The First Step

Before an intervention plan can be developed, it is important that students' specific struggles are understood. The processes that help us become strong readers and writers are complex. Learners of the same age may be having difficulty with the same material but struggling for entirely different reasons.

Does the student struggle to figure out the words on the page (fluency), or perhaps they can’t make sense of the material they are reading (comprehension)? If there is a fluency issue, does the problem stem from an inability to decode unknown words (phonemic awareness)? Or does the problem seem to be a laborious reading rate and a poor ability to quickly recognize words on sight (graphemic imagery)? If it’s a comprehension issue, is the problem absorbing the details and making connections (receptive), or with retelling - in writing or orally - the information in a logically connected, organized way (expressive)? Identifying the root cause of students' challenges is essential to developing an effective intervention plan.

We carefully review any prior assessments, can conduct an in-house assessment, and/or can provide a referral for a psych-ed assessment to determine students' abilities and areas of challenges.