Reading

We address reading through techniques that are commonly used by most reading specialists. Our repertoire of approaches to teaching decoding to younger students includes: Orton Gillingham, Preventing Academic Failure, and fluency training. We also see teenagers whose intelligence has carried them through to high school, but whose subtle decoding deficits surface when they encounter more complex text. For these students we use MegaWords and standardized test reading comprehension passages to build their reading skills. It’s not too late for your 18 year-old — it really helps!

We use a number of widely available materials to address comprehension problems, but we also have our own in-house ways of teaching comprehension. We try to help students develop character lists and learn to take notes about plot when reading for English class. This helps identify missing information and provides cues for memory later on during the writing process when a paper is due. We also use the techniques we have developed for teaching students how to approach reading comprehension during standardized tests. In fact, teaching reading comprehension techniques through test preparation is a great way to simultaneously address the multiple obstacles our students face.