All of our Programs use a Multi-Sensory Approach that Greatly Improves Visual and Auditory Processing Speed, Working Memory, Executive Functioning, Confidence, and Perseverance
You want to see your child be a successful reader.
Your child’s self-esteem is suffering because they are behind in reading.
You know how important it is to get 1-1 reading help for your child so they can succeed in school.
In today’s world, being able to read is important. You see your child struggling to read, falling further behind their peers, and getting more frustrated with each passing month. It breaks your heart as a parent and you aren’t sure how to help. You’ve tried reading with your child. You’ve expressed your concern to your child’s teacher. At home, you try encouraging reading, rewarding reading, and just plain begging your child to read a little more. Perhaps you’ve even had your child tested for dyslexia or another learning disability. But they still struggle.
Your Student Will Benefit From Fit Reading If…
- They are struggling with reading homework
- Your child is behind in reading
- Your child’s teacher has raised concerns at parent-teacher conferences
- Their grades don’t reflect mastery
- Your child’s grades are good, but your gut tells you something is wrong
- They don’t like to read, avoid reading, and complain whenever it’s time to do homework
- Your child is a good reader, even enjoys reading, but doesn’t feel challenged in the classroom
- You want your child to be a great student
Our reading curriculum covers the basics, like phonics and phonemic awareness. Once your child has mastered those basic reading concepts, our reading curriculum grows with the learner to include advanced visual decoding, word analysis, vocabulary, and literary comprehension.
Some of the broad reading skills covered in Fit’s reading curriculum include:
- Letter names
- Letter sounds
- Phonemic awareness
- Auditory analysis
- Segmenting words
- Learning to read words in isolation
- Nonsense words
- Sight words
- Passage reading
- Word analysis
Is Your Child Struggling to Learn to Read at a Second or Third-Grade Level?
Your student may be struggling because they haven’t mastered the building blocks of reading. The traditional educational approach and many reading curriculums expect your child to learn to read without first determining if he or she has mastered basic reading skills. For example, they may not have mastered early phonics such as letter sounds, vowel combinations, and the rules of reading. They have to have this knowledge to do things like decoding unfamiliar words out of context.
Schools usually shift the focus from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” around the third or fourth grade. So, if your child is behind in reading at this critical stage in their education, they likely aren’t going to be able to “close the gap” with their peers without intensive reading intervention. Reading becomes more and more frustrating for your child.
Learning to read now can make a huge difference in your child’s education
However, when your student truly masters these early literacy skills, then they will be able to develop reading skills at their grade level and beyond. Then, they will have the skills to read well and understand the things they are learning from the text. This is critical for their academic success.
At Fit Learning, we assess your child’s competence with component or building block skills first. Then, we teach these skills to fluency before teaching higher-level skills.
The Difference Between Fit Learning and Reading Tutoring or Homework Help
Traditional homework help or reading tutoring programs help your child with the things that are easy to see they are struggling with right now. They often focus on helping your child be successful on their assignments and the reading units currently assigned in their classroom. Fit Learning goes deeper, identifies exactly where your child’s problems with reading begin, and fills in those gaps. We work our way up beginning first with basic reading skills and then moving onto the more advanced skills currently being taught in your child’s classrooms.
What to expect with Fit Reading
Fit Reading begins with our no-obligation comprehensive skills assessment is designed to tell us what skills your student has not mastered yet. This allows us to create an individualized curriculum to help them become fluent in the skills they need to be successful readers.
Our reading curriculum targets exactly what your child needs to learn to be a masterful, competent, and confident student. We do this by providing fluency training. Fluency training will give your child the chance to go back and learn the reading skills they missed in earlier grades. We will keep working on these skills over and over in a fun, encouraging way until your child has mastered them. And, once a learner is a fluent reader, they are ready to apply the skills automatically, without having to think about it. They’ll feel confident and excited about reading! These skills will set them up for success in other subjects that require them to read to learn. For example, being able to read well will help them be successful in learning history, science, and math. It will also help them improve their reading comprehension.
What age group benefits from Fit Reading?
Fit Reading appropriate for learners as young as 1st grade all the way through high school. However, the majority of the learners we work with are in elementary school. Our Lil Fits curriculum teaches early literacy, numeracy, and logic skills to learners younger than first grade. It doesn’t matter if your learner has dyslexia, is gifted and talented, struggling, average, or is learning disabled; our approach is scientifically proven to meet your child’s needs.
Fit Reading’s Precision Teaching Method is:
- Evidence-based: We adhere to the principles of learning and the science of reading
- Systematic: Students learn and master basic skills before moving on to more complex skills
- Focused on fluency: Your child will improve their reading until it becomes effortless
- Individualized: Our instruction is delivered 1:1, never in a small group.
- Taught explicitly: Sessions are goal-driven with lots of opportunities to practice the right answer
- Fast-paced: Coaches hold kids attention by moving swiftly, there’s no time to be bored
- Rich in frequent feedback: “You got this!” “Go, girl!” Our coaches resemble sports coaches
- Multi-sensory: Learners practice seeing, hearing, doing, moving, and writing
- Fun! Learning Coaches provide lots of positive reinforcement and reward effort as well as personal bests
Fit Reading Help for Dyslexic Students
Our method is currently the only in the world to combine the most highly tested and researched methods into one comprehensive, instructional approach. Therefore, the result is a profoundly transformative process that consistently produces 1 year’s worth of growth in as little as 40 hours. In fact, many students gain 2 years worth growth in just 40 hours. The below graph illustrates Fit’s outcomes with learners diagnosed with dyslexia—26 percentile rank gain after 40 hours of instruction on standardized tests. These outcomes are similar to those achieved with other learners.
