I just wanted to tell you what an amazing journey it has been doing the Easyread course, and to thank you.
Harvey completed the course on Friday (one day before his 9th birthday) and is so proud of himself. He now says ‘I can read’. This alone is cause for celebration, as he has never really felt proud of himself before.
Easyread has become a major part of our lives over these last few months. It has been an emotional journey, but we felt supported all the way through. We invested a lot of time in it, and Harvey has worked incredibly hard and it has all paid off. We really cannot thank you enough for all the support and expert help and time you have given us. It has been life-changing for Harvey, and for us all as a family.
As you will know, having a struggling reader in the family has an impact on everyone. Harvey is a different boy now- empowered and believing he can affect change through his own efforts. He is happier at home, standing taller, and at school he is accessing the curriculum and feeling more able to cope.
His teacher, who uses the Phonographix method, says his knowledge of the code of the English language and all its sounds is actually far better than that of his peers who have been reading for years.
Tonight Harvey read a phonetically decodable controlled vocabulary school reading book to me. He had begun reading this particular text to me just before he started Easyread, and we were using a colour overlay, and a piece of card with a hole cut out of it, to reveal one letter at a time, and he was really struggling to read this text. He got so frustrated that he could only read one page at a time (about 10 words). Tonight he read the whole book in less than five minutes, fluently and with expression, and comprehension and enjoyment of the story. The only words he found tricky were the vowel digraphs ‘learn’ and ‘screamed’, but he didn’t get frustrated.
He has gone from being a non-reader at the age of eight, to a reader at the age of 8 and 364 days!
Harvey is generally reluctant to put in effort, possibly partly due to feeling that his efforts were all in vain. Easyread was never a problem for him though. He never refused to do it, and we got into a wonderful habit of doing it. It became as much a part of our lives as mealtimes and bedtimes. We have become emotionally attached to it, and it has made us feel secure that Harvey was making progress, and was in safe hands.
Many, many, many thanks,
J