Case study: Giant leap forward for Alexander

Nov 1, 2017 | DM Case Studies |

  1. WHAT THE PAST WAS LIKE

Alexander struggled greatly with phonics in school. He hated reading and writing in the beginning. He had had a particularly bad case of glue ear and his hearing was badly affected by it between 1.5yrs and 3.9 yrs. Consequently, his speech was behind and anything to do with language was difficult. We persisted with extra work over the years and he eventually learned to read, but was usually a couple of levels behind his peers.

  1. PREVIOUS INTERVENTIONS DONE

We’ve used revision books, online games, EducationCity. He would read, but try to actually guess the sentence and would make a lot of mistakes on the small words. When it came to names of people and towns, he rarely tried to read the word and usually completely made it up. His comprehension wasn’t very good either. And he was in a special help group at school for his spelling. He’d get high scores on the spelling tests, but when using the same words in writing tasks his spelling was atrocious.

  1. THE EASYREAD EXPERIENCE

When Alex was in the spring term of Year 4, I came across the EasyRead system and it sounded like the solution of our problems, as well as being a very fun and rewarding way to learn. Alex was always keen to do his daily 15 min of practice and loved the little rewards he’d get when completing a level. For me it was finally a way to help him learn in a positive way, without having to raise my voice and threaten with screen time ban.

  1. THE OUTCOMES

Within 2 months of starting the programme, his confidence and speed when reading improved so much he moved 2 levels up at school. We continued with the system for a total of 6 months. His reading is fluent and fast. I actually struggle to keep up with him. He has moved a total of 4 levels up since the start of the programme. He rarely makes mistakes and doesn’t hesitate to stop and decode an unknown word. His comprehension has improved dramatically.
We didn’t really see much improvement in his spelling until the last month on the system. But we were advised on that by Sarah from the EasyRead Team in advance.
There is an actual table with performance scores in the admin panel that records the progress of the child. It is excellent idea to have and to check occasionally how far they’ve come. Alexander loved checking it with me and made him feel very proud of his achievements.
I have been very pleasantly surprised lately of Alex’s writing. It feels like he has suddenly made a giant leap forward. He used to miss most of the vowels in a word and now he puts all the right ones in the right places. His confidence has improved too which helps as he has a thing about making mistakes when writing and would rather not write anything than write it wrong.

  1. THE IMPACT & VALUE DELIVERED

For us, the EasyRead system was one of the best investments we’ve made. It was a bit difficult financially and we stayed with it longer than what expected initially, but the results were so good that we made it a priority and found a way to afford it.
Sincere thanks to the EasyRead Team for developing this system and for the support while we were on it.