Max’s parents were worried about his future. He was an intelligent kid who loved learning about history and current events. He was social and had strong relationships with his family and friends. But his grades were mediocre, at best. He could not write a legible essay with correct grammar and spelling, and he did not test well on exams like the SAT and the CAHSEE. Max wanted to go to college, but how was that ever going to happen?
Our battery of tests revealed Max’s learning problems. He was a freshman who was reading at the 5th grade level. He hadn’t mastered the rules for phonics or breaking words into syllables. He put so much energy into sounding out words that he couldn’t concentrate on comprehension. With his limited comprehension, he couldn’t take effective notes and, therefore, he didn’t have the study skills to prepare for tests.
Max’s writing was also a problem. He omitted words and word endings and confused the syntax. He forgot to include periods and capitals, so his writing was full of run-on sentences. He spelled words without logical letters. Nobody could read Max’s writing – including Max himself!
Another challenge for Max was language processing. His ability to listen to lectures and identify the main ideas tested at the 7 to 8 year old level. This was a boy who was 13 ½. No wonder he was struggling in 9th grade!
We Helped Max Get Ahead in School
We enrolled Max in our literacy program 4 hours a week. Our goal was to help Max catch up and GET AHEAD in school!
We started by re-teaching Max the rules for phonics and syllabication. We began with the sound-symbol relations, but this time we used tactile cues like American Sign Language to beef up his shaky knowledge of the letters and sounds. Then we taught him the rules for syllabication – knowing where to break words into syllables. If you know the various rules for phonics and syllabication, it’s a piece of cake to decode longer words like syllabication – syl.lab.i.ca.tion.
We coordinated our instruction with Max’s high school literature class. He and his literacy specialist, Kathy, first made sure Max could sound-out all the words. Then she helped him develop instant recognition of those words (sight words) to build his fluency.
Next, Kathy asked Max to describe his visual imagery. Once she knew that Max’s images were accurate, she asked him to think critically about the content.
To make sure Max remembered the key characters and events, Kathy helped Max write notes in the margins of the literature and summary sentences at the bottom of each page. These notes enabled Max to summarize the plots of each chapter, and finally, the entire book.
Max started to interact with the text, and he got into it! He began to recognize the depth of the characters and their complicated relationships. Max began to relate to the characters and couldn’t wait to learn what would happen next. He started participating in class discussions and received recognition from his teachers and classmates.
We needed to help Max write more effectively too. Max practiced writing summaries of the chapters and then editing those summaries for clearly written sentences with rich vocabulary, appropriate grammar and correct spelling.
Max Went off to College!
We lost track of Max until earlier this year when we received an email from him at San Francisco State, thanking us, and especially Kathy, for our help:
“I just wanted to say how grateful I was to be taught by Kathy at Jodie K. Schuller & Associates. I am currently at San Francisco State, majoring in history, and I am planning on going to law school. Without Kathy’s help, I don’t think I would have appreciated reading as much as I do. She made me a more confident reader and writer.”
WOW! That email made our day!
These stories don’t occur every day, but they do happen frequently to kids who attend our program. If you would like more information about our speech, language, literacy and college prep programs, please call us at 858.509.1131 or contact us via our form. It is never too early or too late to begin.