Reading

Reading problems center in one or more of these areas: decoding and word recognition; fluency (reading rate and accuracy), and reading comprehension. Here is what Encompass Learning Solutions will do to help students in each of these areas.

Word-Level Difficulties

Often these students have an adequate or advance oral language vocabulary.  When they talk, we cannot imagine why they are having trouble learning to read. They know the meanings of words; however, they cannot recognize them in print.

For students with difficulties at the word-reading level, Encompass Learning Solutions uses a combination of ¹Lindamood-Bell™ and traditional Orton-Gillingham techniques. How these methods are combined is unique to each child whom we teach. We are not; however, affliated with or supervised by Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, Phyllis Lindamood, Nanci Bell, or any clinic owned by their organizations. We have been trained to use these methods and materials and do so in a unique way based on individual student needs. For many students, we begin with the phonemic awareness of Lindamood-Bell and progress toward the multi-syllable instruction of Orton-Gillingham. Spelling and writing are included as needed.

Fluency

For students with difficulty in reading rate, accuracy, and prosody (voice and inflection while reading), we again use a combination of programs for an individualized program. It is essential to understand the underlying cause of the problem. Great readers effortlessly chunk sentences into phrases shorter phrases. Reading rate problems may be caused by problems recognizing individual words, visual tracking, attention, problems "chunking" sentences, and more.

Reading Comprehension

This is the most complex area and the one most studied by main-stream educators. For some students, comprehension problems can be handled in a group setting rather than requiring 1:1 instruction. For this reason, they are often caught and solved in the school system.

Students who have reading comprehension problems that have not been solved in school could have underlying issues with recognizing words that have gone unnoticed. Other students may not create mental images (visualize) what they read, they may lack vocabulary knowledge, or they may have difficulty remembering details of what they read. For these students, we use a large number of techniques.. They may include Nanci Bell's Visualizing & Verbalizing*. Other comprehension techniques, such as finding main ideas, summarizing, questioning, predicting, and inferring meaning (reading between the lines), are taught as student needs indicate.  In addition, many students need practice to keep their mind focused on their reading.

¹As stated on our home page, we are not affiliated with or supervised by Phyllis Lindamood, Nanci Bell, or Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes