The unfair race

It’s my belief that your child is running in an unfair race, and tutoring is not necessarily the best first step.

Reading progress is like a track meet. Most children are running in an open lane, but some children, like yours, are running in a lane filled with hurdles.

Tutoring will focus on teaching your child to catch up by running faster and jumping higher. However, wouldn’t it be better to simply remove as many of the hurdles as possible before focusing on jumping and sprinting?

What are the Hurdles

Reading progress requires an instant recollection of words and their meanings. This is true for all of us. Most people require only 2-4 exposures to a word before we are able to commit the word to memory with instant recollection.

Your child’s metaphorical hurdles are most likely preventing an instant recollection of words due to a very common and fixable problem.

Without being able to efficiently ‘self teach’ with instant recollection of words, early readers will require significantly more exposures before a word is committed to memory.

the Open Lane

The solution is straightforward: a person only needs three skills in order to build mastery in the instant recollection of words.

1. Ability to see the printed word and the letter groups that make up the word.

2. Ability to discern and identify all the different unique sounds that make up the word.

3. Ability to comprehend the meaning of the word.

Over time, as early readers encounter new words, they sound out the words in their head and recall the possible letter groups that have created those sounds (phonemes) in previous words. Then, they see the distinct letter groups in the new word coming together to form the sounds (phonemes). This is an automatic and instantaneous process for most readers with the above three skills.

Most children who struggle with reading fail in #2; this means they lack the ability to discern and identify the phonemes that comprise words. In short, they lack Advanced Phonemic Awareness.

LEvel the Playing Field

There are many resources to assist with building phonemic awareness, but choosing what is best for your child can be daunting. Take a moment and connect with us below and you will be immediately provided with the three best options we have found for building advanced phonemic awareness skills.

Thank you - Jeff