Oxton House Publishers, LLC

Meet Dr. Phyllis E. Fischer

Phyllis E. Fischer, the developer of Concept Phonics™ and author/designer of many other Oxton House publications, grew up in and around Minnesota’s Twin Cities. With her grandmother, mother, and two aunts as teachers before her, she moved naturally into the field of education. She began her professional career almost four decades ago as a third grade teacher in Hopkins, Minnesota. After earning a B.S. in Education and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota, she taught at the university level for more than 30 years, in Connecticut, Australia, and Maine. She is now Professor Emerita of Learning Disabilities
at the University of Maine at Farmington, where for years she supervised a clinic for children with learning disabilities.

Dr. Fischer also serves as a school consultant for students with special academic needs, is on the Advisory Board of the Learning Disabilities Association of Maine, presents workshops on teaching reading, spelling and numeracy, and maintains a small private practice to evaluate students for possible learning disabilities and
to teach reading and arithmetic.

The inspiration for creating her many educational materials emerged from blending her teaching experience with her doctoral research. In Phyllis Fischer’s own words:

The driving motivation behind the development of Concept Phonics™ was speed. Struggling readers need to become automatic decoders just as fast as possible. Combining the psychology research on concept-training paradigms with reading research on teaching multiple vowel sounds and my Orton-Gillingham training led to the beginning of the Concept Phonics™ program. Working with children in clinics and in inner-city schools led to the emphasis on automaticity at every step of the teaching-learning process.

Made by Serif

“Dr. Fischer is one of those unusual individuals in our field who has command of the scientific research literature in reading, language, and learning disabilities, and who knows intimately the rationale and processes for teaching any student to read.

She consulted with us for several years on the NICHD Early Interven-tions Project. She was successful under adverse conditions in low-performing schools with challenging children and needy teachers. The teachers liked and welcomed her instruction, and many improved their practices as a result. I credit her with helping us to raise the achievement of the children to the national average and above.”

Louisa Moats, Ed.D., Director
NICHD Early Interventions Project

When Phyllis Fischer is not teaching, writing, or consulting, one might find her busy gardening, reading a good book, or knitting a sweater to keep warm during Maine’s long winter months. She lives in Farmington with her husband and their cat, Ceili.

Phyllis E. Fischer, Ph.D.

“Dr. Phyllis Fischer [has] a wealth of knowledge about early reading acquisition and years of successful experience in teaching.... She has developed theoretically sound, clinically proven materials to train children in an intelligently sequenced and orderly fashion in the skills basic to the reading process.”

Prof. Isabelle Y. Liberman

University of Connecticut

Some Recent Presentations