Parent Reviews of Easyread
Our most recent reviews:
Very impressed Mum!
Thank you so much for the prizes and encouraging letters and eye tracker chart!! Hannah is highly engaged, enthusiastic and eager to do her lessons every day.
Very impressed Mum!!!
I enjoy your classes
Dear Sarah and David
Thank you for my certificate. I enjoy your classes. I am finding them easy and fun. Thank you for the prizes. I am going to Scotland tomorrow for my holiday but I am hoping to keep doing your classes every day.
Thank you.
Easyread has achieved its goal
Whilst we’ve been on holiday we’ve been doing lots of reading with Henry and I would say he is reading successfully now. He’s slow, but methodical and when he comes across a word he doesn’t know he works it out – even words I would consider too difficult. He does need a little help now and again, but generally he is reading independently. He has started reading Fluff the Farting Fish by Michael Rosen to me and he is reading it well, albeit slowly.
I feel Easyread has achieved its goal – Henry can now read. Before Easyread, Henry was reading his school books fine but beyond that he struggled. Easyread has turned him around and I’m astonished. My husband and I are so happy to hear him read – he reads everything around him without prompting – and we are delightfully amazed by it too. He is constantly sounding out words. And I am absolutely certain he will be a good speller because of Easyread.
"Super Reader"!
I just want to let you know that Josh received a “Super Reader” certificate from school today. We are all so happy and excited for him.
Thanks to Easyread!
Dear David…
Dear David,
I like your games.
At school I’m in BB8.
Thank you for all the gifts.
My favourite story was Ungar, I liked the race the best.
I feel really good about my reading. That’s it.
From E
[message written entirely by E himself without help on spelling]
Does Easyread Progress Last After You Finish?
This is a question I get asked all the time by parents wondering whether to invest time and money into purchasing Easyread for their child.
And it’s an excellent question. We often hear about programs that worked while the child was on it, but then progress started backsliding after the child finished it. That can be devastating for the whole family.
Very few of our Easyreaders ever come back to us needing more help. When I say “very few”, I mean that I hear from 1 or 2 people a year, out of thousands. And we make it clear that we want to hear of any difficulties.
But why listen to me babble on about it when you can hear it straight from the source? Here is a little message a former Easyread parent sent me today out of the blue.
“I wanted to tell you about Daisy who is one of your Easyread graduates. Before we started Easyread Daisy was an unconfident reader who’s achievement in reading was significantly lower than her other academic levels. She is now several years on from the Easyread programme and is flourishing. She is 8 and in year three at school, however she now has a reading age of 11, her levels for Numeracy, Literacy, and Science are all at a year 5-6 level which is 2-3 years above her actual school year. She has been placed on the gifted and talented register for several subject areas. We feel without the Easyread programme Daisy would not of achieved her potential and the girl who used to believe she was stupid now has self confidence in her abilities. Thank you easy read without you our little bookworm will never of emerged out of her shell.”
Go Daisy!
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Sarah Forrest is an Easyread Coach at Oxford Learning Solutions. Easyread is a unique online program that uses visual phonics to help children with dyslexia, auditory processing issues, sight-reading and guessing habits, and more. www.easyreadsystem.com
He is loving the support
Ben is doing well with easy read although he has found the symbols quite hard when we are trying to read the stories out – we are getting there though. He is reading all the words well though and is now taking time on decoding words rather than racing through. He is loving the support he gets and looks forward to his ‘prizes’ coming through – amazing that he now wants to do his daily spell magic – wish it would roll over into his other work!:)
Going well
Caleb is continuing well. He is not finding these to words be more difficult than the games. The story is going well. Caleb is re-reading the phrases; although I am reminding him to do so. He does not find that fun all the time. 🙂
He gets very excited when a code word appears and we also like humorous little things like a fart machine. He will love it! Thank you for letting me know ahead of time. We look forward to continuing to work harder, as the summer days have caused us to miss a few days here and there.
Now exceeding national average!
