Literacy is a person's ability to read and write. Literacy is a complex constellation of many skills and is crucial to academic success. Since literacy is a complex integration of many skills, it is important to identify which skills are making reading and/or writing challenging for a child. Knowing a child's "reading level" is not enough information to determine how to skillfully support a child's literacy development.

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Skilled reading is driven by skills in two main areas: word recognition (pulling words off a page) and language skills (including vocabulary and grammar). This is outlined in the graphic below, called The Reading Rope:​

Our team's assessments are comprehensive and allow us to:

• Determine whether your child presents with a language and/or literacy disorder

• Identify all areas that are making reading and/or writing challenging for your child

• Develop a plan for intervention targeting those areas of difficulty

• Help you better understand your child's literacy challenges so you can advocate for them in their schooling

Once we have completed a comprehensive assessment, we can get on the path to stronger reading and writing for your child in intervention. You can think of reading development to building a wall - it has to be built brick-by-brick (taught skills) with strong mortar (explicitly teaching children these skills and giving them opportunities for focused practice with these skills). Unfortunately, this is often a very different approach than your child may be receiving at school which widens the gap between where we want their literacy skills to be and where they currently are. 

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When being supported by our team in intervention:

• We meet once a week (or more frequently depending on the child as more frequent sessions can lead to faster progress) - sessions are focused on the direct teaching and focused practice

  • Important note: memorization of words or books is never our approach as this has not been shown to improved skilled reading

• We provide home practice to encourage progress and generalization of skills learned in session

• We can offer communication regarding areas targeted in intervention with other team members such as teachers and school-board speech-language pathologists

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Some other resources:

• Do you want to better understand reading instruction in Ontario schools? Check this out.

• Do you want to more deeply understand our team's literacy assessment and intervention process? Check this out.

• Do you want a list of possible indicators that your child would benefit from a comprehensive assessment? Check this out.

• Do you want to know why we don't focus on sight words with struggling readers? Check this out.

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If you are sick of your child struggling to read and are ready for a new approach, our team would absolutely love to support you. Complete our quick online form and we'll be in touch! If you have questions about our services, a lot of those questions are answered here!