ideas that make sense. Before and after school, she tutors 2 boys in her class who originally were below the 1st grade level, and their achievement jumps ahead to the middle of 3rd grade!
These 2 boys’ rapid leap forward in reading achievement, after 6 years of failed learning, ignites an obsession in Marnie. Why wasn’t I prepared to teach reading? Why are so many students reading so poorly? She leaves the classroom to open a private reading clinic. Most of the students they work with are able to reach grade level in several reading domains after only 12 hours of 1-on-1 instruction.
Marnie adds a Reading Specialist license and completes a doctoral program focusing on literacy at the University of North Carolina. She “gets to” read hundreds of research articles on word reading acquisition and phonological awareness. 😉
As a doc student and later as a UNC researcher, Marnie has the rare opportunity to develop an early reading intervention to be examined in a series of quasi-experimental research studies funded by the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences. Teachers in high-poverty, rural communities work with struggling readers using her new reading approach and also receive webcam-based coaching from Marnie and other literacy consultants. Multiple research articles in journals such as the Elementary School Journal, Journal of Educational Psychology, and Journal of Learning Disabilities, show strong outcomes for these readers, with effect sizes from .4 to .7, including comprehension.
After watching so many teachers in multiple states (NC, NM, NE, TX) implement the approach she developed, Marnie streamlines the learning process even further for both the teacher and child. She develops K-5 sets of student materials and training videos for a national, non-profit mentoring organization. ReadingSimplified.com begins.
The online Reading Simplified Academy opens to 40 new members.
The ideas of Reading Simplified catch on with teachers and parents all over the world who are overwhelmed by the seeming complexity of teaching reading, especially for those students who are struggling.
With over 1700 teachers and parents going through the Reading Simplified Academy and over 30,000 subscribers to Reading Simplified free trainings, thousands of children have been reached with instruction that yields much more rapid achievement gains than mainstream approaches. Marnie continues to offer complimentary workshops via Facebook live most Tuesdays at 8 pm (EST) and through other online and in-person workshops. Passionate teachers and parents who’ve gotten unprecedented outcomes for their student(s) continue to spread the word about Reading Simplified.