The Power of Small Wins

Hey there, friends! After taking a short break to recover from surgery, I’m back with a quick but powerful episode all about the magic of small wins. Whether it’s learning to read, homeschooling, or mastering any new skill, progress isn’t about big leaps—it’s about stacking tiny victories over time.

I’ll share real-life stories from my students, like how one simple fluency strategy is helping Cyrus become a more confident reader and how Josiah is breaking through his mental block—one paragraph at a time. Plus, I’ll give you two easy ways to encourage progress at home so you can help your child feel successful in their learning journey.

Sometimes, the biggest breakthroughs start with the smallest steps. Let’s talk about why those little moments matter more than you think!

🎧 Listen now and be encouraged to celebrate every step forward!

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode with a fellow homeschool parent or educator who needs a reminder that progress—no matter how small—is still progress!

Thank you for listening to Dyslexia Decoded! Remember, every journey begins with a single step, and progress always beats perfection.

Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and if you found this story inspiring, please share it with someone who might need to hear it.

Until next time, stay strong, stay curious, and stay fearless. 💚

Transcript

0:01

Hey there, and welcome back to Dyslexia Decoded with Teacher Maggie. If you're a regular listener, you may have noticed I missed last week's episode. I had surgery and was in full recovery mode. resting is not exactly my strong suit. I am a very busy do do do kind of person. So resting and healing drove me crazy, but I'm on the mend and excited to be back Since I'm keeping things light this week, I thought this would be the perfect time to talk about the power in small wins. This could be in learning and homeschooling and honestly in life, because whether it's healing from surgery, learning to read or mastering a new skill, slow and steady progress is what actually moves us forward. So let's dive in. I see it. all the time with my students. Those tiny victories that might not seem like much in the moment, but over time they add up to something huge. I have one little boy for example, he's just started with me a few weeks ago, but he's doing an amazing job with decoding. And so we've shifting our goal to building fluency. and you probably worked with. Emerging readers, they get stuck in that, you know, and wanting to sound out every single word. Like you tell them to sound out words and now they're stuck on that. You might relate to that. So what I do to help bridge the gap there and get to more fluent reading is have the student read silently inside their head first. And then once they think they've got it, then they can read the whole sentence out loud. So today we were doing that. We were playing a game. And when it was his turn, he would read the sentence in his head and then he would read it out loud with fluency he's really coming along with this. It really feels like a small step, but it is already making a difference. I have another little boy I've been working with for quite some time. We're using the Learn Reading program. he is on Lesson 12, so he's getting in some more complex phonics and doing amazing. if you don't know about Learn Reading, we start doing, full page passages at that point. looking at a whole page of text can feel really overwhelming for a lot of students. So this little boy, last week we're like, well, how about we just read the first paragraph, which is, four short sentences and that he could do. He could get his mind around reading one paragraph, but looking at the whole page, was quite terrifying. this week, we were really eager to move past the first paragraph, but he had got stuck in his head that I only have to do one paragraph and he just couldn't get past. But the win that we wanted to celebrate and the proof that he was growing is that he read that first paragraph like it was the easiest thing he's ever read. So his fluency, his confidence, he really did great on that paragraph. And even if we don't, finish the task every time, we want to look and find the ways that we can celebrate our learners who are really working on the things that are, the hardest for them, right? I always tell parents that if you had to do your least favorite thing all day, every day, life would be very frustrating. I want to balance. having to work on the things we have to work on with, also working on things we enjoy and ways we feel successful. learning isn't about giant leaps. It's about stacking small victories. A child doesn't go from struggling with reading to fluently reading chapter books overnight. It happens one word, one sentence, and one story at a time, and every bit is progress. So what does this mean to you? If you're a parent, a teacher, or a tutor, here's a reminder to celebrate those small wins. Here are two simple ways to encourage progress. First, I recommend allowing your students, your child, to re read familiar books. Sometimes we think progress means constantly moving to harder text, but re reading a book they already know? Builds confidence and fluency and, God forbid, a love of reading. So if your child wants to read Green Eggs and Ham for the 10th time, Let them. They can read it to a stuffed animal, a sibling, to a chicken. As long as they're reading and they're wanting to read, let them read the books over and over again. my next tip is to praise the effort, not just results. Don't wait for them to get the word perfect to praise them. Or don't wait for them to read the full book and be like, wow, you just read a whole book. make sure we're finding the spots in between in order to praise them. instead of like, wow, you read that perfectly. Try, I love how you've sounded that word out. Or I see you trying even when it's hard. That. Is inspiring. This can build resilience and a growth mindset. So that is all for today's mini episode. I know it was short. but I am back and it feels good to be back. And just knowing that I'm staying consistent and that was my whole plan. Just be consistent. so thank you for your patience while I recovered and I appreciate you all so much. Next week, I really would like to dive into being diagnosed with dyslexia or ADHD or a learning difference and really the value of that. and putting the effort into getting diagnosed. in the meantime, I'd love to hear about your child's small wins. Send me a message or comment on social media. Until next time, keep celebrating progress one step at a time.