Reading therapy

Who can attend reading therapy?

A child who has difficulty learning to read.
Any child who has fallen behind at school because they struggle to read.

What is reading therapy?

Reading therapy is a minimum of a weekly, hour long class with Lianne using the Phono-graphix™ Reading and Spelling method.
It gives the learner the individualized attention they need.
It is focused on identifying and building on the learner’s specific strengths and weaknesses.
It is a carefully planned, individualized intervention strategy designed to build knowledge and develop the skills required to become a confident & fluent reader.
It provides a supportive and nurturing environment where the learner experiences success early on.
Classes are either in person or online.

What is Phono-graphix?

Phono-graphix™ is a straightforward Reading and Spelling method developed by Carmen and Geoffrey Mc Guinness in 1993, at the Read America clinic in Florida. Read for Africa has worked very closely with the developers of Phono-graphix™ researching, modifying and adapting the method to the South African context for over 16 years.

Phono-graphix™ takes the sounds of the English language – and teaches the various sound-pictures (letters) that represent those sounds in careful stages, progressing from easy to complex. It addresses the nature of the written code, the nature of the learner as well as three skills required to access the code.

How do you know if your child needs help?

My child does not recognize rhyming words.
My child can’t identify words that start with the same sound.
My child makes use of alphabet names and not their sounds when trying to decode words.
My child has difficulty matching letters and their sounds.
.My child struggles to segment and blend the sounds in words.
- Segment – means to break words up into sounds (spelling)
- Blend – means to push the sounds together to form a word (reading)
My child has difficulty manipulating the sounds in words.
My child guesses words based on the first letter.
My child leaves out/skip words in a sentence or paragraph.
My child adds words that are not there.
My child confuses letters such as b, d, v, w, f, t, m, u and n.
My child adds sounds to a word.
My child reverses sounds in a word.
My child omits sounds in a word.
My child is unable to break words into chunks or syllables.
My child adds/omits endings to a word e.g. ‘games’ becomes ‘game’ and ‘play’ becomes ‘playing’.
My child makes no attempt to self-correct.
My child reads a contraction as if it is two words.
My child struggles to recognize repeated words.
My child constantly rereads words or parts of a sentence.
My child ignores punctuation when reading.
My child resists or avoids reading activities.
My child reads excruciatingly slowly, one word at a time, sounding out each word to the point that all meaning in the sentence is lost.
My child reads words in isolation with inappropriately long pauses between each word.
My child reads two, three and four-letter sounds incorrectly e.g ‘ea’, eigh’, ‘ow’, ‘ough’.
My child reads too fast with no expression.
My child does not understand what they are reading.

If you have answered ‘yes’ to any combination of the above statements, then your child could benefit from intervention in the form of Reading Therapy.

To explore working with Lianne face-to-face in Parkmore (Sandton, Johannesburg), contact her for a consultation to discuss how she can assist you.