Ray of Hope Educational Opportunities – A Client Centred Approach to Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities

Research completed by the educational profession, the medical profession and the scientific community have clearly indicated that not all students learn the same way. Extensive brain research has proven beyond a doubt that some people need alternative teaching and learning programs. Most reading programs are based on teaching people to read through phonetics. But there is 5% to 10% of the population that do not learn to read that way because they do not have phonemic awareness. In brief that means that they do not get the relationship between the sound of the word and the alphabetic principal. Therefore conventional reading programs will often have little success for them to become independent readers and independent learners. As a consequence, some great workers or potentially great workers are excluded from the workforce, or limited in their advancement on the job and in post-secondary education.

The Ray of Hope Educational Opportunities offer:
THE FOOTHILLS ACADEMY 5 WEEK INTENSIVE READ/WRITE PROGRAM
It is a highly specialized, researched based program based on the LindaMood Bell LIPS program, that has been refined by Foothills Academy*. It is designed to teach phonemic awareness specifically to students who are have low literacy skills and are experiencing low academic achievement, indicated by their difficulty in reading and spelling .

*SALS (The Ray of Hope Educational Opportunities) is in partnership with the internationally renowned Foothills Academy (a non-profit charity) in Calgary Alberta (a school for students with learning disabilities). We are excited to announce that after being in a one year pilot program with them, that we have now proven ourselves successful in the teaching and delivery of their specialized Read/Write program in Prince Albert. The success for the students that we have put through the five week intensive have been measureable and life changing for them.

If a person, of average to above average intelligence suffers from low-literacy levels and is a poor speller, it limits their opportunity to enter the workforce and to stay in the work force and or to go on to post-secondary education. It does not mean that the person does not have the ability to handle the workload, but an inability to read and spell at a functional level restricts the person’s ability to function well on the job and inhibits their chances of success, let alone advancement and lowers their chance for success in post-secondary.

The Read/Write program is designed specifically for struggling readers, people with learning disabilities like Dyslexia, who have very little phonemic awareness. (Many students are not diagnosed with learning disabilities or dyslexia, but if reading and spelling are of difficulty for them and their level of educational achievement if below their grade or age level, it might suggest a problem.) One of the most important foundations of reading success is phonemic awareness. Although it is a widely used term in reading, it is often misunderstood. One misunderstanding is that phonemic awareness and phonics are the same thing. Phonemic awareness is not phonics. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words. Phonics is the understanding that there is a relationship between letters and sounds through written language. If students are to benefit from phonics instruction, they need phonemic awareness. Studies have shown that phonemic awareness has a direct correlation with students’ ability to read as they get older. Phonemic awareness builds a foundation for students to understand the rules of the English language. This in turn allows each student to apply these skills and increase his or her oral reading fluency and understanding of the text. Students who cannot hear and work with the phonemes of spoken words will have a difficult time learning how to relate these phonemes to letters when they see them in written words.

The Read/Write program is designed to increase a person’s reading level, spelling and writing ability to qualify them for post-secondary education in the trades or to qualify them in the workforce to be able to fill out application forms, issue billing on the job (the hours worked and the job done), take written orders (example in a restaurant), record their work activities for the day for their employers. Without these simple literacy skills, many people cannot get a job, cannot hold a job or advance in their chosen field.

The Read/Write program has some specific built in components. There is pre and post testing, which documents improvement on each individual student. The instruction is one on one which meets the learning style of the individual student. The second component of the program is based on Nanci Bells’ Visualizing and Verbalizing for Language Comprehension and Thinking. Some students do not get pictures in their mind when they read. Consequently, they might appear to read relatively well, but will not have any comprehension of what they read, because all it was to them was words on a page, because they can not visualize the content of the story that they were reading.

Visualization and Verbalization also addresses this and sequential thinking problems. Some students do not think in a sequential fashion and it shows up in spelling and affects reading greatly, but it also shows up in the work place and school settings. In school settings, it often shows up as not getting the instructions straight; not understanding the assignments correctly. In the workplace it shows up as not following instructions well. A lot of students / employees do not learn intuitively therefore need to be shown what is needed to be successful, for example, to get along with fellow employees or to pick up on needed skills to be successful in a work environment. Through Visualization and Verbalizing, which is producing sequences of imagery stimulation, remarkable results occur. Individuals become able to visualize and comprehend language and situations whose previous language processing could best be described as “in one ear and out the other”. Students also become able to organize and relevantly choose and order what to say or do. Thinking and communicating will become available to our students through visualizing /verbalizing concepts. Both spoken and written comprehension improves. This base function for some does not exist. The reality for many students, employees is that a sequence of intervention procedures is necessary before they have access to auditory conceptual judgement for self-correction in speech, spelling, reading and visual imagery for language comprehension and skill performance. What is new in the Lindamood work in auditory conceptual judgement and Nanci Bell’s work in visualizing/verbalizing is that nothing is assumed. A sequence of procedures so basic is offered in both areas that 1) the processing is accelerated and further refined; and 2) the emergence and development of the processing is stimulated and retained for those who don’t intuitively develop it. We could possibly tie in the essential components with this section.

Anecdotes from an adult client at Foothills – Dave M. – Fire Fighter Dave’s reading skills, including comprehension, showed a two year gain after tutoring with the Read/Write program. “My reading was so slow my mind would always start to wander. I couldn’t keep my mind on the subject. I also didn’t know how to break words down to pronounce the vowels. At work there is a lot of training and I always avoided reading so I felt I was falling behind. After taking the Read/Write program, now when I come across a word I don’t know, I can sound out the proper pronunciation. My reading improved and reading is a lot more interesting. My confidence has improved. Reading and writing is something you need every day. I believe a lot of new opportunities are now opened up to me.”

Anecdotes from an adult client in Prince Albert who passed his a first year apprenticeship program – Sam B. Sam’s isolated decoding skill (sounding out for reading) increased by 4 grade levels and his functional spelling increased several grade levels to grade 10 with an electronic spell-checker. “The confidence that I have acquired from taking the Read/Write program has been life changing for me. As a result of taking this program, have entered into an apprenticeship program and have just passed my first year apprenticeship. I work as a second year apprentice. I was so paranoid about not being able to spell and read well enough that I would not enter into any post-secondary program. If I did not have this new confidence I would have quit the second day on the job because I have to fill out my own billing forms and that would have intimidated me into quitting. Now I can fill out the forms and I have a whole new world of opportunities opened up to me.”
If you require any further information, please call Marj Somers 763-4041 or Shirley Carriere 764-5094.

by SK Advocates for Learning Solutions

Ray of Hope Educational Opportunities – A Client Centred Approach to Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities

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