“Ideally, the reading instruction provided to the dyslexic child should be evidence-based, systematic and delivered in a small group setting. Phonemic awareness and phonics should be taught explicitly. Learning should be active, with frequent teacher-child interactions. And the program should include many opportunities to practice reading, to develop fluency, to build vocabulary, to develop comprehension strategies, to write and to listen and talk about stories.”
How is Fit Learning’s approach to reading instruction similar to Wilson Reading System®️ or Orton-Gillingham?
Like Wilson Reading System®️ (WRS), Fit Learning is a curriculum based on teaching phonics and phonemic awareness. This is the only empirically validated means of training effective reading repertoires. Additionally, the similarities include the use of nonsense words, incorporation of spelling strategies, and segmentation, and blending of words. All three approaches are multi-sensory, structured, and sequential.
How is Fit Learning’s approach to reading instruction different from Wilson reading System®️ or Orton-Gillingham?
Orton-Gillingham and WRS are missing the science of learning that is the backbone of our curriculum. Science guides how we measure learning, evaluate mastery, make immediate instructional decisions regarding learner performance, and adjust our teaching practices such that learning occurs at an optimal rate.
“I’ve never seen reading learners make progress the way they do at Fit Learning. It adds the science of learning to an Orton-Gillingham foundation to promote accuracy, speed, and self-confidence. It’s the difference between teaching someone to read and developing someone who loves to read—and that transformation happens within a few months. It’s like Wilson on steroids!”
Rhonda West, a speech-language pathologist who is certified in Wilson Reading System®️ and in the Fit Learning method.
“Explicit Teaching of Alphabetic Decoding Skills is Helpful for All Children, Harmful for None, and Crucial for Some”
Harvard Professor Catherine Snow and Stanford Professor Connie Juel
The Fit Reading Approach Gets Results
The truth is, your child has a harder time learning to read than other students their age. However, they can learn. The Fit Reading program has helped countless other students learn to read. The graphs below show how Fit Reading has helped other students with dyslexia, general learning disabilities, and students in general.
This graph shows the progress Fit Learners diagnosed with dyslexia make on a standardized reading test, gaining an average of 27 words read correctly per minute, in 40-hours.
This graph shows the progress ALL Fit Learners make on a standardized reading test, gaining an average 30 words per minute, in 40-hours.
This graph shows the progress Fit Learners diagnosed with a learning disability make on a standardized reading test, gaining an average of 29 words read correctly per minute, in 40-hours.
Data represents 4th quarter 2019, all Fit Learning locations.
Are you still looking for more information? Check out these additional articles about reading education:
For articles on reading and Dyslexia, please visit The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity
What you can expect to receive from your investment in Fit Reading’s Precision Teaching Method
At first blush, the tuition for a 50-hour enrollment might seem higher than reading tutors you have researched. That’s because our reading program is different. Here are a few reasons why we are worth it…
Fit Reading is Efficient
Other programs might look less expensive until you factor in the length of time your child will participate in them. For example, some popular programs clearly state that they take 2-3 years to complete! Yet, data collected over our 20+ year history demonstrate that kids in our program gain an average of 1-2 grade levels in just hours! By paying a little bit more, your child will learn to read much faster. In the long run, this will not only save you money but will help your child’s self-esteem when they feel better about their reading sooner rather than later.
Fit Reading will give your child the foundational skills they need to be successful, life-long readers
Think about how much we, as parents, spend on sports training for our kids. I know it can be a lot. My daughter is a D1 competitive swimmer so our cost of investment in her athletic success includes her suits, gear, team membership, banquets, travel meets, hotels, restaurants, gas, meet fees, etc. Most of us, though would say that academic success is just as important, if not more important, than athletic success. So, isn’t it worth the investment to teach your child the skills they need to be successful readers? I think so!
Begin Fit Reading and get reading help for your student in the St. Louis area
Your child doesn’t have to keep falling behind their peers in reading. They don’t have to be frustrated every time you ask them to read at home. If your child is struggling to keep up with their lessons and the homework they are given in school, help is available in our Fit Reading program. Our certified learning coaches are skilled in providing individualized instruction utilizing the latest learning and behavioral science technology. We approach learning to read in a new way that will help your child make real progress and feel great about their reading!
To begin Fit Reading and get reading help in St. Louis, follow these steps:
- Contact Fit Learning St. Louis and speak with our Director
- Schedule an intake assessment for your child
- Begin Fit Reading and watch your child’s reading abilities & confidence grow!
Other Learning Services Offered at Fit Learning in St. Louis
Sometimes, students struggling in more than one area, so you may be looking for more than just help to increase your child’s reading skills and confidence. Fit Learning St. Louis offers help in a variety of areas and sometimes learners may enroll in more than one program. Our school-age services include Fit Math, Fit Logic, Fit Penmanship, and Fit Homeschool. Additionally, we offer a preschool program Lil Fits for our very young learners. We want to serve as a resource for parents, educators, and other professionals looking for support children who are struggling to keep up in school. Therefore, our talented staff of educators contributes to our education blog with relevant educational information and tips.
If you’re ready to help your child catch up in school, learn to read more fluently and feel more confident in school, we’re here to help. Contact our St. Louis precision teaching clinic to learn more about our learning coaches and our educational programs.