Case Studies

Clark: from 2 years behind to all caught up in 100 days

Wow what a week! My 8 year old son Clark has completed 100 lessons with Easy Read and in the same week he got pupil of the week at school, not for just anything but for his reading skills and finding his love of reading.

This is so amazing and I’ll tell you why. Just over twelve months ago when Clark had just moved up to year 3 in Junior School I was disappointed to discover that his reading age was around 5 years old, two years behind his actual age. The school worked very hard with Clark to improve his reading but he didn’t enjoy reading at all, it didn’t matter how we tried to encourage or support him he found it very hard to the point of him having a total melt down on most occasions. As far as Clark was concerned reading wasn’t worth the effort and it didn’t get any easier. The phonics that Clark was taught in Infant School were too confusing for Clark and there are so many rules and exceptions that they just made no sense to him.

When we did manage to get him to read it was very slow and sentences made very little sense. He could read a word on one page but will have forgotten it by the next page. Strangely bigger longer words were easier for Clark, I believe this was due to the fact that he had the knowledge to read but struggled with the basic word structures and sounds.

I found Easy read after a google search. After a very difficult day trying to read with Clark, I felt so upset seeing my son struggle and was desperate to help him. Obviously I was unsure if it would help Clark as we had tried just about everything.

It was the feedback from the parents online that sealed the deal so to speak. So many had described their child’s problems and I felt that they could have been writing about Clark.

I was impressed with the 10 free lessons without having to give any payment details.

The trainertext characters are fabulous and fun and easy to learn. They really do make sense and helped Clark see some letters have different sounds. I really looked forwarded to our training everyday and it was nice to sit with Clark and spend that time with him, working through the games and reading sections. I saw results quite quickly after about 20 lessons (in that Clark would sit and do his lesson without any fuss and actually understood what he was reading) and we progressed up the bookcase smoothly. It was during this time that I realised what an impact Clark’s struggle with reading had had on him. It wasn’t quite overnight but he seemed calmer in himself and started sleeping better. His school noticed too during the first couple of weeks. He liked the easy read programme and looked forward to doing it everyday.

We loved the games and I felt the ‘spy’ theme running alongside the lessons were a lovely touch. Getting a codeword and prizes when getting to a milestone was brilliant. Clark loved getting a letter in the post. I was very impressed with the amount of support and contact from the Easy Read staff. They really do help you get the most from the course. They are available to speak to and email at any time. During our first phone call I was very impressed with their concerns that Clark might have an eye tracking problem and light contrast sensitive (something I had considered) they gave him some exercise to do which definitely helped.

So that’s about it really. Our wonderful journey through Easy Read has been worth every penny as Clark’s new teacher (at the start of year 4 in September) was so impressed with his reading that she didn’t even know he’d struggled last year. So he’s reading has come up 2 years in just over 100 days. During the 6 week summer holidays he was a changed boy and its wonderful to see him wanting to read and trying lots of new things due to his reading ability.

I’m so so proud of him.