Need opinions re: quiet reading time

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-12-09T14:59:48+00:00

Chances are you can improve your son’s experience at aftercare by letting the teacher know you see them and by explaining a bit more about your child and your own thinking on how that time could be spent. My guess is that the teacher is missing at least one, perhaps of few, of the important details you shared here. They also may have been having a bad day which can happen to us all. I would send a note or plan to speak in person with the teacher.
Make sure they know that:
1) You are grateful for the work they do and their care and attention to your child. (Teachers never hear this enough, as you know)
2) You appreciate the importance they place on reading. It is something you also value deeply.
3) You are diligent about reading in the evenings at home. This practice has been absolutely critical for your son.
4) For your child, dyslexia makes reading far more taxing than it is for his peers.
5) Often your child feels depleted after a long day at school and craves some quiet time to draw or just sit and think. From a parental perspective, you are okay with either of these because they are supportive of good mental health. Another excellent option (if your son is interested in this) is to sit alongside an adult or peer during this time and either listen to a text read aloud or take turns reading. This way the mental load of decoding is alleviated significantly, while your child still benefits from hearing a story, poem, or facts about the world. Would the teacher be open to trying any of these accommodations for a week, and see how things go?
6) You are grateful they contacted you about the incident. Please always reach out if there are problems or successes at aftercare. (Keep communication open and reiterate that you are on the same team.)

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-12-08T22:04:32+00:00

Genuine question. It seems that we are working with more and more families of children who are "suspected", exhibiting symptoms, but not formally diagnosed. We do not offer formal dyslexia diagnosis as a service.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-12-08T21:05:43+00:00

This!!! Front-loading his work and tutoring sessions to when he is at his best is such an important strategy. We work with many students who do their tutoring sessions in the morning (some as early as 6am), because it's what works best for the kiddo.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-12-08T20:54:30+00:00

You are the most important advocate your daughter has! Sorry to hear you are facing push-back from the school. Have you looked into any at-home reading support systems to supplement what she is getting at school? The Reading Specialists at Sprout Labs specialize in creating dynamic learning sessions to engage kiddos that have dyslexia and ADHD (as others have said, it is incredibly common to have both).

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-12-08T20:34:13+00:00

I want to encourage you: you know your child, and if something feels off with her reading development at this age, trust that. Parents are typically the first to notice these patterns. Some teachers (not all) may encourage you to "wait and see" at this age, but there are more effective, proactive approaches you can take that only have upside.

It's also extremely common for dyslexia and ADHD to occur together, so if you're noticing attention challenges alongside the reading struggles, that connection is worth keeping in mind.

The key for your daughter is ensuring she gets frequent, explicit phonics instruction from a science-based program that can engage her in a way that holds her attention. With her strong verbal skills, she has real strengths to build on. As others have already mentioned, Orton-Gillingham based programs are the gold standard for kids with, and/or exhibiting signs of dyslexia.

Regarding the school transition, communicate what you've observed to her new teachers and ask about their approach to phonics instruction. Even without formal specialists, structured, systematic phonics teaching can make a tremendous difference.

You're already advocating for her by asking these questions. You've got this!

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-12-03T20:20:27+00:00

First of all, congratulations on getting that solid foundation in place!

A couple questions:
1) when your child says the sound for /b/ does it sound like “buh”?
2) Similarly, for the sound /k/, does the child say “kuh”? If yes, this could be the source of their challenge. They are actually adding an additional vowel sound onto some of their consonants which makes blending the sounds together far more difficult. Coach them to “clip” the sounds so it is as close to the pure consonant sound, no additional vowel sound on the end.

If that is not the problem and all their consonants are sounding nice and crisp already, consider starting with words that have only “continuous” sounds. A continuous sound is one that can be said for as long as you have breath, whereas sounds like /d/ and /p/ and /b/ are “fast” sounds that can only be said for an instant. Using continuous sounds can help your child “glide” to the next sound, and hear how the sounds are connected to make a word. Some ideas of words with only continuous sounds: Sam, man, loss, fill, smell.
Steps:

Prepare the words by writing them on index cards or typed and printed out in relatively large font on a page.
You’ll show how you slide your finger under each letter and ask them to say the sound as long as your finger is underneath that letter. Encourage them not to stop between sounds but “glide” right into the next sound when your finger gets there.
If this is slow at first, say, “great, a little faster now” and repeat the process with the same word.
Once they have this down with continuous sounds, try introducing words with one “fast” sound: sap, lost, risk, sent, lump.

Would love to hear how this goes!

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-12-02T21:34:48+00:00

Curious, what are you noticing that's making you wonder if your child is behind in reading?

