The first thing is that James is reading and his rapid progress took off when he got into Easyread. He has now been told that he is reading to the level of a 10 – 11-year-old despite being 7. So the system has certainly worked for James.
º The way the course works in short snippets each day has proven to be sucessful. It is just long enough without being tedious over a 6-month term.
º James just loved the incentives; not just the prizes (which he thought were fantastic), but also the certificates too. James has had me laminate all his certificates to keep them safe forever.
º Unfortunately, the i-shuffle has never worked properly. I have never been able to download to it via Apple. Since commencing Easyread, James has really got into listening to story-cds and particularly loves some of the Roald Dahl stories and he was hoping that I could download these, but it doesn’t work.
º The first and second stages of Easyread were good for James, although he did think the nursery-rhyme themes were a bit young for him in stage 2.
º The pictures are a brilliant idea. He felt such a sense of achievement each day when he could recall the pictures from the previous day.
º The Eggy game and the tracking exercises have also been really good for James’ eye development.
º Unfortunately, he did not enjoy the other stories at all, such as the Seal story and Ungar, and we hit a real low at that point. James really did not want to do Easyread at all. I did not put any pressure on him as I felt this would be self-defeating, but we were in danger of James not completing the course. I used a few prizes to bribe him into persevering in the end. Fortunately, I found the “How to Train Your Dragon” books just prior to the film being released earlier in the year and this replaced Easyread largely during this time, although of course he missed the de-coding pictures which have been a huge help throughout.
º Also, James felt that there was a very long period without any prizes during this time from Easyread and he got fed up.
º When James was put onto the Riddles section, it all changed completely. You will see that he logged on each day and he loved doing the sessions. He said that he wished that the stories stages didn’t exist but were replaced instead with the riddles and jokes. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to create them all!
º The spy theme has also proven to be successful. He wasn’t sure what to think at first, but one of his teachers told me that James had told her all about Easyread and the fact that he is a spy on a mission, so it clearly made an impact with him.
º David, the look on James’ face this morning was a joy to see and his sense of achievement at finishing the entire Easyread course sent him out on Cloud 9 this morning. Thank you very much indeed.
Kindest regards,
Pennie