In the run up to the holidays, our secret agents have been working just as hard as ever, logging in every day to complete their secret mission training – master the Trainertext code to achieve reading success.
There’ve been a number of helicopters that have taken off from both our UK and US posting depots to arrive with our Easyread graduates all over the world. We hope you enjoy many hours of fun with your helicopters – you deserve them. As ever, do send us a photo/video of the helicopter in action, we’d love to share it with our other Easyread learners as something they can look forward to. And do keep in touch and let us know how you’re getting on with your future studies.
Following on from a successful October month of Easyread Breakthrough Badge awards, we’ve decided to award our new Breakthrough Badge to the following readers, to celebrate their reading take-off moments. These achievements normally occur around lesson 90, and we love to tell the world about them!
Hannah
When Hannah joined the programme, she found it difficult to decode and sound out words. Being a highly visual learner, she often mirrored her letters. She could learn words for a spelling list without difficulty, but found it challenging to recall these words once the spelling test was complete.
Now Hannah, aged 8, is reading books that her tutor thought she would never manage. Her whole confidence has improved and she will try new things, something she never would have considered. She does find the story a wee bit harder but is enjoying the challenge. Her reading support time in school has also been reduced. Way to go Hannah!
Luke
When Luke began Easyread, his mother was concerned about his reading fluency. His technique for sight reading words led to him adding words that weren’t on the page, or changing a word completely. He also had difficulty in blending words. For instance, “a” would become “I”, or “what” would become “that”. However, he appeared to know them as sight words alone.
A combination of our Guided Phonetic Reading technique and our recommended eye-tracking exercises means that Luke has now completed our Reading Assessor within the 90 days, moving from a Level 1 right through to the top level, Level 8. A great achievement as this was completed without using any of our Trainertext characters, indicating a good ability to decode a single word. Well done Luke!
Sophie
Sophie is a bit further on in the programme, but she excitedly told us this month that she has won an award at her school presentation night and gets to choose a book as a prize.
From guessing some words when reading, confusing “b” and “d” and spelling troubles to an award night, we want to say a big well done Sophie! Thoroughly deserved. We hope you enjoy your evening.
Ethan
Ethan joined Easyread behind his classmates in reading and writing. He was receiving extra help in school for reading but progress was not as quick as his parents would have liked. He could learn simple spellings for tests but would soon forget them afterwards. His confidence as a reader had taken a bit of a knock.
Ethan loves computer games, so it bode well for the Easyread programme working well for him. Now, around lesson 70, 6 year-old Ethan is reading fluently and accurately within the programme. We thought everyone should know how well Ethan is coming along – we know we can’t wait to see where he ends up over the coming weeks on the course. Well done Ethan!
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.
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This month once again, we feel that there was one Breakthrough story that really stood out for us.
James’s story is one that began with special targeted classes in reading. But after 2 years, his reading hadn’t seen much progress. He was still writing his letters and numbers backwards, and often had difficulty with common sight words like “the” and “and”. Aged 8, James still loved school, but reading wasn’t exactly an enjoyable task.
After four months of Easyread, James is now very good at our pure decoding pages, with just the Trainertext characters rather than the letters. He is happy to go back and decode a word if there is ever any guessing. And most importantly, he tells his mum that he loves reading.
James’s mum shares their story here.
“As James’s mum I struggled with reading as a child so it made me conscious of signs in my children. James had classic sign of problems, when he got b and d mixed up as well as p and q, also words that he should have known like “the” & “and” were a guess. I was looking for a program for him that would focus on dyslexics. The school programs focused on the whole word approach that the bigger class was learning but now James was just in a smaller group. I felt that you can’t do the same thing and expect a different outcome. Easyread seemed worth a try because it didn’t require me second guessing myself. Plenty of research had been done on how dyslexics learn and after the 10 free lessons I could see the light switch turn on for James.
I listen to him read a normal book now and I well up with tears, I see him beam with confidence and pride. I think he surprises himself sometimes. He often says “I can’t believe I just read that.”
Congratulations once again to all our Easyreaders and I can’t wait to share your big celebratory moments on the blog over the next coming months!
– Maddie