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***If your student has been diagnosed with dyslexia please refer to my page about the Take Flight Dyslexia Intervention program that I use for dyslexia therapy.***

Reading Support 

(For students who may not have Dyslexia but still need some extra support with reading.) 

Not all struggling readers are dyslexic and not all reading struggles are related to dyslexia.  Some readers just need an extra boost in certain area's of their reading.  Often times students struggle with fluency and comprehension or just need some extra practice with certain phonics skills.  Phonemic awareness and phonics, fluency and comprehension are all components that are vital to becoming strong, confident readers.  I have a wide variety of tools for helping your learner with any aspect of reading that they are struggling with.  


 

***If your student has been diagnosed with dyslexia please refer to my page about the Take Flight Dyslexia Intervention program that I use for dyslexia therapy.***

Phonemic Awareness (PA) & Phonics Support



Phonological Awareness is the umbrella that rhyming, alliteration, syllables, word concepts, on set and rime, and phonemic awareness (PA) fall under.


Phonemic awareness (PA) is the awareness of individual speech sounds. It includes the ability to isolate them, blend them together, pull them apart, and manipulate them. 


Phonics is the relationship between speech sounds and the letters that go with them. Phonics deals more with the spelling system of a language. So, when a student struggles with phonics skills you will see things like when asked to write the word "hat" they will write "hap" instead. They struggle with putting the correct sounds to the letters.  With intervention and practice these students can learn the sounds and correspond them to the correct letter.


Phonemic awareness (PA) and phonics work together in reading. Most sessions we will work on both concepts.


What to Expect in a PA /Phonics Session:


Depending on what type of PA and phonics intervention that your student needs will be the deciding factor on whether their sessions can be done online or if they will need to be in person. Developing phonological skills is a very multistory experience and sessions may require the use of manipulative's that are kept in my home office and work best with a hands on approach.


It is possible to conduct these sessions online it will just depend on your students specific needs. We will discuss this when we meet to set up sessions for you student.


How Often Do We Need to Meet?


Phonological skills require more reinforcement and practice than comprehension and fluency so we will need to try and meet at least 2-3 times a week for 45 minutes sessions. 3 times a week at 45 minutes would be ideal to solidify these concepts and skills but if 3 times a week is too much of a strain on your family life we can meet in 2 sessions a week and extend the session time to one hour instead of 45 minutes.


Homework:


This will depend entirely on how much support your reader will need. We will discuss this often and make changes to the homework parent/guardian support portion as needed. 




Fluency Support

Fluency is often mis-understood as reading fast.  When learners as asked to read fluently they often try to read as fast as they can.  This is not what we want from a fluent reader. Fluency is making the shift between reading word by word to reading in a way that flows naturally, like the way that we speak.  


Often readers that struggle with fluency will read with a choppy, halted tone, read word by word instead of reading through the entire sentence, are slow to process what is being read, and tire out easily when they are asked to read a longer passage.  


Just as when we learn a new skill, like playing the piano or driving it requires practice to be proficient in it.  Fluency is the very same way.  To become a fluent reader we need to be exposed to as much practice as possible.   As a new reader receives exposure to more words, texts, and strategies, they go from wobbly with words, to more accurate, and then onto effortless.  Without this continued practice and exposure learners will struggle with reading.  When learners who were fluent in reading during the school year take a long summer break with little reading we see a decrease in their fluency.  Even in just that short period of time if students aren't exposed to fluency practice they will have to spend a few weeks or months building that fluency again. 


What to Expect in a Fluency Session:


These sessions can be done in person at my home office in Frederick, CO or online via a Zoom platform.  I will create a student folder in Google Classroom that will have all the material for our sessions in it for the student to access during an online session.  


If you choose to go virtual I will ask that your student has a quiet place, distraction free place to meet with me online. This is your students time to focus entirely on reading comprehension and it should be treated as one of the most important parts of their week.  


How Often Do We Need to Meet?

Because fluency requires so much exposure to text  your student and I will need to meet at least two times a week for 45 minutes. If we cannot meet this requirement we will not see much improvement in fluency. The brain is a muscle and reading is how it gets a good workout!  


Homework:


Depending on what methods I decide to pursue for your students personalized fluency tutoring session there may be a very small amount of homework.  Some of the strategies that I use to build fluency require a page of words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs that will need to be read with someone that has enough experience with reading to make any corrections necessary so that the student can get accurate and quick feedback on their fluency practice.   We can discuss this in more depth when set up your students fluency sessions.  


Comprehension Support

Comprehension is not only the ability to understand what has been read but it also includes gaining a rich vocabulary, being able to separate important from unimportant information, gaining background knowledge on the subject that is being read, and adjusting the mind to accommodate new information that is acquired.


Learners who struggle with comprehension often lack the qualities that I listed above in their reading. They will focus on just completing the task, rather than truly understanding the text and gaining new knowledge from it. They often times cannot tell you what they just read and they lack a large vocabulary often substituting more common words to describe things or experiences.


What to Expect in a Comprehension Session:


These sessions can be done in person at my home office in Frederick, CO or online via a Zoom platform. I will create a student folder in Google Classroom that will have all of the material for our sessions in it for the student to access during an online session.


If you choose to go virtual I will ask that your student has a quiet place, distraction free place to meet with me online. This is your students time to focus entirely on reading comprehension and it should be treated as one of the most important parts of their week.


The student and I will go through a text and practice strategies that will increase their ability to comprehend what is being read, take on new vocabulary, and really pull new information out of the text and lock it into our knowledge base.


How Often Do We Need to Meet?


To make a solid impact on comprehension your student and I will need to meet at least two times a week for 45 minutes. If we cannot meet this requirement we will not see much improvement in comprehension. The brain is a muscle and reading is how it gets a good workout!


Homework:


As often as possible I will try to complete everything necessary to create gains in comprehension during our sessions, however there may a time or two when I require some assistance from home. This will be very rare and will not require more than 15 minutes or less of your time.   


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