"Dale has been on the
Honor Roll for the past
six consecutive quarters.
...His time and effort
spent in your program
has yielded results that
have far exceeded our
expectations." -- Kim K.

Academic Therapy

A significant percentage of the population, almost 30% of students, struggle with learning and reading problems. Specific difficulty with reading is commonly called Dyslexia, and many learning problems often go undiagnosed. Some of the approaches used are noted on the right.

Learning Problems

Learning problems can have many different and often overlapping causes. The primary learning problems related to reading include deficiencies in:

• Phonological Awareness
  Ability to recognize the number, order and identity of sounds in words. Weakness here results in difficulty sounding out, correctly pronouncing and spelling words.
   

• Phonological Memory
  The ability to hold sounds in memory, in the correct sequence. Difficulty here is often noted by sounds being omitted, added, or switched in sequence during the decoding process.
   

• Rapid Naming
  The ability to rapidly access long-term memory of rote information like the names of letters, numbers, colors and objects. Slow rapid naming skills are associated with slow reading rates.
   

• Symbol Imagery
  Ability to visualize and remember letter patterns in words. Weakness is frequently noted in poor spelling skills, difficulty learning sight words and often frequent word substitution errors when reading.
   

• Phonics
  Phonics is the knowledge of the rules that govern how words are pronounced. To sound out words, one must combine phonological processing skills with a knowledge of phonics to be successful. 
   

• Concept Imagery
  The ability to create accurate visual imagery from what is read. Weakness in this area can result comprehension problems and a limited vocabulary.
   

• Memory Problems
  Includes both visual and auditory memory issues with both short-term, long-term and working memory.
   

• Attention with and without Hyperactivity
  Includes sustained, divided and selective attention. Attention problems can disrupt reading, comprehension, learning and behavior.

How We Begin

The Director begins by doing thorough assessment testing with standardized, nationally recognized measures to determine exactly what an individual’s needs are. We then design a one-to-one tutoring program that will be most effective in addressing the student's needs.

Academic Therapy

With the learning problems identified, the Consultant writes a lesson plan to implement the program of remediation. The Consultant will work with the student, along with other Tutors, to execute the lesson plans. Detailed notes are taken of every single response the student makes during his session. The Consultant takes those notes and builds a new lesson plan for the student's next session. Once a week the Staff meets with the Director to review the progress of each student and changes are made to the program as needed.

Approximately every 10 hours a written progress update is provided to the parents. At approximately the midpoint in the program, we meet with the parents to review in detail what we are doing with the student and review his progress. At any point, if the parents have questions or concerns, they are encouraged to meet with us at any point in the program. At the end of the program, the Director will administer the same battery of testing that was done in the beginning, and provide a written report documenting progress and making any further recommendations.

– Colorado Reading Center Staff