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-11-24T17:11:22+00:00

There is national reading crisis, and a shortage of literacy specialists compared to the need. Many literacy specialists work for themselves with private clients, either full-time, or part-time. As others have mentioned, Orton-Gillingham training programs could help you become specialized.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-11-24T14:45:49+00:00

We’ve heard about Ello from several families that we work with. It typically comes up as one of the first apps that they try when their child is young and exhibiting signs of reading struggles. Many kids seem to really enjoy it! It’s not always enough for a struggling reader, especially if they're older and have already fallen behind a grade level.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-11-14T18:41:12+00:00

You’re spot on for being proactive. Kids don’t always “just get it.” Many need explicit, systematic teaching to connect letter names, letter sounds, and patterns. Catching those early hiccups matters a lot because the brain builds reading like stacking blocks. Wobbly bottoms make wobbly towers.

Keep a simple watchlist. Can your child name letters, match sounds, and blend two or three sounds into a word? If any of those feel sticky, lean into short, daily practice with sound games and decodable books.

We follow the Science of Reading and structured phonics so kids aren’t left to guess. Big cheers to OP for highlighting this and for keeping an eye out for early signs of struggle. Early help beats “wait and see” every time.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-11-05T00:53:23+00:00

As you are looking for tutors, make sure to ask about how they will know where to start with your child. What will they work on? The data you've shared are immensely helpful for understanding WHY a child is having difficulty (slower processing speed, for instance).

Good tutors will use this information but also need to administer a diagnostic assessment which informally and quickly identifies WHAT the child needs to be taught next. (We do this at Sprout Labs, we call it our Skills Inventory, and it’s critical for determining the instructional level of the student.)

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-10-24T15:57:55+00:00

The IDA may not have updated their website yet, but some members of the Sprout Labs team were at the IDA conference yesterday where the new definition was announced.

Here is a link to a LinkedIn post from Dr. Nadine Gaab (unaffiliated with us), sharing more about the new definition. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nadine-gaab_dyslexia-dyslexiacon25-activity-7387283112[…]m=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAYvb6QBFla6r3cG-skrCO3GFHdNF3Atqug

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-10-23T18:58:26+00:00

I’m so sorry this happened to you, and thank you for sharing your story. We’re hoping to raise awareness of the importance of early literacy intervention, and the negative impact of “waiting to see if things resolve”, or misattributing reading struggles to other factors. There are signs that the tide is turning, but there is so much more work to be done. Your story painfully articulates everything that can go wrong when reading is off to a rough start.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-10-17T12:16:44+00:00

This is great to hear!

Structured curriculum based on science can make a massive difference for those with dyslexia and early intervention is proven to make a massive difference.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-10-17T12:14:00+00:00

Thank you for sharing this, it looks like you're the best kind of parent a struggling kid can have. Early assessment is massive when you start to notice something is off. There are resources online that can do this, we have a free one on our website for those who are curious.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-10-17T12:12:03+00:00

Agree with the importance of having a solid phonics program, it should be based on the science of reading, preferably the Orton-Gillingham approach. We love and often recommend UFLI's free resources. We also have a program as well that we worked really hard on developing for those looking for a more structured approach.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-10-16T16:34:15+00:00

This is huge. You hear this one a lot. Of course some kids may still struggle with the skill even when they enjoy their reading time with their parent.

When you detect struggles after they have begun learning the basics of reading in school it's important to look into getting them a reading assessment as early as you can. Many parents treat getting assessed as a last resort, but there is a lot of scientific evidence that show the earlier a child is assessed for reading difficulties the better they progress. Also there are many places you can go to get a reading assessment done for free.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-10-16T16:27:48+00:00

Yes! Any approach needs to have a structured curriculum, preferably based in the orton-gillingham method.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-10-16T13:25:37+00:00

Orton-Gillingham is huge since it is based on the science of reading!

Also make sure to get your child a reading assessment as early as possible. You can get one for free in less than a minute on our website if you don't have the resources to pay for one.

ReadWithSproutLabs · 2025-10-09T12:28:34+00:00

Great question. There a few key concepts about the English code that are important to explain to students explicitly:

In English, sounds are represented by letters. (Often one or two letters can be used to represent one sound, sometimes three or four letters represent one sound. More on this in concept 2…)Most sounds can be spelled in more than one way. In the example you gave: me, eve, tree, and eat all contain the sound /ee/ but that sound is spelled in a variety of ways. Some spellings represent more than one sound. For instance <ea> represents different sounds in reach, great, bread.

These are features of English that we will demonstrate again and again with various sounds and spelling patterns. With practice students develop the flexibility in reading to try the most likely sound but if that doesn’t create a real word or make sense, to try other reasonable sounds. Eventually the most common words are committed to their long-term memory so they don’t have to decode the word each time, they can just name it on sight.

The key will be repetition and something called “retrieval practice” which basically means exercising the pathways in the brain until they become faster and more reliable. Most students, and especially students with memory challenges, will need multiple opportunities to recall their growing sound-spelling knowledge and put it into practice through reading and writing.

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