As promised I wanted to let you know how Harry has been getting on. I can’t say so far that he’s missed easy read as he’s been busy and tired with end of term activities! The meeting with his teacher was very positive and she was very pleased with his progress in literacy this year. His reading has really come on and he has progressed 3 levels (sub levels) this year which is amazing. He is now exceeding the expected national age related average for his reading which is great. His confidence and fluency have definitively improved, although he still doesn’t read independently at home unless encouraged to do so. His writing/spelling has also come on not quite at the same rate but I’m sure in time this will follow. He told his teacher that his biggest achievement this year has been his spelling as he has tried his hardest! That really sums Harry up a real hard worker! I have been really proud of his application with easy read and how much it appears to have helped him out. I am just wondering what we do next!
Thanks to all the easy read team for your support throughout the last 18months, I will miss you!
Very big smile from Oliver
I have a message from Oliver, he says “Yes I have been enjoying Easyread” with a very big smile on his face 🙂
The scared feeling in my tummy is gone
When I started Easyread I felt frightened of doing reading and writing because of getting it wrong and because it was so difficult for me.
Then I started Easyread I really liked doing it every day as it helped me read and I liked doing it on the computer. The scared feeling in my tummy when I was trying to read before went away.
Now I feel like I have done really well, I can decode easier and I feel more confident now at school too.
I think easyread is excellent for children who are not confident with school tasks.
Thankyou David I think Easyread is the best !!
From Louie Age 7.
Words seem inadequate to express thanks
Dear Sarah & co
Thank you very much for the enjoyable structured way in which you have helped my son to read confidently.
I am sure all your parents have struggled for years trying out various “reading systems” which promise the “moon & stars ” as far as reading is concerned. All this of course entails huge outlays of time & resources, for me it all ended up with no progress, tears from me & my son(s), & frustration which made me feel a total failure. “I was unable to teach my children how to read & their schoolwork suffered leading to more misery for all of us. ” I went to school a long time ago & could not remember how I learned to read & write!!
This is a plea for all parents out there who are struggling with their children with reading to try Easyread. For your part David & Sarah please publicise, advertise, Facebook etc etc Easyread to the world.
Words seem inadequate to express my gratitude but words are the only way to do this.
Thanks a million billion trillion times from the bottom of my left ventricle “heart”
Eternally grateful parent,
Judy
Best of all his school work!
Nathan enjoys his Easyread lessons best of all his school work. We use it has a reward. He likes that Funky Monkey Jungle is optional and tends to just skip it. He has not been re-reading the lessons lately because he reads them so well without any mistakes and fluently on the first read. He has finally worked through his issues with some of the silly characters. He has begun to transfer his decoding over to other areas of his studies. I am also more aware of how psychologically challenging his lessons are for him, so I am trying to implement some Easyread concepts into his homeschooling, mainly the positive reinforcement and 5-1 praise to negative comment ratio.
I really enjoyed reading the recent Facebook article about the young man who is actually picking up books and reading them on his own. I would be so excited when that day comes for Nathan.
Thank you for all you do!
Case Study: Off-the-Charts Clever with Asperger's and Irlen Syndrome
Before Easyread
From an early age Craig always loved having someone read stories to him, but when he started school he loathed reading and writing and homework was a battleground. It would have been easy to label him as “clever but lazy”: he had an incredibly high verbal IQ but low performance in literacy. His mother, Fiona, suspected dyslexia but the school did not want to test to find out. Irlen lenses helped with some aspects but did not seem to “cure” his learning difficulties.
When it came to reading, his main strategy was to guess, based on the pictures and the first letter of the word. Craig was an amazingly good guesser and hid his difficulties well, but he felt keenly that his classmates were racing ahead with reading when he was struggling so much. It just didn’t add up – he knew he was clever so why couldn’t he do it?
One day, he started to pack up his books into a box to sell at a car boot sale. When I said he should keep them for when he got better at reading he said, “There is no point, I’m rubbish at reading. I’ll never be able to read these so someone else should have them.” It was a heart-breaking moment for Fiona.
In Primary Three his reading age was tested as 21 months behind his actual age. The school were still not concerned and said he would learn at his own pace. Fiona disagreed, and decided to give give Easyread a try.
During Easyread
Craig has Aspergers and is very rule-driven. He hated the fact that the phonics rules taught at school didn’t work – for instance he was taught that “ou” spells the sound “ow” (as in loud or proud) but that didn’t work for soup or group. So he just ignored the rules and memorized the words, which didn’t work as a strategy for long.
Easyread suited Craig perfectly because the rules are never broken. He has a very visual memory and could 100% rely that the Owl with a Scowl picture represents the sound “ow” every time without exception.
Also, Craig shared narrator David’s sense of humour and loved learning all the Easyread characters like the Uncle with the Carbuncle.
Fiona was surprised at how keen Craig was to do Easyread every day. Whilst battles over homework each night were still of epic proportions, he always did his 10 minutes of Easyread in the mornings without complaint even in the holidays and weekends. He hasn’t missed a day yet, even when he was off school with the sick bug!
After Easyread
The results have been better than ever imagined. In only 4 months on Easyread, Craig’s reading age went up by an astonishing 19 months! He still improves daily and Fiona now believes he may end up with a reading age beyond his actual age. He is now confident in decoding words he doesn’t know and he very rarely guesses. His whole attitude to reading has changed. Now he happily reads to himself and Fiona often finds him at night, lying in bed, fast asleep still wearing his glasses with a book beside him! He has started engaging with text around him, reading cereal packets and signs where he would never have tried before.
Craig’s family are now able to celebrate his dyslexic, autistic, creative, brilliant mind without having to battle over reading every day. In fact, reading has become such a joy that it’s hard to imagine a day passing where he doesn’t pick up a book for pleasure. He recently said to Fiona, “I love reading so much I am going to read for the rest of my life!”. What a turnaround in only 4 months!
Fiona says: “Tonight when I tucked him into bed he whispered – “Mum, I have a secret! I can actually read Captain Underpants now! I read 5 whole books last night!” (Easyread has not cured him of his tendency to exaggerate!) I cannot find words that can thank Easyread enough. David and his team have given Craig the gift of reading which will make his whole life at school less exhausting as well as opening doors for learning that were barred to him before. Thank you Easyread!”
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Sarah Forrest is a Reading Specialist for the Easyread System, and has been delighted to oversee Craig’s brilliant progress on the course in recent months. Easyread is an online course that uses innovative visual phonics to resolve poor literacy due to dyslexia, auditory processing weakness, sight-reading and more.
Great success for reading/spelling
Sorry I haven’t let you know sooner but we had such a great success with Rhiannon and easy read that she has now really improved her reading/spelling. She has gone from below average in her class to average, which is terrific.
Although she still finds reading and spelling challenging and prefers for more creative forms to express herself, I have no doubt that easy read really assisted her in a greater understanding of the English language and how it works. Which then developed her confidence and commitment.
I would highly recommend Easy read to anyone with a child that’s struggling with reading, it’s not a quick fix, which is a good thing as we all know they don’t work.
Thank you again.
A huge relief to finally understand
Things are on track and we know that we need to be patient. It has been a huge relief getting some understanding of what the underlying issues are – when school has been hopeless at helping! Flora is engaged with the lessons and enjoys them. The system of code words and prizes is a useful support – and the guidance and encouragement for parents is excellent.
We are all committed to the course- Flora and parents – and have manged to find ways to fit in 4 to 5 sessions per week without too much trauma. Looking forward to getting teh next 6 weeks under ouir belts and starting to see the glimmers we are already seeing turn into a meaningful shift. Crucially, Flora’s confidence in her reading is increasing, she hasn’t lost her love for books and the library and she is enjoying the course (as is her rapt little sister!)
Can't praise it more highly!!
Hi Sarah
Tuscan is doing very well with his reading in all aspects, we can now hear him voluntarily reading the road/street/shop signs as we drive around the city.
Also at the end of last term I asked his teacher how he was going with his reading (I hadn’t said anything to her at that stage about Easyread as I wanted it to be a gauge as to how he was doing at school, without any predetermined ideas) and she told me that the 3 helpers that come in regularly to help with the poor readers had all said at different times how much his reading had improved this term (Term 2). So as you can expect, the thrill I got from that was awesome! (I can’t thank you enough!!)
He is doing well with the 3 little pigs story, we’ve got over the -“ohbother! this part”- stage and he is picking up the decoding well even beating me quite regularly, much to his delight! we click on the occasional word only when we ‘both’ can’t work it out!!
Overall I don’t have any problems with the system, I can’t praise it more highly!! Thank you for everything. Look forward to talking to you again.
Very thankful
Hi David i had a lot of fun doing it i am very thankful.
Slow and steady wins the day!
Things are slowly coming together for Lily-Rose and she is actually beginning to read text in the world other than just her easy read text. It’s really exciting and emphasizes that gentle ploughing on wins the day, we’ve still a long way to go, but the fact that we are seeing real life progress now is fab. Just wanted to share with you
Thrilled, even after stopping and restarting lessons!
I would just like to add that even though we have stopped and started with some considerable gaps, and that isn’t an ideal situation, that Elinor has still remembered the vast majority of the pictures and that I would like to reassure other parents that stopping and starting hasn’t detrimented Elinor too badly. Her end of year 4 report was reading 3A and writing 3B, the reading and writing averages for end of year 4 are both 3B – so I am more than thrilled with her progress!
Couldn't ask for more!
Both kids are reading in everyday life, not only books but also on computers, recipes, signs and all sorts of other things. And their spelling is improving little by little.
So, while we haven’t finished the full course, it has achieved exactly what we set out to do – to get Hannah the help she needed with her reading difficulty and get Charlie on the right track while he begins his reading. Both kids are now enjoying reading and I really couldn’t ask for more than that!
Thank you all for the help and support you have given Hannah, Charlie and me. I regularly recommend Easyread to those who have children with reading difficulties and will continue to do so in the future.
Reading for pure pleasure now…
Craig passed his level 7 reading assessment today and he was just so delighted!!! We had been doing easy level of Word Mash because he hates it so much, but flushed with his amazing success I persuaded him to do hard level and the got 5/5 and an average time of 2.7!!! We are just so delighted with how things are coming together for him. We have joined the local library summer reading scheme so he is getting stickers every time he takes a book back to the library and he is really starting to read for pure pleasure.
I just can’t thank you enough!
All thanks to your programme!
Kaia has certainly made improvements with her spelling – thank-you. She still doesn’t find writing easy – it’s not something that she really wants to do, but she is quite a reader now!! All thanks to your programme. In fact a couple of months ago her support teacher for literacy at her Steiner school decided to test her using a test from mainstream education. At that point Kaia was 10 and quarter. Well what came out from the test was that Kaia’s reading was at the expected level for a 10 and a half to 11 year old. So she was above the norm!!
Showing significant improvement
Good morning, dear Easyread support team,
We would like to thank you for the level of support received so far and for the system itself. We believe it is very effective and Alisha showed a significant improvement in her reading skills and level. She moved from level 2B to level 3B at school in the last 3 months!
She does see a dyslexia specialist and other tutors on a regular basis as well, so we believe that a combined effort and your program made such a great difference in her decoding and reading skills.
I am attending the courses for the parents with dyslexic kids and highly recommended your program, which is easy to follow and fun for the child, while giving a wealth of knowledge and building the reading skills. I wish we had more of these programs and more of this individual approach at our schools.
We will certainly continue and are very interested in your other programs or products that can assist with literacy or maybe even maths skills.
Thank you once again for your support and the effort put into the development of the program.
500 page books now!
Andrew continues to make amazing progress with reading – he’s now onto some really big 500 page books and is getting through them within two weeks. I cannot say how grateful we are!