It’s that time of year again. The holiday season is upon us, and while there is relief in the idea of winter break allowing for catch up and respite, this time is also a call to action for parents who are witnessing major signs of burnout. For children, the stressors from this first half of the school year are showcased in the form of resistance, avoidance, performance anxiety, procrastination, emotionality and frustration. As parents we witness the panicky nights before school projects are due, the struggle to complete nightly homework, underperformance because of fatigue or disinterest and testing taking a toll on our children. These stressors are magnified when your child is a struggling reader or writer, not meeting grade level expectations.
If your child is a struggling reader or writer, this is the best time to put a game plan together. Consider this break an opportunity to kickstart effective interventions for your child without the added stress of school assignments and schedules. With less on their plate and yours, now is the perfect time to introduce a key component of change and we are happy to help you navigate the process. A free consultation with a certified literacy therapist can help identify problem areas and create a learning path that will bolster existing skill sets while school is out and carve out a customizable, structured plan for your child to step into the New Year with their very best foot forward. With a plan in place and new literacy tools in tow, both parent and child can return to school in the new year with more confidence, insight about how to combat existing problem areas and support from their literacy therapist who will work alongside parent and child to face any literacy challenges to come.
Just like a New Year’s resolution, getting started with a new plan is the hardest part, but as Mark Seidenberg, a well-known researcher in the psychology and the science of reading states, “delays in identifying struggling readers are hazardous because early interventions are more successful.” Whether your child is struggling with reading, spelling or writing, we have a multi-sensory curriculum designed to help children who are pre-readers through 12th grade. It is the role of the literacy therapist to meet students where they are, customizing a program to meet their specific needs.
Depending on a child’s age and abilities, the first session will consist of assessments that gauge literacy skills associated with phonemic awareness, word-reading, text-reading, spelling and/or sentence-writing. This initial session gives clinicians the opportunity to learn about which specific letters, sounds, word structures and writing norms are most and least familiar to your child. Analysis across several areas allows a literacy therapist to effectively place your child within our Orton-Gillingham Structured Literacy Curriculum based on their reading and writing.