"I've been going to the Northwest Reading Clinic for four months now. I have seen a great improvement in my spelling. My grades came up from a B to an A !"
Courtney G., age 10

Visual memory development helps individuals become independent readers and spellers by teaching them how to visualize "unfair" words such as enough and answer.  Students at Northwest Reading Clinic develop visual memory for letters to improve sight word recognition and fluency.  This program improves reading fluency and word attack skills as well.  Visual memory development may be used on its own or in conjunction with phonemic processing development, depending on each student’s unique needs.
Students with weak visual memory may have difficulty reading unfamiliar words, demonstrate poor spelling, and read slowly because they do not recognize sight words quickly and accurately.  If a student has good phonemic awareness and poor visual memory, many of their spelling errors will tend to be phonetically accurate.  For instance, a student may spell the word enough as enuff or neighbor as nayber, because these words do not follow common phonetic patterns.
Strengthening visual memory allows students to recognize common unfair words as a whole and to self-correct errors in reading and spelling. Consequently, students are able to avoid guessing and thus read and spell with greater accuracy and success.
 
 
Sight Words and Spelling Accuracy Development