Gini was a teacher for 31 years, 29 as a reading specialist. She has also taught ALL grades, K-12, in many formats - large class, small group, co-teaching, push-in, pull-out. You name it; she did it. She has always tried to meet her students where they are, learn about them individually, and group them accordingly for maximum progress. Retired now, she is still tutoring struggling readers, although she has been doing it only virtually since the pandemic started. Amazingly, remote learning has been going very well.
Surprise! Her favorite pastime is, reading. She loves non-fiction, mostly biographies, history, poetry, and educational research. Nerd that she is, Gini still looks for new and effective teaching ideas. Once in a while, she even reads a fiction book if it comes highly recommended.
Gini is also an avid gardener (So am I!). You can see photos of her Pittsburgh garden on Pinterest @
Loving Her Garden. On the left is just one of the many beautiful photos.
Believe it or not, Gini has no grass in her yard. She claims she was well ahead of climate change concerns when she developed it almost 40 years ago. She rarely has to water her garden, but oh, the weeds! She used to do all of the weeding and pruning herself until about 10 years ago when she started needing joint replacements. She now has a total of five (two knees, two hips, one shoulder). One more, and she will be totally bionic.
She is also an avid golfer. She used to play golf with her husband for 40 years about 3-4 times a week, mostly after school and in the summer. They often played moonlit golf as they usually were the last ones on the course. All that practice helped her win eight Women’s Championships and eight Husband and Wife Championships, though not in the same years. Her hubby still plays golf and often shoots his age or under, but she rarely plays anymore.
Gini joined TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers) in the first or second year of its development. (Me, too! We're oldies but goodies!) Currently, she has 122 resources in her store called Reading Spotlight with 20 of them being free. She joined because she wanted to share her best resources for effective and enjoyable practice for beginning and struggling readers. Having been an English teacher, her store also contains many fun grammar practice activities.
Her first free item ever posted on TPT was Johnny Appleseed: A Tall Tale Grammar Story, and it is still a popular download.
It is a Tall Tale Grammar story to practice grammar and spelling skills with intermediate and middle school students. The tale focuses on the most common errors in homophones, subject (verb agreement, apostrophe, capitalization, punctuation, irregular verbs and irregular plurals).
Gini's featured paid resource is a bundle entitled
Learn To Read Bingo: Vowels. Effective, enjoyable, and easy-to-use, this bargain bundle is a terrific way to practice the basic fundamentals of decoding. It is so-o-o much better than passing out another boring phonics worksheet.
The latest brain research indicates that humans remember in patterns. These games reinforce the most common short and long vowel phonograms in English. This word family approach improves reading, writing, and spelling, and the games are especially effective with students who do not hear phonics sounds well.
Gini developed many more Bingos and Word Searches for word analysis practice because she found that many struggling readers simply had gaps in their skills due to a lack of mastery for various reasons. She discovered all that many of them needed was extra practice in that skill.
Having taught several thousand struggling readers to read is the most rewarding experience of her life. Gini thanks all of them for their trust in her. Continuing to help them makes her feel useful and makes her happy every day.
Gini has other places where you can view her resources, read her blog posts or just get teaching ideas and strategies.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Again, I am featuring a TPT seller who is also a member of
The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative (TBOTEMC) of which Gini and I are members. TBOTEMC is made up of teachers who work together to take their
Teachers Pay Teachers stores to the next level. We use the power of cross-promotion to collaborate with our Pinterest, Facebook, and Teacher Talk blog marketing teams. For more information on how you can join this group, go to
The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative.