Overall, I have seen a vast improvement in Francis’ sound recognition, decoding, encoding, reading and spelling skills since we started easyread. He is very good at reading single words now – with and without the easyread characters. As he is dyslexic I thought he would have difficulty with spelling, but as he can now correctly identify sounds, his spelling is pretty good for a child his age.
I don’t think we would have gotten to this point without easyread. Francis previously had daily special intervention at school for a year, and extra help at home with no noticable improvement. As a result of his improved reading skills, his confidence in school has bounced back, and school has ceased being torturous (we had tears on a daily basis on the way to school at the end of last year). Now school is ‘ok’ and ‘a little bit good’. I hope that by the end of our easyread journey this might hopefully turn into ‘fun’ or ‘great’.
Francis’ school, SEN co-ordinator and teacher have been very supportive of me wanting to try a fresh approach, and his teacher has also noticed a great improvement in his skills. She sent him home with a postcard yesterdsy that shows a dragon spewing fire that spells ‘good reading’ and a text that certifies that Francis is making ‘excellent progress’ in his reading skills. He is very proud that she gave him this special acknowledgement.
Overall I have become a great fan of easyread. It really works and all the games are fun. When things get difficult you are available to help. I also like David’s clear instructions for parents. With the school stuff I knew what I was suppose to teach Francis, but not HOW to teach it so he would get it and it would stick. With easyread what you do and how you do it is very straightforward. As there are lots of small tasks that get immediate results you can praise a lot, which helps to keep positive momentum. It is also fantastic that the lessons are limited to 10 to 15 minutes, as even working parent like me can easily make time for a session on most days, and if Francis doesn’t feel like doing easyread I can tell him ‘but it will only take 10 minutes’.
I think that you provide a great solution for children and parents of kids struggling to learn how to read. It obviously takes a while to form the neurological pathways that will help dyslexic (and non-dyslexic) children read, but it is a very worthwhile effort, and 10 – 15 minuted a day over the course of a year is hardly onerous. Considering how many children cannot or struggle to read when they leave primary school, maybe the government should consider providing easyread in primary school. I will certainly mention this to the Senco of Francis’ school when we have our next catch-up.
– T (Francis, 7)