Specialist Reading and Spelling Tutoring
with Lauren Breeding
“My aim is to create a space where your child regularly experiences encouragement, support and success, enabling their self esteem and confidence to grow.”
About me
Qualifications
- Bachelor of Education (Junior Primary/Primary)
- Teaching Students with Dyslexia, Levels 1 and 2
Thank you for reaching out to seek support for your child.
I am a registered teacher with 18 years experience working full time in classrooms. Throughout my career, I have always had a strong passion for supporting students with a variety of learning difficulties.
I have trained as a Specialist Dyslexia Teacher and my approach is based on the Playberry Multisensory Literacy Program. This program benefits children with Dyslexia, as well as children without a diagnosis, who have persistent spelling and reading difficulties.
In 2024, I will run tutoring sessions from my home in Lockleys each Monday and Friday. The rest of my week will be spent running the Playberry Intervention program at the school where I hold a permanent position.
My aim is to create a space where your child regularly experiences encouragement, support and success, enabling their self esteem and confidence to grow.
Contact Me
The program
The Playberry Tier 3 Multisensory Literacy Program is an intensive intervention for students with stubborn reading and spelling difficulties.
Developed by Alison Playford and Bill Hansberry, Playberry takes a student right back to the beginning and systematically rebuilds their knowledge of phonics (our letter-sound system).
The structure of the program spans 86 teaching points, which are each taught explicitly and then revised in an ongoing way throughout the program.
Weekly sessions
Your child’s first session with me will likely involve some initial assessments. These will allow me to measure their progress over time. Following this, each weekly 60 minute session will consist of the following structure:
1. Homework check
2. Alphabet work/Phonological Awareness
3. Card Drills
4. Revision
5. New Teaching Point (if your child has consolidated previous learning and is ready to proceed)
6. Game
The hour session passes quickly as we move from one part of the lesson to another. Each of the six lesson components are quite different, which breaks the lessson into small chunks.
This program is highly individualised. Children will move through the program at a pace that is right for them. They will only be introduced to a new teaching point when ready for it.
Each teaching point can be delivered in a variety of ways, meaning that two children at the same point of the program may be exposed to the content differently, depending on their individual needs.
Card packs
Your child will have a folder that they must bring to each session. There will be 3 packs of cards in this folder:
Reading cards
These are white cards with a letter (or group of letters) on the shiny side and the different sounds that can be made by that letter (or letters) on the reverse side. These cards help children to become quicker at linking sounds to letters and letters to sounds.
Concept cards
These are white cards with a red line down one edge of the shiny side. These cards help your child to recall spelling rules and grammar terms with growing automaticity.
Spelling cards
These are only used during tutoring sessions. During lessons, I will call out the sounds from these cards and ask your child to write them, using accurate spelling. They do not need to use them at home.
Most weeks, your child will be given a new reading or concept card which has been introduced to them in our session. They will never bring home a card that we haven’t explored together.
Homework
Homework will involve:
- Card drills each night (for no more than several minutes)
- 1-2 reading sheets over the week
Your child will need your support to keep up with the homework commitment.
A consistent time and place for homework to occur each night where distractions are minimised is recommended.
All homework will be achievable as it will only consist of letters, sounds and concepts covered in previous lessons.
Home card drills
Your child will need to do a reading card and concept card drill with you each night (Monday – Friday). This should never take longer than a few minutes.
Put simply, the drill involves you showing your child the shiny side of each card, one at a time, and your child trying to recite from memory what is on the reverse side.
You will find step by step instructions for how to do this inside your child’s folder.
Practising the card drills at home is vital to the speed of progress your child will make through the program.
As I teach your child new concepts and letter-sound combinations, their card pack will grow and the drills will take a little longer.
How to do Playberry reading and concept card drills at home:
Home reading sheets
One or two of these will be placed in the ‘homework’ section of your child’s folder each week.
The reading sheets are straight forward; your child just reads them to an adult three times in one sitting. This activity is called repeated oral reading and it develops fluency.
Some reading sheets will also include comprehension questions to be completed and some revise particular aspects of the program that have been taught. The written components of these sheets need to be completed in the link script I teach in lessons.
Repeated oral reading at home – doing it properly:
Why linked script?
Research is still showing us that linking letters places less demand on students’ coding and motor systems. Having to lift the pen or pencil and then ‘touch-down’ again in non-cursive print places greater load on these neural systems, making writing harder. Cursive also makes letter reversals less of a problem because the symmetry of ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘p’ and ‘q’ is removed and these letters aree no longer mirror images of each other when printed in cursive.
Contact
Lauren Breeding
Available Monday & Friday
Lockleys, South Australia 5032
ABN: 31 382 124 295
