Reading Ladders works with small groups of children and young people who have literacy difficulties. Pupils receive weekly lessons, which either take place during the day or after school.

What makes Reading Ladders lessons unique?
We only employ specialist dyslexia tutors with a dyslexia qualification. Pupils are taught reading skills and strategies through multi-sensory games and activities, which specifically target the pupils gaps in their phonic knowledge and associated dyslexic type difficulties, such as perceiving the sounds in words. Some of the concepts we teach, such as how to identify closed syllables in words, can be difficult to understand, yet are vitally important to help pupils improve their reading accuracy. To overcome this hurdle, we design tasks such as highlighting the syllable patterns and physically cutting up the words into syllables, so the pupils fully understand the concepts. By playing a game alongside the task (such as a balance type game or a mini-basketball game), we can make sure they associate learning these concepts with having fun.

We focus heavily on empowering the pupils to take ownership of their learning, through teaching reading strategies such as looking for hidden words within words or splitting the words into syllables. Encouraging pupils to discuss the strategies they use and how they would use them in the classroom, ensures the skills are not just practised in isolation.

Tutors first assess pupils using standardised and baseline assessments, to ensure that pupils abilities are closely matched. These results are used to design an effective programme, unique for every group. Lessons are fun and interactive!

 

Reading Ladders is unique because:

• Tutors are able to focus on the pupils’ areas of need and utilise their strengths.
• We work closely with schools and make sure our work supports and links with what children are learning in school.
• We don’t believe in a one fits all approach. We work flexibly, continually monitoring progress, to ensure our pupils make excellent progress.
• We work with pupils who have literacy difficulties/dyslexia. Some of these pupils may have additional learning needs. We are able to provide training to schools on how best to support pupils with literacy difficulties/dyslexia in the classroom.