Roughly a third of all children learn to read on their own, with little or no help from their parents or teachers.  Another third will learn to read with some instruction, almost no matter what kind of instruction they get.  

All other children need more than that.  They need instruction based on the "Science of Reading" -- a term used to describe the last 20+ years of research into how children learn to "decode" (read) and "encode" (spell).  They need excellent instruction in phonological awareness and phonics in order to build those foundational reading skills.  Plus training in fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.  

Unfortunately, most classroom teachers haven't been trained to effectively teach this group of students to read.

Even Before Phonics, You Need Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is key to becoming a good reader.  Children need to truly, deeply understand that words are made up of individual sounds, and that we use individual sounds in different combinations to produce the many words in the English language. And they need to be able to manipulate those sounds. Can your daughter tell you all the sounds she hears in the word "grand"?  Can your son say "sleep" without the "s"?  How about "bake," but with a long /e/ sound instead of the long /a/ sound?

"Decoding" Instead of Memorizing

If you don't have good phonological awareness, phonics (the relationship between sounds and letters) doesn't make any sense.  If you don't understand that you can combine the long /a/ with "r" and "n" to make the word "rain," your teacher's "ai" lesson isn't going to stick.  And that's what we see, over and over again - children with poor phonological awareness who haven't learned the phonics patterns they need to know in order to be able to "decode" (or read) an unfamiliar word.  These kids will do their best to memorize entire words as complete units, based on the shape of the word and maybe the first few letters.  And some kids with excellent memories can get away with this technique for quite a while before parents and teachers realize that the child can't decipher an unknown word.  No child can memorize all the words we use in English - in order to become fluent readers, they need to understand that we combine sounds in different ways to make words, and learn how we spell the various sounds in our language. We use Orton Gillingham methods and materials to teach children phonics.

That's Where We Come In

We specialize in teaching struggling readers to decode the English language and learn to love reading! And in the process, we're training the next generation of classroom teachers, speech language pathologists and other educators.  

We want all kids to become fluent readers, good spellers and confident students!