Stride Ahead: An Aid to Comprehension

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Stride Ahead is the perfect tool to help these particular students. Studying Stride Ahead helps students to increasingly blank out the white noise of written text (that is, the minor details of a text). It is the worrying over the ‘minor detail’ of a text that distracts a student from achieving the main object of reading a text: understanding it and extracting meaning from it. Often these students become so adept at disguising their poor reading skills (by guesswork allied with contextual clues) that their teachers may not even be aware that they have a problem. In effect, they are on a ‘reading plateau’ and they often remain there throughout their school careers and on into their adult life. Every target should be met, BUT (and this is very important to remember) it is not necessary to reach every target time in sequence.

Often these students become very adept at disguising their poor reading skills. They use ‘guesswork’ allied with contextual clues to get meaning. Because these ‘guesswork’ techniques hide a student’s poor reading skills, often their teachers are not even aware that the student has a problem. Stride Ahead is a study book, written for students who can read, but who have difficulty in understanding and comprehending written text. Many students reach a ‘reading plateau’. They have good reading skills, but still face problems in understanding text content and extracting meaningful information from it. This has consequences for a student across all subjects in test and examination situations. For maturer students, it can also impact on their ability to do their job competently and effectively. A. The methodology underpinning the manuals is exactly the same. Both are equally effective at improving students’ reading ability and their confidence and self-esteem. Toe by Toe USA has been altered slightly to reflect differences between British and American English with regard to vocabulary, spelling and the use of certain idioms.Typically, they would begin with a ‘benchmark time’ of 20 seconds and make several mistakes and / or get tongue-tied.

From decades of experience, we believe it is more natural and far easier for struggling readers to discriminate between the various sounds by using the schwa. Keda realised very early on in her research that struggling readers need to make a clear distinction between sounds. She found it is NOT a problem for them to transfer these more distinct sounds to words later. Non-trained staff or parents find it much easier (more natural, perhaps?) to demonstrate the sound in this way. For example, the precise sound of the letter ‘L’ causes much confusion for student and tutor alike. However, if tutors prefer to follow the conventional wisdom that’s OK – Toe By Toe will still work its magic!

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Toe By Toe provides a sense of progress and momentum from day one. It is this that keeps them motivated and ‘on task’. Keda spent almost all her teaching career at one school – Sandal Road Primary School in Baildon, UK. After observing that some students’ reading difficulties persisted despite careful instruction, she began teaching students in her home after school each day. Though a relatively unknown term at the time, dyslexia fascinated Keda and she began to conduct her own research, which became the basis of Toe by Toe. Over the ensuing decades, Toe by Toe became the fully functioning system it is today. Automaticity is the ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required. This enables a student’s thought processes to become an automatic response pattern or habit. Regardless of the nature of literacy problems, everyone can be taught to read using Toe By Toe. It requires only 20 minutes of coaching a day and you’ll see immediate improvements in your child’s reading confidence. It can be used by parents or by teachers – you don’t need to be a trained educator to help a child read with Toe By Toe.

A. We consider that a child should be 7 years old before starting the Toe By Toe. That said, don’t consider 7 years old as the absolute minimum age to start Toe By Toe. As a parent or teacher you will know the child best. You will know when the child is capable of studying Toe By Toe. As a tutor, you are not going to succeed without the active co-operation of students. Inspire them and ensure they never lose heart. The beauty of Toe By Toe is that it can be studied at home. Almost anyone can teach it. You don’t need to be a qualified teacher. A parent. A family member or friend. Even a sibling. Almost anyone could be a mentor, teaching struggling readers how to read. All exercises are easily followed and everything is clearly explained. A. Both manuals can be used in the same lesson. However, we recommend alternating between a reading lesson one day and a spelling lesson on the next. Alternatively, some people prefer to finish or partially complete Toe by Toe before starting Stareway.

Wordle Helper

Many students reach a ‘reading plateau’. They have good reading skills, but still face problems in understanding text content and extracting meaningful information from it. This has consequences for a student across all subjects in test and examination situations. For maturer students, it can also impact on their ability to do their job competently and effectively. BUSY MINDS We refute this charge. Our counter is how do most words enter a person’s vocabulary? Surely, ‘Barking at Print’ is how we all start to read in the first place? For many such students, they often remain on this ‘reading plateau’ throughout their school careers and on into adult life.

Far more important, indeed the most important thing is to make students feel that they are finally succeeding with what is - to them - a mysteriously difficult skill. In the late 70’s Keda Cowling created a unique syllable division which was incorporated into the reading manual Toe by Toe. Over the last few years this system has successfully taught thousands of people – dyslexics and non-dyslexics alike – to read (i.e. decode). This success has been due to the application of this easy-to-use syllable division and the structured over-teaching of the phonemes in question. Keda Cowling, creator of the Toe by Toe manual, was born in 1926 in West Yorkshire, attending school during the depression of the 1930s. Sadly, like many others, she was denied the chance to take up a scholarship at the local grammar school. Although forced to leave school early for financial reasons, Keda maintained a love for school and her books. She never lost this passion or her burning desire to become a teacher.

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A. Our aim is to establish high frequency words in the long-term memory. Just because a student spells a word correctly on one occasion is no guarantee that it will be known the next time. However, years of our research have established that if a student is able to spell a word successfully on FIVE consecutive occasions - with a gap of at least 24 hours between testing - this indicates that it has been stored in long-term memory.