Which Reading System - Easyread, Dancing Bears or Sound Reading Solutions

[Pinkroses73]

Hi. I would really appreciate any advice thanks.

My 6.5 year old son has only just moved onto the yellow stage biff chip kipper books. He is way behind most of his class on reading levels and is also behind on every other subject. He does not enjoy reading (although loves being read to). He knows his phonics sounds although does not always know some such as the different “oo” sounds. He is good with the sight recognition tricky words.

His teacher has been no help. She just keeps saying he requires support but he gets no additional support at school. There are children in his class who can’t read a single word so the extra support goes to them and his teacher says he is not at that stage to require the extra support.

I have therefore been looking into what else I can do at home. His homework books (biff chip kipper) are a struggle to get him to read as he finds it a chore.

I have started the Easyread free 10 day trial. He loves doing it and actually ran to do the lesson yesterday, rather than the constant battles over homework I normally have. However, the Easyread system is very expensive if I sign up (£140 a month I think), and I am concerned this system may confuse him with the Jolly Phonics system he is learning at school.

I have also looked at Dancing Bears and Sound Reading Solutions and confused as to which one to invest my time and money in.

I have already introduced him to a vast array of reading books that he has an interest in but he wants me to read them not him.

I'd recommend https://www.udemy.com/help-your-child-to-read-and-write/ which is free and part two which costs £9.99

My son has just finished with DMEasyRead, yes it costs but the result is a child who reads more fluently, loves books and reading and has the courage to try and decode long complex words. I am a scientist and put hours of research into finding a system that nurtured, encouraged and developed the reading. The benefit is that the lessons are short and therefore the child wants to do more, they receive vocal encouragement and gifts along the way and have an element of control, often lost with learning difficulties, as they can select books they want to read and games that develop skills that they want to play. I have a happy and confident reader now.

How about Toe by Toe - costs around £25 from Amazon. Can be done in around 5 mins a day minimum 3 x per week. We use this in school. We also use the Nessy products - Nessy reading and spelling costs around £8 per month and is computer based so loads of fun games and videos to support learning. You can also print out games and worksheets if you want to

You have to find your own way, all In can say is with a team of educated professionals working at DMEasyRead, the assessments of reading and spelling are adapted to your childs progress rather than a standard approach, it is this individual approach that gives such good results.

I've used Dancing Bears with all three of my children - 10 minutes a day - it got DS who couldn't blend reading and helped the other two who were slow at times and guessing at others reading much better.

I haven't used Easyread or Sound Reading Solutions - though I suspect just pratcising something at home will massively help.

We also used the free teach your moster how to read and bought book series like Song birds and Cat on the Mat series and for all three at some point I've done Reading Chest as they needed practise with proper phonic based schemes and school and local library at the time didn’t seem to have enough of.

I have to disagree with just practicing at home, Dyslexic children have a different pattern to storing sounds and letters, DMEasyRead is as much about teaching the parents about the 'condition' and how to tackle it for life. It is life long decoding and confidence to do so.

I am diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia and I know it affects me very differently to other diagnosed family members and I've seen different issues with my children.

Personally I found all practise at home help me work out where my children were struggling not where they should or must be having problems allowing to focus on them and their issues.

We found dancing bears and apple and pears very good for us it seemed to slowly build up words and their confidence – it was recommending by a year 2 teacher at one of their schools and from these boards from other parents with dyslexia children but I know other parents have had success with other programs – Toe to toe is often mentioned or Nessy though mine haven’t got on with those.

I do believe I said at the beginning it is an individual approach, I research hundreds of courses and reviewed the outcome and data, that is all I am saying. No course is going to work without practice. MSc, BSc, BA, BSc (Hons.) as my personal support.

I research hundreds of courses and reviewed the outcome and data, that is all I am saying.

Of course being a scientist coming from a family with many diagnosed dyslexics and married to a scientist at one time involved in educational research with children we were worried about this never occur to us

OP IME there is an awful lot of horse shit and silver bullets around dyslexia - my advice would be start with the free or low cost things and see if they help.

At the minute he’s just slow to move up reading bands – reading can just take off and he may not have any future problems I know friend's children who this happend to - I would do some support and keep talking to the school about concerns.

Jolly good, but I believe it was a request to ask advice and what worked for us in our experience, which is exactly what I did and then explained why, I would never say that your advice holds any more value than mine, although saying what your family is in not exactly own experience is it. I believe in offering up my experience and as said before letting people make up their own minds.

Another recommendation for Dancing Bears here, we have had great success with many children over the years with this. We will often use toe by toe for children in KS2 but tend to use DB for KS1 as toe by toe can be a little dry, the DB seems to hold their attention better.

