For parents
What a reading specialist does — and how we do it
A good reading specialist isn’t magic. They do a specific set of things, in a specific order, proven by decades of research. Here’s every one — and exactly how we deliver it.
A reading specialist runs $80–$250 a session, once or twice a week.
We’re $39 a month for your whole family — and we do the daily work between sessions, which is the part that actually builds the skill.
First, what a specialist looks for
The assessment — finding exactly where your child is, and watching them grow.
- ✓Exactly where your child is in the sequenceOur Starting Check places your child at their precise step — not their grade.
- ✓Can they hear and work with the sounds in words?Every lesson includes sound work — blending, segmenting, and pulling words apart by ear.
- ✓Can they decode real and made-up words?Our check uses real words and “robot words” — nonsense words a child can’t have memorized, which is how you know they’re truly decoding.
- ✓How smoothly and accurately do they read aloud?We listen to your child read once a week and chart their reading speed and accuracy over time.
- ✓Can they spell what they can read?Every session includes dictation — your child spells the words they’re learning to read.
- ✓Progress you can hand a teacherA printable weekly note with the numbers a teacher or IEP team will recognize. Most apps never give you this.
Then, what a specialist does every session
The teaching — the active ingredients proven to build reading.
- ✓Explicit, step-by-step phonics in a proven orderWe hand you every word to say — the teaching, the practice, the corrections. Nothing is left to guess.
- ✓Pure, clean letter soundsThe sounds are taught crisply — /b/, not “buh” — because the wrong way makes blending nearly impossible.
- ✓Reading built at your child’s exact levelEvery line of every story is built from only the sounds your child has been taught — so they can actually read it. Almost no one else does this.
- ✓Reading the same lines until they’re smoothYour child reads each line a few times — the single most proven way to build reading fluency.
- ✓Advance only when a skill is solidYour child moves on only once they’ve mastered a step — and any skill that slips comes back automatically on a spaced schedule.
- ◐Understanding and vocabulary — growingWe build comprehension and word meaning into the stories, and we’re deepening this further.
- ✓Keeping your child wanting to come backThe reading is a real adventure that only moves when your child reads it — plus a parent playbook for the hard nights.
And here’s what we’ll always be straight with you about
We’re not a diagnosis. We don’t label your child — we teach them. If you want to know whether your child has dyslexia, a formal evaluation by a qualified professional is the right step, and we’ll point you to one.
For a child who is struggling severely, think of us as the daily engine that works alongside a specialist — not a full replacement for one. For everyone else, we’re built to be most of what that weekly session does, every single day, at home.