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Reading and Spelling

Reading and Spelling program helps students who are

  • having difficulty learning to sound out and/or remember words
  • reluctant to read
  • reading slowly and laboriously
  • guessing at long words

The Reading Clinic works with a wide variety of students who are struggling with reading. We have a deep understanding of how the reading process works, and are able to adapt programs to best suit your child’s needs. We use a variety of research based programs proven to help students struggling students learn to read. Every child has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses, and some don’t always fit the mold so we have the freedom to adapt to the needs of the child.

Our toolkit includes: Fundations, LiPS, Slingerland, Words Their Way, Seeing Stars, Words Their Way, Morphology, Great Leaps and Quick Reads.
Reading with Ease strengthens

  • Phonemic Awareness
  • Word Attack
  • Sight Words Acquisition
  • Multi-syllable (long words) reading
  • Spelling
  • Fluency

Phonemic Awareness
Some students struggle with being able to correctly identify and sequence sounds. By discovering, and then identifying how their mouth forms to make sounds, students are able to use articulatory feedback (feeling) to distinguish individual sounds. We then connect the sounding out process to letters for accurate reading, and to blend sounds for more accurate word attack. This new way of looking at the process can open doors for those students who just don’t seem to “get” how to sound out words

Word Attack
For many children struggling to read, guessing is the first habit they pick up. Learning how to sound out a word – word attack – is a critical skill to develop. At The Reading Clinic, students learn and practice how to decode words that play by the rules. They might practice with nonsense words to make sure they really understand the rules. They also practice word families for words that don’t follow the rules – like sight, might, fright and one, son, come. Once students believe that they have the tools to consistently read a word correctly, they stop guessing and start reading.

Sight Words
Just as important as the ability to sound out words is the rapid word recognition of frequently seen words and patterns in words. Recalling these sight words requires a strong visual memory. We use symbol imagery and pattern recognition to strengthen visual memory. As students make a kinetic connection by “writing” in the air and on surfaces, they learn to create mental images of letters and words. Starting with simple exercises and moving to more complex, students learn to hold and manipulate letter patterns so that they can more readily recognize words and parts of words. As they increase their lexicon of sight words, students become more fluent in reading and more accurate in spelling.

Multi-Syllable (long words)
We use two approaches to learning how to read longer words. Students learn a very methodical approach to breaking up words so that they can be read in chunks. They practice using prefixes and suffixes, and inflectional endings.

They also explore the history of English for a deeper understanding of word structure and spelling. Most of the words in our language are of Old English, Latin or Greek origin. Students discover how to determine word origin and connect the history of language to word construction. Knowledge of word origin and the meaning of word parts provide a structure to recognize and understanding these patterns leads to improved visual memory for word recognition, spelling, and improved vocabulary.

Spelling
Students practice spelling simultaneously with learning to read. Close study of the rules and history of the English language helps to establish which rules are used when.

Fluency
As a student’s ability to read words develops, they start working on reading fluently. For some students, they just need to discover that they can read more quickly than they used to. Others require specific timed practice and repeated readings.