Please join us in congratulating Theo, Peighton and Cassidy, who all turned a big corner with their reading in August.

Theo

Reading never came easy for 9 year-old Theo, but it was coming along. It was spelling, however, that that was the bigger problem for Theo. When Theo spelled, he could spell phonetically, but the accuracy when it came to writing the vowel sounds just wasn’t there.

At around lesson 120, Theo’s reading had visibly started to take off, as he gained in fluency and accuracy in sounding out unfamiliar words.

Now that Theo’s reading is really starting to take-off, we can’t wait to hear how his spelling accuracy comes along. Well done Theo!

Peighton

9 year-old Peighton loved stories, and her parents had read with/to her every day since she was little. Her mum would have described her reading ability as OK, and after some indications of concern from the school in grade 1, there didn’t seem to be any red flags now.

Rather than her reading, it was her writing and spelling skills that worried Peighton’s mum the most. Despite routine practise outside of school for the past few years, Peighton was not seeing the results she was hoping for. As a result, her confidence started to take a turn for the worst.

After reading the information on spelling difficulties on our website, Peighton seemed to fit the pattern of a child who managed to get by with her reading techniques, but she was getting over 50% of the words incorrect in her free writing.

At lesson 90, Peighton has decided to finish the Easyread programme, happy with the progress she has seen for herself. Her mum says:

“We are happy with her progress and have reached the goals we set out to reach. Thank you very much. I would recommend this program to other families with children learning to read.”

Peighton’s mum also had a message from Peighton: “Peighton said she would like to say that she had a lot of fun doing the easy read program and feels confident and likes to read on her own now. She also says Thanks.”

Peighton’s reading speed has just soared over the past few months, and we are confident that with her newfound decoding skills and confidence, both her reading and writing will continue to go from strength to strength. Well done Peighton!

If you feel like your child has reached the point of reading take-off and we haven’t included them this month, then do let us know, so we can send their badge out to them for this month. And do let us know if you’re having any worries around this stage too – we’re here to help every child achieve their breakthrough. And as always, congratulations to our Easyread graduates who completed the course with the achievement of their helicopter this month.

…

We chose Cassidy as our Breakthrough Reader of August. We’ll let you discover more of her story below.

Cassidy

9 year-old Cassidy had received an official dyslexia diagnosis prior to beginning the Easyread programme. She had also tried other reading intervention programmes at home.

And yet, reading didn’t come easily for Cassidy, and this had an impact on her reading fluency. Her reading difficulties were also causing difficulties for her writing and her maths too, with word equations proving problematic.

Cassidy’s tracking difficulties were also making the reading process more difficult, although putting a sheet of paper under a line of text seemed to make this easier.

Cassidy’s mum knew she was an extremely bright, creative child, who was very much a visual learner.

At bang on lesson 90, we were delighted to receive this message from Cassidy’s mum:

“I would like to let you know that Cassidy is finding the Easyread reading exercise easier now which is fantastic news!”

Cassidy is now reading the longer stories in our Easyread library, where the characters are not automatically present, and are more like a “traditional” book.

Cassidy continues to work on her eye-tracking and rereading any phrases where there’s been a difficult word, to help move from decoding accuracy to building on the foundations of reading fluency. We’re also working on building up Cassidy’s reading confidence, and we hope this award helps Cassidy to see how far she’s come over the past 3 months.

You should feel very proud, Cassidy.

To celebrate, Cassidy spent the day at Luna Park amusement park in Sydney, super fun!