As a parent, I have been very impressed with the program, and I know that it has been responsible for her dramatic improvements in reading over the past year.
Hannah has gone from a girl of 7 who would avoid looking at signs or texts and would resist my attempts at helping her to sound words out, to an 8 year old who happily reads signs when out and about, easily navigates Netflix and Google, and can read short novels like Billy B Brown or Ivy and Bean with minimal assistance.
She enjoyed the new “bookshelf” and the “weird creatures” book in particular. The link to YouTube of the slimy Hagfish was a hit. It was great to have new games introduced to broaden the variety of activities.
I could see that many of the games included eye tracking components which was really helpful, as after the first two 10 day courses of eye tracking Hannah became reluctant to do any more. We did get her playing Netball though, which may have helped with eye tracking and hand-eye coordination.
In the last 2 months I have observed Hannah becoming more familiar with common spelling patterns such as tion, er, ure which I think Easyread has helped with.
She has always enjoyed getting the code words and enthusiastically memorised them and went back to type them in, and loves getting her parcels in the mail.
She enjoyed using the codeword typing function and has written a secret message in Easyread characters to share with her class as a show and tell activity.
In summary, as a parent I love Easyread and know it has saved my daughter from the shame and heartache of not being able to learn to read as quickly as her peers. As we approach the end of the 12 month course, I can easily say that my goal for Hannah has been achieved: she can read fluently and chooses to do so from time to time. There is no doubt that her confidence in the classroom has improved, and that when the standardised tests occur next year, she will be able to read the questions.
Hannah has enjoyed many aspects of Easyread, including the games, the texts, the email feedback and the prizes. She intensely disliked the decoding, but as I see it, this is the essential strategy that has allowed her to learn to read. So at times we took turns with decoding, one word each or one line each, especially with the lengthier passages. We also discussed the “no pain, no gain” philosophy on several occasions, and kept looking forward to that helicopter as an ultimate motivation.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your wonderful, personalised, life changing program!
