Reading Help: Tulsa Area 

An alarming number of children are being left behind because of problems with reading. Your child doesn't have to be part of that statistic. The solution is easier than you realize.

Trouble In America

When the average six-year-old child enters first grade, he or she already knows the meanings of about 26,000 words. They may not use all of those words themselves, but they understand what the words mean when they hear them.

The goal of many first grade reading programs is to teach the students to read between 200 to 600 common words by the end of first grade. Sadly, over half of them can't even read 100 words by the time they finish first grade.

In fact, many of them never learn to read well at all. In the United States, over half of the adults can't read material written at sixth grade level. Many people ask, "How can this problem exist in the greatest, richest and most powerful nation on earth?"

To find the answer to that question, we need to know about two men, John Dewey and Arthur I. Gates. John Dewey is often called the "Father of Progressive Education," and Arthur I. Gates was also an influential educator many years ago. Before they and their associates changed the way reading was taught in this country, everyone who attended school learned to read in a very short time. In our large cities, over ninety percent of the adult population could read anything written in our language.

Dewey and Gates proposed that our schools abandon the method othat had been used to teach reading ever since reading was first invented. As a result of their ill-advised plan, we now have an epidemic of poor reading in this country.

Millions of children and adults are paying a terrible price because of what these men and other educators of their time did. It is imperative in a country as large and diverse as ours that everyone learn to read well. Yet many of our citizens are severely handicapped because they have not been taught to read by the only method that works every time.

Our only hope of ever putting America back on the right track is to return to a method of teaching reading that has been proved for thousands of years. It is called phonics, and if it were properly used in the schools of America, those six-year-old students would be able to read every word they know by the time first grade is over. And how many words is that? About 35,000 to 40,000 words.

~Cliff Ponder, Founder of Academic Associates

 Our students typically gain 2-4 grade levels in just 30-60 hours!

We are Reading Instruction Specialists For Children who are struggling with their reading. Children with poor leading skills often…