Bear Necessities is a souped up version of Dancing bears and we've had very good results using it in the past. Sound Reading Solutions works from print to sound which IMHO is backwards and personally I'd not touch Easy read even if it were free.

We're using Easyread and started in October - already seeing a real difference and very pleased with it. It was recommended to us as it's supposed to be very good at helping with some specific things we wanted to address - skipping words, guessing words, only reading half a word and really poor spelling.

Main things are how positive my DS feels about reading - he has loved it from day 1. Reading practise is now something we enjoy and look forward to every day. His decoding has really improved and good to practise eye tracking etc. I think it's a very clever system and it is incredibly motivating for my child. The support is fab too.

DS2 has been so jealous and has been badgering me to let him do it. We weren't keen, partly due to the cost, but have agreed as he really wants to do it - and of course, it will help his reading / spelling too. Very happy to give you more info if you'd like.

Me again, as posted too soon...

We've tried various systems to help with our DC's learning (reading, spelling and maths). Some have worked really well, others less so. Some have worked for one DC and not another. Some have been brilliant but just too time consuming or intensive for me to juggle with the kids. Some are paper based , some online - some need quite a lot of input from the parent - others can be more independent. My best advice would be to gather recommendations and look at lots of different options before choosing one that fits your child, circumstances and family life. Consistency is really important. Then give it a try and see how you get on. Don't be afraid to tweak it or to try something else.

Good luck X

@peoniesarejustperfect @RCollins @Pinkroses73

This is an old post, but if you are still around how did you get on with Easyread? I have just started the free trial with ds and he loves it! I would do anything to get him to read!

i‘m a scientist too (even a psychologist) - it really, really depends on your child.
I‘m highly dyslexic, I learned reading by recognising sight words. I still really, really struggle with decoding words. Once somebody has read them to me once, I recognise them easily though.
My older son is dyslexic as well - nessy and dancing bears led to massive tantrums and no learning, but toe by toe works great. He really benefits from systematic decoding (I however can’t do it with him as I don’t get it at all - thank god for school being well ressourced).

oops, zombie thread!

Hi. I did not proceed with Easyread. I decided as it was not 100% in line with how he is taught in school not to proceed. I choose Dancing Bears instead and have now worked through all the books in the Dancing Bears series. My son can read now but needs to work on fluency and there are still some words that he struggles to decode. So at the moment I am looking at starting another system to help with this, perhaps Toe by Toe.

I would say however that my son moaned and complained every time he had to do Dancing Bears, although in the end it lessened as he could see for himself how much it helped. In hindsight, perhaps I should have continued with Easyread instead. It was me that taught my son to read, not school, so the fact that it is not the same as school was not really relevant. Also, my son loved doing the Easyread trial and I may have saved myself listening to 2 years of complaining every day :)

I would just go with one and see how you get on. Practice little and often at home will help. If you don't feel like its working move to another system. Take it into your own hands. I wish I knew what I did 2 years ago. In my experience its only the very best schools that really manage to intervene and get a struggling reader up to speed. Since my last post my son has also been diagnosed with Dyslexia. Despite this he can now read, albeit I would say not as fluently as most of his peers. Good luck.

Have a look at Reading Chest, we've just subscribed to it for our daughter in reception.
It's basically a subscription service for book band books.
She's absolutely loving it so far and there a really good range/variety of books.
You can also 'bin' books you don't want, so I can make sure she doesn't get books we've had from school and the dreaded Biff and Chip books as they're awful!

@Pinkroses73 great advice! I have to say ds is LOVING Easyread so far - fingers crossed it continues!

@anna114young Yes, I'm still here!
Easyread was really useful for us. I can't remember exactly how far we got, but we did about 8 months. I then stopped because my DS had to start online practice for pre-tests and we couldn't fit it all in. DS2 continued for a while longer. It was a great help to the boys and we all enjoyed doing it. They both made a lot of progress. They def make it fun and at that point computer learning was a novelty (ooh, those were the days....). Prizes in the post were a big boost. I haven't tried Dancing Bears or the others, but my only advice is to try and find something you all enjoy. We used to sit on the sofa together and have a giggle and cuddle whilst we were doing it - try and make reading fun and relaxing.

@peoniesarejustperfect Thank you so much for getting back to me!!! I am so happy to hear this. So far the free trial is going so so well and you're so right. Prizes in the post definitely help! I am so pleased you had success with it and that it was fun. I have had such a battle on my hands with reading for so many years now. I just want to have a giggle with ds too! I think I am going to sign up for the full program. This is the ONLY thing he hasn't complained about