Just wanted to say a big thank you. A friend had suggested your programme when our son was 6 and at that time we decided against it. We struggled for two years with no reading gains even though he was doing Reading Recovery at school.
So in April 2016 at age 8 we bit the bullet and signed our son up for Easyread. Our son was very shy and withdrawn, called himself stupid and refused to read especially in front of anyone including his 5 year old sister.
I didn’t understand all the concepts at first and had to go through all the online tutorials for me (the adult). These were great and definitely necessary. Together we started the sessions.
It was hard at first to motivate him every day. Then after about 5 weeks he was asking for it! There did not seem to be much change and we hummed along.
Then something happened – gosh that sounds corny even when I am typing it – but something clicked. He went from level 1 in May to level 7 in July. He was asking to do sessions in front of people – grandparents and then even friends. He sat up straight at the computer and read aloud. He got a bit frustrated every now and then but the length of the sessions was perfect.
What really hit home for him too was the Skype sessions. Having someone from Easyread go through the session with him and provide him external confirmation that he was doing great was just what he needed. He is a very visual child so I let him look at the graphs in the admin zone. He loved seeing that you were following his every lesson and loved it even more when he could see his improvement.
Then in the August school holidays he wanted to buy a book – the 13 Storey Treehouse. He read the whole thing in 4 days. I could have cried. He then used his pocket money to buy the whole series. He reads them every night before bed.
This was something that I dreamed of for him and now I get to see it – and a big part of that is thanks to your programme. I will be an advocate of your programme, the programme itself is great but so too is your service, to the personalised letters and rewards along the way, to the Skype sessions and the messages – every bit motivated us and supported us to become the happy reading family we are today.